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Digital Convergence: How the Merging of Computers, Communications and Multimedia is Transforming Our Lives

Digital Convergence: How the Merging of Computers, Communications and Multimedia is Transforming Our Lives

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Rating: 0 stars
Summary: How can new technology empower you?
Review: Obviously, the printing press is still alive and well as an effective technology for sharing information. Digital convergence technologies -- such as the Web, e-mail, videoconferencing, and streaming media -- offer many exciting new opportunities for us to get ahead. These technologies are already changing the way we learn, conduct business, and entertain ourselves.

Digital convergence technologies -- which enable us to interact, communicate, and share information in new ways -- will ultimately lead to the RISE OF THE INDIVUAL in our global society and economy. These technologies empower individuals, entrepreneurs, and workgroups in a way we haven't seen before. They really do level the playing field.

How do people like you and I go about leveraging this new capability? Many people lack a framework for understanding how new digital technologies are evolving and what their limitations are; and they are often at a loss when it comes to selecting and deploying new technologies. This book is a technology primer that offers a nuts-and-bolts overview -- along with some sage advice -- that instills in you, the reader, a framework for understanding how the technology is evolving and how to effectively utilize new technology to enhance your life and improve your career. It is the creative and energetic among us that will come to understand and use this framework -- and lead us into the future.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: a good and easy guide for understanding digital technologies
Review: Technologies have existed throughout our history from physical tools such as hammer and wheel to intellectual skills such as know-how of organization management. With the advent and acceptance of new technologies, people have experienced the change of life pattern correspondingly. Since the late 1990s, a variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have also changed our lives. For example, mobile telephone made it easier to make and adjust appointments. Internet brings about both richness and overload of available information. Andy Covell tries to show the potential opportunity new digital technologies offer individuals through his book Digital Convergence.
Digital ICTs are different from conventional analog ICTs in that they represent any information as binary digits. This way of digitized representation improves our ability to transmit, edit, and compute information. Furthermore, it is relatively easier to integrate different kinds of digital technologies. This can be called digital convergence. According to the author, digital convergence refers to the merging of computing capabilities, multimedia technologies, and communication technologies. Currently, digital convergence is in progress.
As an expert of information technology, the author focuses on technological potential for influencing human life. Actually this book can be regarded as a kind of guidebook rather than one that describes and discusses the impact of digital convergence on human life. We can find somewhat familiar acronyms such as LAN, MPEG-1, AGP, PCMCIA, and MIDI. But we may not know exactly what they mean and how can they be used. This book is useful in that it provides easy explanation of each acronym, sometimes with stories of author himself.
But it may be misleading to discuss the impact of digital convergence from technology-centered perspective. Technological potential is not the outcome but a necessary condition. Digital convergence can transform our lives through the interaction with diverse political, economical, and cultural conditions. Nonetheless, this book is useful in that it helps understand the functionality and potential impact of diverse digital technologies.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fascinating reading for computer & "future shock" students.
Review: The merging of computers and communications is changing our lives fast: this considers the future of such mergers, examining how changes in video, sound, text and image transmission will revolutionize our lives in a relatively short period of time. This considers not only the pros and cons, but the underlying technology involved in such mergers.


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