One thing I've appreciated more viscerally since moving to England a dozen years ago - technology histories really vary depending on geographic space, at least on the personal level. I wouldn't be surprised to find this true with Jeremy's population of journalists, but I'm not sure what area of the world he's talking about. I had the impression it was France but could be wrong. Burmese country code on his email is not very enlightening since given the current political situation it seems unlikely he's there - but I bet they have a VERY different ICT timeline. Elizabeth On 12 Oct 2006, at 04:44, Julian Hopkins wrote:
Hello Jeremy,
I'm surprised you don't include the Sinclair ZX80 (see e.g. http://www.oldcomputers.net/zx80.html ) in your timeline - I may be mistaken but I think it was the first 'PC' that was cheap enough to go straight into the average household - the ZX81 had more of a mass market and then it was followed by the Spectrum.
I remember playing my first computer game on a ZX81, and using them in school too :)
On the database question - I would say that yes they have to be considered. However a database is in essence just a list of things - which must have been around ever since the first sapiens tried to tell someone about their favourite gathering spots :) So how and why (or if) they become something exclusively 'IT' I don't know.
Mark Poster deals with the significance of databases in a Foucauldian manner: Poster, Mark. The Second Media Age. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1995.
Regards,
Julian
++++++++++ Julian Hopkins Lecturer HELP University College - ADP Kuala Lumpur tel: +60 3 2095 8791 x2913 email: julianh@help.edu.my
Message: 13 Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:52:53 +0200 From: "Jeremy Depauw" <jeremy.depauw@gmail.com> Subject: [Air-l] ICT's Timeline: thanks and first draft To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <f837fdd90610110752l3cd745b9y41566e6dc619440e@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Dear all !
Firstly, I would like to thank readers who have taken some of their time to answer my question about ICT's Timeline. Lots of suggestions were very usefull.
Now I would like to present the first draft I made since I manages to catch a first wave of dates and ideas. To view it, feel free to click on that link <http://dev.ulb.ac.be/%7Ejdepauw/telecharger/EN_timeline- TIC.pdf>. I think that my info are still too "computer oriented" but by the way, I am not sure there is so much other fields of innovation for my question. I translated it very quickly and the layout is still to be improved.
My new motivation is here to ask for an advice : should I consider the history of "databases" as relevant in my reflection and should I link it to the developpement of on-line ressources ? (which I couldn't take into account yet)
-- Jeremy Depauw
The Power of Knoweldge Sharing and Skills Synegism Journal de recherche: http://dev.ulb.ac.be/~jdepauw/dotclear/index.php
_______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http:// listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Elizabeth Van Couvering PhD Student Department of Media & Communications London School of Economics and Political Science http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/ e.j.van-couvering@lse.ac.uk