Week 3: Network and information society

In “Challenges of the global information society” raport (2004.) Finnish philosopher Dr. Pekka Himanen gives an overview of technology and economy models for three leading regions – United Stated, Asia and Europe and talks about the future of the Finnish and European information society. According to Dr. Himanen developed countries should rely on creativity and competence in order to increase productivity through innovations, it is not possible to compete with countries with low tax rates in routine jobs and routine productions. His arguments seems logical and I agree with them. Europe should take the right direction for development in order to be competitive and independent. But implementing this will take a lot of time. Changes should be done on government level first in plans of development. Also the way of thinking should be changed.

Week 2: New media

Web search engines 

Nowadays, technology is changing extremely fast and you can hardly predict how it will transform society in 20-30 years. Things are getting more convenient and simpler and some tasks, that took a good amount of time a few decades ago now can be fulfilled in a couple of seconds. Information searching by web search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Aol Search etc., can be a good example. In most cases, there is no more need to go and search for the right book in library or a book shop and browse it's contents for some kind of information. Just send a request to a search engine and get information in some seconds. Also search engines are used by companies, who want to be in top of search results and get clients and popularity. For me it is really hard to imagine life without Google nowadays.

Week 1: Tech failures

Nexus Q

Nexus Q is not-mobile digital media player, that was developed by Google. On June 27, 2012 this device was originally announced. The reason why this media player failed badly is it's high price and lack of streaming options comparing to alternative devices. Nexus Q streams from Google Play and YouTube only and there is no options to play from other media servers like Netflix, Hulu Plus or an attached drive. Most similar media devices are much cheaper and provide more functionality. New York Time's technology columnist David Progue wrote about this "It’s wildly overbuilt for its incredibly limited functions, and far too expensive. For now, I can think of only one class of customer who should consider buying the black Nexus Q sphere: people whose living rooms are dominated by bowling-ball collections."

 Nintendo Virtual Boy

The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit 3D video game console, developed by Nintendo. It was released in 1995 and discontinued next year on March 2, 1996. Virtual boy failed for many reasons, some of them are high price, poor marketing campaign, discomfort and painful physiological symptoms while playing.
Although Nintendo had promised a real virtual reality experience, in fact it was weak red and black monochrome graphics, that hardly gave any feeling of immersion. Howard Lincoln, the chairman of Nintendo of America said, that the Virtual Boy "just failed."

Nice Virtual Boy review below:) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyVAp0tOk5A

 

Sony Tablet P

The Sony Tablet P was released in November 2011. Due to it's unique clamshell design with a big black hinge splitting up the screen in 2 parts thereby increasing portability, this device failed badly. It was awkward to play games, read or browse internet on such screen, so the whole experience became a mess.

By the end of 2012 this device was taken off from Sony's American website.