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A virtual representation of a person or a person's interactions with others in a virtual environment, conveying a sense of someone's presence (known as tele-presence) by providing the location (position and orientation) and identity; examples include the graphical human figure model, the talking head, and the real-time reproduction of a three-dimensional human image.
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Collective Intelligence
This is a concept developed by the French scholar Pierre Lévy in his book by the same name published in France in 1994. The theory intends to found -in the words of the author-an ‘anthropology of cyberspace’ and finds it vital lymph in the advent of computer networks, and in particular, the Internet. According to Lévy, collective intelligence is distributed everywhere, even in the most unexpected places. ‘No one knows everything; everyone knows something. The totality of knowing resides in humanity. There is no reserve of transcendent knowledge and knowing is nothing different from that which the people know. The light of the spirit shines even where one would want to believe that there is no intelligence’. The role of digital information technologies is fundamental insofar as it allows for the ‘real-time coordination of intelligence’ within a virtual scenario of knowledge in continual transformation. Intelligences are later mobilized within a sole common project in which each person is recognized by a significant role. There is nothing fixed, but chaos does not reign because all is appreciated and coordinated in real-time thanks to the immediate interaction among the various components of a similar community. Lévy’s system is an extreme and utopian appreciation of the impact of the networks on knowledge, with relapses also on the ethical and political plan, and it is not without a certain dogmatic aspect that has drawn some criticism. A more nuanced position is that of Derrick de Kerckhove, that speaks, instead, of connective intelligence.
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Communication (Types of)
Many-to-many communication, or narrowcasting, proper to the www and e-mail, is differentiated from one-to-many communication or broadcasting, typical of the means of mass communication, such as radio, cinema, and television. If in traditional media the control of the content and form of the message is all in the hands of the person who transmits it, here form and content may be produced and modified by whoever is the active subject in the communication. While traditional media reduce the distance between the communication actors, the new media widen the space of communication; they “sink” it and allow every involved subject to intervene in the modification of the text and context of the message (Oriani, 2002). The cyberspace of the web allows each person, individually or in a group, to feed the collective intelligence and it is, at the same time, fed.
Through forms of many-to-many communication significance, sharing of knowledge, of a dynamic, memory that is shared, navigable and collectively produced is negotiated. The environment in this case is cyberspace, but it could also be a classroom in which there is a group of persons who work together according to certain principles and build a collective intelligence that is group intelligence.
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Communication Ethics
The first thing that must be said with regard to the ethics of communication is that the relevance of the term ‘communication’ in the field of ethics has assumed a much greater importance than in the past when J. Habermas and O. Apel made an ingenious attempt to base the whole moral discourse beginning with the laws that regulate argumentative communication, i.e., that type of communication that seeks free consent from the recipient based on convincing arguments. This is precisely the type of communication in which one expresses every form of ethical proposal. The communication is fixed in the sector of interpersonal relationships that represent a case in point of particular interest. In the communication, the people enter into a reciprocal relationship of exchange that has as its object the eminently spiritual reality of a ‘message.’
The primary ethic of communication is its capacity to create communion. This imposes on communication the commitment to a certain “dialoguing” that presupposes on the part of each of the participants an attitude of acceptance and of disinterested promotion of the other’s advancement .
A similar attitude brings with it the overcoming of every desire to “use” the other person and every form of communicative imperialism. Communication belongs to the field of gratuity, but the first gift given by the participant is his/her consideration of the person as a partner in a dialogue between equals. Interpersonal communication becomes more authentic and in dialogue when the transmitter is open to the retune message or feedback from the other. The neologism adopted suggests that reciprocity in dialogue also needs specific techniques, but it is primarily a form of ethical commitment that needs a certain practice.
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Community (virtual community)
A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as letters, telephone, email or Usenet rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chat rooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars. Significant socio-technical change may have resulted from the proliferation of such Internet-based social networks.
