Technology, Ethnicity and Gender the

Technology, Ethnicity and Gender The first part of this unit deals with the creation of the Internet as a global network, starting with the initial work of scientist J.C.R. Licklider, back in 1960. His vision was for a network of computers that would be connected to one another and would provide between them the entire volume of information existing at that point in libraries. The idea started to be put into action at the level of the U.S.

Department of Defense, as the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project) was created in 1962. Part of DARPA informally worked on the idea of networking. The idea of an interconnected networking system was further developed with the creation of a network connection between the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute in 1969, to which two other universities adhered later that year. By 1981, this incipient form of the Internet already had 213 hosts, with more being added from that point onwards.

On the other hand, this had remained an American-based project, as the Europeans were working on a different network project that would not be connected to the American one. This network relied on X.25 and related communication standards, with the first International Packet Switched Service being founded in 1978. The respective service eventually included almost all the continents as a multifunction protocol that was available for business use. From the merger of all existing networks, the Internet came about as a network using the TCP/IP protocol.

It became the norm at a global level as well, with the Internet taking over in Japan, Thailand or Australia. As technology expanded and diversified, Internet became available on the mobile phone as well, with the introduction of the Nokia 9000 Communicator. As the Internet developed, more and more applications were created to facilitate the communication between users (email applications) and the capacity to find information easier and to organize it appropriately (Gopher or the FTP Archive, as well as the browsers that came about).

For finding information, search engines and web directories either researched Internet pages or simply grouped the information together according to similar criteria. With the development of the World Wide Web, the Internet could now be easily accesses by users, providing information to a large number of individuals.

The history of the Internet also contains the great dot com bubble, at the end of the 1990s, when an abundance of companies went online and tried to transform the entire concept of business by revolutionizing the entire set of elements that formed a business. While this was successful, many of the newly created Internet companies had not survived the deflation of the bubble.

The development of new applications went hand in had with new technologies during the 1990s, especially with the development of the Java platform, as well as new applications. Some of these targeted communication over the Internet, such as Hotmail, which was created and launched in 1996, initially as a free service to market the product. The Hotmail website quickly attracted followers, to the degree to which there were around 1 million subscribers in the initial six months after the launch.

The product was later on sold to Microsoft after only a year and a half, with the founder still working for a period of time for Microsoft. It is considered that the customer base and audience for Hotmail grew faster than any other media or telecommunication product, but many still had the sense that the $400 million paid for Hotmail was simply too much for just an email application. With the new development, the new Internet-based applications included a focus on organizing and an easier access to information.

Wikipedia is the best example in this sense: free, available information on basically any issues that a user can think of. Further more, the concept itself is very interesting, with the fact that anybody can access and edit the content over Wikipedia. The last part of the unit deals with the statistics of national science in terms of the participation of different categories of individuals, such as women, minorities or person with disabilities in science and engineering. The analysis is interesting in that it also covers the projections up to 2050.

As such, in terms of race participation, statistics expect Hispanic, Black and Asian/Pacific Islander populations to all increase their participation in science and engineering. The distribution of educational studies among the different ethnicities is also interesting. Statistics show that the Asian population is more inclined towards engineering, with the white and black ethnicities more inclined towards social sciences. Other sciences, such as biological sciences or mathematics have a reasonably similar and equal distribution among the different ethnicities.

Unit 3 -- it Ethics This unit has a collection of different articles that deal with the concept of ethics in the it world, in different areas, ranging from the programming sector to hacking and other less ethical activities. The first article has reflections on the programming life. As a proper personal reflection, it is written in the first person singular. The first noticeable thing that the writer mentions is the extreme specificity of the programming languages.

In order to be able to communicate with the computer, you need to appropriately use the right algorithm, without any mistakes, which otherwise would be interpreted as a syntax error. On the other hand, the capacity to write such an algorithm means a continuous attention paid to the working process. Any potential breaks or interruptions will mean programming errors and, as such, a decrease in the overall efficiency of the programmer.

It will also mean, however, that the actual programming activity might be less interactive and social than other working activities. The article goes on to describe several experiences which put into good view some of the eccentricities of programmers and engineers in general. Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, writes the following article as a somewhat philosophical perspective on the future. His attempts is to analyze from different perspectives how the technological advances are likely to affect the human race and even bring about its destruction.

On one hand, the technological advances could bring about the potentiality for immortality, but, on the other hand, if these became instruments out of control, they could also imply potential harm for humans. Such examples abound in the science fiction literature, including the Borg in Star Trek or other similar robots or engineered organisms. As he points out later on, in the relationship between humans, nature and machines, it is quite plausible that the machines may win out in the end.

Henry Ingo's article discusses Linux, the impact Linux had over the entire computer community and the entire Open Source philosophy. The Open Source applications are not limited to Linux, which is an operating system. They include a large number of programs, including email, word processors or Web browsers. Probably the main difference from traditional programs such as Windows is that the source is available to all users alike over the Internet or anywhere.

It can also be used by other programmers, incorporated into other applications without any dues necessary -- everything is free. This is all resumed in the Open Source ethic that clearly states that you can and should "do whatever you like," with the necessary addition that this should mean that you will not, however, interfere with other individuals' work. At the same time, the Open Source philosophy also created a strong community of developers.

Linux progressed over time as more and more people contacted the original programmer and offered to contribute to further developing Linux. The contributions were flexible and without a center coordination, as no exact indications were given.