CyberMouse

Friday, July 04, 2003:

Hello Cybermice I think that this is the best and most complete answer to the 2020 question I sent you so thought I'd blog it for you all to see:

The Internet Effect

The Internet has brought new opportunities to everything that we do. Today, millions of people are connected to the Internet, and the number is increasing every day. And its effect, "the Internet Effect", is profound. In this essay, I will talk about the Internet Effect on four major areas: Family life, my country (Japan), the world, and social and political issues and problems.

Use of email and chat changed the family life especially in the way they communicate. Instead of making phone calls or writing letters, they now write short, informal email, chat online, send electronic greeting cards, etc. The Internet makes us to spend less time with our family.
The Internet is spawning whole new mass markets, and formerly stagnant markets are being rejuvenated. Much of this activity will benefit the Japanese industry. Perhaps the best news of all for Japan’s electronics companies is that the rise of the Internet should help rejuvenate the demand for consumer electronics and their components. The ongoing growth and development of the Internet is beginning to stimulate demand in equipment and component markets that are dominated by the large Japanese electronics companies. This is putting Japan at the leading edge of developments related to the broadband wireless Internet.

The Internet has effected the world in many ways. In a real-life situation the majority of people would avoid speaking to a disfigured individual or a child even if they themselves were intellectual or occupied another high-ranking position in society. The Internet is the savior of these people for it hides the simple traits of age, looks and class. The Internet can allow people to gain positions and gain friends that they would never otherwise have the chance to in real life. Also the Internet allows anyone who may not have the courage, or in whose locale it may not be acceptable, to reach out to others with their beliefs and ideas. This means that people who have a certain view can promote it without being worried about others laughing or holding prejudice against them: the Net provides places where they can find other people who agree with them.

The Internet has caused somewhat of a revolution in society, allowing people from all over the world to communicate and express their ideas and feelings. The Internet has also changed the way society treats people and the balance of power. The power members of society become much less powerful than they are in real life. The social group of advanced computer users have a much larger power on the Internet because of their knowledge of its mechanics, and not just a position they have been given. ?The point about the balance of power change is not that the people who have 'authority by position' lose some of their power, but that anyone can get to that position via knowledge.

The Internet is here to stay, and it's really up to us how it affects our lives. It has allowed people from all over the world to express their ideas, communicate and have fun. It has allowed minority groups much more power than they have in real life. There are many changes to our lives because of the Internet; whether they enhance or ruin our lives is up to us.


Sayaka Kasai
IE Internet Enlish (Tuesday)
Unknown // 6:38 AM

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Monday, June 30, 2003:

Hi, my name is Mariko Sato. I could come here at last...
I am a member of the baseball club.
I LOVE baseball very much !!
It is the best sports in the world...
My another favorite thing is watching movie.
I like Charlie's Angels and The Virgine Suicides,
because the girls are so cute in these movies.
I'm enjoying this class a lot. Thank you !!
Unknown // 7:40 PM

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Don't Lick That Envelop!



Finally, don't lick that flap if you have something to hide -- a
particularly hard lesson learned by a 35-year old man who was just
arrested for a murder committed 21 years ago
(http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/21/old.murder.ap/index.html).

It seems that DNA technologies of twenty, and even ten years ago, were
too crude to lift a "DNA fingerprint" from the victim's body. But this
was finally accomplished last year. The question then, was how to
legally get a DNA sample from the suspect to test for a match?

The authorities sent him a letter containing a form he had to fill out,
along with a self-addressed (and assumedly stamped) return envelop. All
he had to do was sign the form, lick the flap, and drop it in a mailbox.
(I wonder if this was a "You've Won!" sweepstakes kind of form...?)

This freely-given DNA sample was then analyzed, matched to the
"fingerprint" on the body, and he was arrested.

Talk about "getting licked!"



This story is somewhat humorous (although assumedly not for the man
arrested), but it does remind us that "privacy" as we've known it is
being constantly eroded by the technological advances that are otherwise
so valuable. We've seen TV cop shows where the DNA from a glass of
water given to someone being interrogated, or a thrown-out piece of
chewing gum, can be a "smoking gun" -- and now we've seen a real-life
version.

In a different kind of privacy issue, another man was just sentenced to
30 years in jail based on the evidence stored in his car's "black box"
-- it documented for the police that he was actually moving at 100 MPH
just prior to hitting a car containing two teenagers
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=
story&u=/ibsys/20030613/lo_wplg/1658180 ).

And if you don't think that YOU have such a "black box," consider that
they're already built into 25 million cars in the US as part of the
engine and data monitoring system!
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/
20030605/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/vehicle_black_boxes_2 )



Just something to keep in mind as you walk around with your cell phone
turned on, drive past recording traffic surveillance cameras on
roadways, take the "fast lane" through toll plazas, or walk past shops'
surveillance cameras on a sidewalk. For both good and for ill (and
there ARE both "goods" and "ills"), our lives are increasingly an open
book; let's be sure that we only allow our technologies to shape our
societies in ways that we are, quite literally, willing to live with.




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Unknown // 5:36 AM

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Quote of the Week.



From The Past:

"Introduced in 1978, the original 16-bit 8086 chip contained only
29,000 transistors and ran at 5 MHz...

In comparison, early 2003's Pentium 4 processors contain 55 million
transistors and run more than 600 times faster -- at 3.06GHz.