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Computer Mediated Communication
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) refers to the use of computer and related technology to communicate. More frequently, the term is narrowed to include only those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (i.e., instant messages, e-mails, chat rooms) between two or more individuals. Research on CMC focuses largely on the social effects of different computer-supported communication technologies. Many recent studies involve internet-based social networking supported by social software online. CMC It offers many educational opportunities and possibilities when driven by sound visions of learning. The use of e-mail, discussion forums, whiteboards, video conferencing, chat groups, web pages, Compact Disk Training, are a few examples of CMC.
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Connective Intelligence
The term was introduced by Derrick de Kerckhove, director of the McLuhan Program of Culture and Technology in Toronto, in a veiled polemic discussion with the Frenchman Pierre Lévy on his theory of collective intelligence. After having written and spoken at length of various types of collectives as protagonists in the culture of the Net, de Kerckhove asked to substitute it with the term “connective.” He did so in a book entitled Connective Intelligence (1997). In practice connective intelligence is unleashed when the Net works as a unified biological system. “We deal here”, writes de Kerckhove, with a system that is enormously intelligent, but is, in great part, decentralized and that seems to organize itself, without many people knowing about it or those who should know what is going on” (pp. 178-179). The growth of telecommunications networks would be comparable, according to the scholar, to the development of our nervous system. The exponential increase of connections via Internet could be compared to the activity of a brain in full process of learning, in the phase of greatest expansion of its faculties. Through the use of the Net, the more minds connected as they work for the same objective, can bring about the emergence of a form of intelligence that is superior to the sum of individual brains. “The so-called virtual community is something more of a vast number of persons involved more or less directly, more or less constantly in a common activity. It is also a presence in real time, immediate and contingent, like a mind at work. Online communication has created a new category of mind, a connective mine, to which there “attaches” or from which there “detaches” without influencing the integrity of the structure (p. 186). We deal with a theory that is complementary under some aspects with that of Pierre Lévy, one that is very bound to the concrete experience of de Kerckhove himself, who organizes connective intelligence workshops with an academic aim and that of managerial formation.
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Cracker/Hacker
cracker, n.: One who breaks security on a system. Coined by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of the term "hacker". The term "cracker" reflects a strong revulsion at the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. There is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than most would suspect.
hacker, n.: 1) A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. 2) One who programs enthusiastically. 3) A person who is good at programming quickly. 4) An expert at a particular program, as in "a Unix hacker". 5) [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. The correct term for this sense is "cracker".
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Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is one of four fields of anthropology (the holistic study of humanity) as it developed in the United States. It is the branch of anthropology that has developed and promoted "culture" as a meaningful scientific concept, studied cultural variation among humans, and examined the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities.
The anthropological concept of "culture" reflects in part a reaction against earlier Western discourses based on an opposition between "culture" and "nature", according to which some human beings lived in a "state of nature". Anthropologists have argued that culture is "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications symbolically, and teach such abstractions to others. Since humans acquire culture through learning (the processes of enculturation and socialization), people living in different places or different circumstances may develop different cultures. Anthropologists have also pointed out that through culture people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distinct places/circumstances).
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Cultural Concentration
Concentration, the notion that has an economic derivation, could be defined as the acquisition on the part of the subject for a quantity of communication power, normally expressed by the numbers of the means of communication that is capable of influencing exorbitant public opinion from the common configuration of the exercise of the right to information and conflicting with the needs of guardianship of the right to information.
In the concentration of the means of mass communication, therefore, the right (to information) is transformed into a power (for conditioning).
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Cyberanthropology
The computer is changing the concept of space and of time. Things that once appeared to be far away draw close and enter into our experience space.
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Cyberculture
The culture arising from the use of computer networks, as for communication, entertainment, work, and business". However, what both the OED and the American Heritage Dictionary miss is that cyberculture is the culture within and among users of computer networks. This cyberculture may be purely an online culture or it may span both virtual and physical worlds. This is to say, that cyberculture is a culture endemic to online communities; it is not just the culture that results from computer use, but culture that is directly mediated by the computer. Another way to envision cyberculture is as the electronically-enabled linkage of like-minded, but potentially geographically disparate (or physically disabled and hence less mobile) persons.
