opening blog

Today marked the first day of the summer semester course "New Information Technologies". It also marked the opening of my first blog account as i have never blogged before. Nevertheless, like everyone in this course (and the most of the wider public), I am relatively well-versed in major modern technologies (not an expert by any means) but I of course utilize the internet and its many dimensions particularly social networks eg facebook etc. on a daily basis.
In our initial lecture we briefly outlined the major forms of modern information technologies, eg mobile phones, emails, instant messaging etc. were discussed. Additionally, we discussed the history of communication itself and its primitive communication forms such as simple visual and phonetic communication progressing to more advanced language. We then examined technology and its movement from its older forms such as the written word to print, progressing to radio, film and television then finally into what we have today in the internet. The nature of the internet was also reviewed in Jonathan Zittrain's video "the kindness of strangers" which looked at the security of the internet and at how large sites such as youtube and wikipedia have been saved from hijacking by the "kindness of strangers" on at least one occasion. These people seemed to be doing this for merely altruistic purposes rather than for payment or recognition.