To The Present:

Based on combined desktop, laptop and server shipments, Mercury
Research calculates that Intel shipped its One-Billionth Processor
in April [2003], roughly 25 years after the debut of the first 8086
microprocessor on June 8, 1978...


And On To Tomorrow:

Mercury Research calculates that the next billion X86 CPUs could
ship far faster than the first billion processors, in only four [vs.
25] years -- by as early as 2007!"

Paraphrases from a June 9 Intel Press Release,
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20030609corp.htm
and from additional insights about Intel's history, at
http://www.intel.com/labs/features/mi06031.htm





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The Info Game.



My wife and I were taking the 2+ hour drive back from Cape Cod this past
weekend (being directed, as always, by my Garmin StreetPilot III
(http://www.garmin.com/products/spIII/) - the best ridiculous amount of
money I've spent on an electronic gadget in as long as I can remember.)

Although not quite perfect (nothing is), a self-contained moving-map GPS
device such as this leaves me confident that I can't get lost, and that
I can find almost any destination with little effort. It is, from a
business and personal travel perspective, as highly addictive as the
worst of addictive drugs.

[My only major complaint to Garmin: why, oh why, didn't you allow
for the use of the gigabyte IBM MicroDrive, rather than the
proprietary 128 megabyte memory card -- it would have drastically
expanded the area that the unit could explore between visits to the
PC or notebook, to half the U.S. or more, at virtually the same
price as one memory card!]



It Gets Better.

But the services that this device offers get even better. Because so
long as you're traveling within the detailed map area that you've
previously download (from a PC) into the device's memory card (several
states' worth of data, depending on the density of the area involved),
the database also includes a wealth of information about "points of
interest" along the way, such as lodging, businesses, restaurants,
government services, and much more -- all fully integrated into the
navigation software.

For example, it was approaching dinner time, and it's always our policy
to try new restaurants beyond our normal stomping grounds when feasible.
In this case, Thai food sounded good, so I punched up "Food & Drink /
Asian," and told the StreetPilot III to list the nearest candidates.
This presented a list, sorted with the closest Asian restaurants first,
with each entry showing the distance to that restaurant along with an
arrow showing its direction from our direction-of-travel (so I knew
which ones would require backtracking, vs. those in front of us.) And
the list, as with all such lists, was "live," meaning that in real time
the list re-sorted as we got farther from choices we had passed, while
new restaurants in front of us appeared as they got within range. The
mileage figures for each entry, and their directional arrows, were
similarly "live."

This would be pretty useful by itself, but a click on any of these
restaurants brought up a display of its address and phone number. That
phone number made it a snap to chat with likely candidates to get an
idea of their cuisine, see how busy they were, and generally get a sense
if this restaurant met our desires. Which brings me to one area where
this database just aches to be expanded.



It Could Be EVEN BETTER!

As we settled on prospective restaurants, we pulled out my wife's PDA
which contains the Zagat's restaurant survey, to get an opinion of how
those restaurants near us were rated. (The result of this on-the-fly
data surfing was a very good Thai dinner!)

But that process was needlessly complex. Why not integrate such
added-value material as the Zagat's guide right into the navigation
database? (We'll ignore space concerns, since that always gets better,
as well as the cost of the additional information, since we already paid
separately for the Zagat information, plus enhanced volume through
bundling would likely reduce its price.)

Similarly, and even more important, how about including real-time
traffic info into the GPS display and route calculations -- this would
be an invaluable mobile "Killer App!"

I know -- some of these capabilities are already available in some
markets, at least under experimental conditions. And once wireless
bandwidth is pervasive, virtually any information could be integrated
through standards such as XML. Just imagine what a difference in
time-and-frustration-saved, in added-convenience, (and in better meals),
such real-time data integration would make. And (hint - hint), imagine
the leading edge that such services, coupled with excellent hardware and
databases, might give to the company(s) who first offer such integrated
services!

(It's also rather interesting that in this discussion, I've said
little about the StreetPilot III's core GPS functionality -- it just
works. Raw GPS data is now a commodity available from chips in your
pocket cell phone, much less from these larger, task-oriented units.
But what good would a raw readout of lat./long./elevation be to most
of us?

Indeed, the differentiation for "location-aware" devices is no
longer in how well the basic GPS functions work, since a highly
functional "floor" has already been established as the "price of
entry." Instead, the overall value of current and future "GPS
devices" will be judged more on the INTEGRATION of an ever-growing
sphere of information (restaurants, traffic info, real-time updated
street maps, satellite photo overlays, and far more), on better
displays and user interfaces (the StreetPilot III's color display
and fairly good user interface set it in front of the pack on GPS
mapping functions alone), plus on other functions that dramatically
enhance the "basic" location service.)

I KNOW that these further "integrations" will happen. It's just a
matter of by whom, and when. The good news is that this is certainly
NOT news to the companies poised to further change our commutes, our
business trips, and those wonderful family trips with the kids (to whom,
when they inevitably whine "Are we there yet?", you can now look at the
GPS and respond "Just another 2 hours, 14 minutes, and 16 seconds,
Johnny.").

Of course Johnny, who probably mastered the depths of the GPS software
and user interfaces far faster than his parents, might also point out
that Burger King is only 3.2 miles ahead, and would take them only .23
miles out of their way. And oh, look -- there's a nice miniature golf
range just beyond that...




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From Out of the Ether.



Unknown // 5:29 AM

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