Cyberculture is a wide social and cultural movement closely linked to advanced information science and information technology, their emergence, development and rise to social and cultural prominence between the 1960s and the 1990s. Cyberculture was influenced at its genesis by those early users of the Internet, frequently including the architects of the original project. These individuals were often guided in their actions by the hacker ethic. While early cyberculture was based on a small cultural sample, and its ideals, the modern cyberculture is a much more diverse group of users and the ideals that they espouse.
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Cybernaut
One who navigates the Internet.
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Cybersociety
The mesh (‘space’ or ‘virtual reality’) of electronically based communications created by the world-wide network of computer users. Although it is conventional to distinguish between ‘information technology’ (the term applied to any computer-based application or process, such as is found in the case of office automation), on the one hand, and ‘telecommunications technology’ (for example fax machines or video conferencing), on the other, the multi-media integration of almost all technologies of communication via computers has effectively made this distinction redundant. The newer terminology of cyberspace refers to both developments.
Computer-mediated social interaction has become increasingly prominent in the organization of everyday life in the late twentieth century. Electronic mail and the creation of the Internet have made possible such things as on-line shopping, Web-based ‘chat-rooms’, and personalized video pornography in the home. The implications of this explosion in communications for work, leisure, and politics are a matter of controversy among sociologists (see, for example, Steven G. Jones (ed.) , CyberSociety, 1994).
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Cyberspace
A metaphor for describing the non-physical terrain created by computer systems. Online systems, for example, create a cyberspace within which people can communicate with one another (via e-mail), do research, or simply window shop. Like physical space, cyberspace contains objects (files, mail messages, graphics, etc.) and different modes of transportation and delivery. Unlike real space, though, exploring cyberspace does not require any physical movement other than pressing keys on a keyboard or moving a mouse.
Some programs, particularly computer games, are designed to create a special cyberspace, one that resembles physical reality in some ways but defies it in others. In its extreme form, called virtual reality, users are presented with visual, auditory, and even tactile feedback that makes cyberspace feel real.
The term was coined by author William Gibson in his sci-fi novel Neuromancer (1984).
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Digital convergence
In the days of the first computers, transaction and company data were the first types of information digitized. Then came text, opening the world to word processing, followed by audio CDs and finally video. Having all forms of information in the digital domain has given rise to numerous convergence opportunities.
Personal Computers and Entertainment - A major area of interest is the merging of the PC and entertainment. There are numerous devices that transmit photos, music and videos from the PC to the home stereo/home theater system. In 2002, Microsoft introduced the Windows XP Media Center Edition, a Windows version that concentrates on managing media for home users. This concept uses the Internet as input, the PC as organizer and the home theater as output. Exactly how and where we want to hear, listen and manage all this is evolving.
Data and Voice - Data used to travel over voice networks. Increasingly, voice is traveling over data networks. Billions have been spent by private enterprises and telecom carriers to develop voice over IP (VoIP) networks using the Internet's IP protocol.
Wireless and Handhelds - There is a convergence of wireless transmission for portable phones and cell phones that enable them to also connect to the LAN if they pick up a Wi-Fi signal in the vicinity. Numerous functions are now combined, such as the cell phone/PDA and cell phone/camera/music player. Tiny video camcorders also function as still cameras, voice recorders, digital music players, Webcams and even external storage drives.
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Digital divide
(Also known as technology gap) The term digital divide refers to the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. In other words, it’s the unequal access by some members of the society to information and communications technology, and the unequal acquisition of related skills. Groups often discussed in the context of a digital divide include socioeconomic (rich/poor), racial (majority/minority), generational (young/old) or geographical (urban/rural). The term global digital divide refers to differences in technology access between countries.
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Digitalization
The transformation of a continual signal, of analogical information into one that is digital, in such a way that it may be used by a computer, compressed and transmitted at high speed.
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Distributive Intelligence
This is a concept that is closely connected to the spread and ever more massive use of networks and especially of the Internet from an essentially decentralizes structure where the resources of development, either technological or of thought, are found to be disseminated and not gathered in one center. In fact, the information distributed is a model of that which is already applied on the Net. It is not rare to find cases in which single nodes are use, during the time of slower traffic, for the development of complex data that cannot be managed by on supercomputer. From the consideration of the objective nature of decentralization and the headless aspect of the Net, there have been developed the theories of collective and connective intelligence, the technological roots of which go back to the early research on connection among computers.
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E-book
An e-book (for electronic book: also ebook, also ecobook) is the electronic counterpart of a printed book, which can be viewed on a desktop computer or a portable device such as a laptop computer, PDA or e-book reader. Numerous e-books can be kept on portable units for traveling, eliminating weight and volume compared to equivalent paper books. Electronic bookmarks make referencing easier, and most readers allow the user to annotate pages.
Although fiction and non-fiction books come in e-book formats, technical material is especially suited for e-book delivery because it can be searched. In addition, programming code examples can be quickly copied, which is why CD-ROMs that contain the entire text of the work have been included in the back of many technical paper books.
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E-learning
Electronic learning (or e-Learning) is an umbrella term for providing computer instruction (courseware) online over the public Internet, private distance learning networks or inhouse via an intranet. E-learning is used interchangeably in a wide variety of contexts and is also referred to as Computer Based Training (CBT) or Computer Managed Instruction (CMI).
In companies it is referred to the strategies that use the company network to deliver training courses to employees. In the school setting, it is the use of computers to organize and manage an instructional program for students and helps create test materials, tracks the results and monitors student progress. In the USA, it is defined as a planned teaching/learning experience that uses a wide spectrum of technologies mainly Internet to reach learners at a distance. Lately in most Universities, e-learning is used to define a specific mode to attend a course or programs of study where the students rarely, if ever, attend face-to-face or for on-campus access to educational facilities, because they study on-line.
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eBay
The first and most frequented auction site on the Internet opened in September, 1995. There are millions of categories of objects available on eBay and there are millions of exchanges each day.
The means of operation is simple: users place the notice and description of the object that they want to sell online and bids come through e-mail. The service sees the highest and lists them until the time set. The highest bid wins the product. It is up to the buyer to contact the seller for payment and delivery.
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GNU
GNU (pronounced /gnu) is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for
GNU's Not Unix; it was chosen because its design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and by not containing any Unix code. Development of GNU was initiated by Richard Stallman and was the original focus of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
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Hypertext
Hypertext is a linkage between related information. By selecting a word in an article, more information about that subject is retrieved, which could be a definition, encyclopedic entry or another article. Hypertext is the foundation of the World Wide Web, enabling users to click on a link to obtain more information from a source anywhere in the world.
The hypertext concept was conceived by Ted Nelson in the mid-1960s as a method for making the computer respond to the way humans think and require information. It took the Web to exploit that concept.
Predefined or Virtual - Most Web links are fixed ahead of time. Text links are typically underlined, while a graphic link (hypergraphic) can be a small icon or graphic element of any size. "Virtual hypertext" is also used, which allows a user to click on any word on a page and see a definition. The terms "hypertext," "hyperlink," and "link" are used synonymously.
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Information Highway
(Also information superhighway) The global information and communications network that includes the Internet and other networks and switching systems such as telephone networks, cable television networks, and satellite communication networks.
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Information Technology
(Also IT) Processing information by computer. IT is an umbrella term for the entire computer industry and its latest moniker, which took hold in the 1990s. It actually took 40 years before the industry settled on what to call itself. First it was "electronic data processing" (EDP), which was followed by "management information systems" (MIS) and then "information systems" (IS).
In reality, however, this term is being more and more frequently substituted by ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), which refers to the convergence in act among the sectors of information and telecommunication.
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Interactivity
Interactivity is the reciprocal process of information exchange between two or more "players" in communication, or more specifically learning. "Players" can be pupils, facilitators, peers but also automated learner resources, like databases and other CAL (computer-aided learning) devices.
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Interconnection
In telecommunications, interconnection is the physical linking of a carrier's network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network. The term may refer to a connection between a carrier's facilities and the equipment belonging to its customer, or to a connection between two (or more) carriers.
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Internet Addiction Disorder