Chapter 13
In Chapter 13 Rice deals with cooltown and computer technology. Websites nowdays are used for personal use such as homepages. Hewlett-Pakard, a computer manufacturer, has this image where the world is connected with machines. They call this cooltown. In this environment everything would be operated through computer technology. For example a car will have a information distribution system that lets the driver know if something is wrong with the car. Marshall McLuhan’s book “Understanding Media” discusses two forms of media, hot and cool. Hot media does not require much participation to understand it’s meaning. For example when watching a film nothing is required from us. We just have to understand the movies meaning. Cool media requires a lot more participation. Rice uses the example of a telephone because you have to really participate to communicate correctly.
Technology mostly though the World Wide Web lets businesses lets have a number of products to sell differently that are all connected to the same company. This idea of marketing is called tie-ins. Tie-ins use a product to gain attention to other products and companies. For example a movie company not only makes only makes money through the movies but all products related to that movie that helps to promote it.
Chapter 14
In Chapter 14 Rice discusses cyberculture. Cyberculture is when tie-ins and digital writing affect one another. In cyberculture the World Wide Web contains material of all sorts, such as chat rooms, weblogs, and technology. The web is put together by little bits of information on computers this can be viewed as webpages. Collages help cyberpaces because it makes us participants to view it.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web by first inventing the Enquire. This was invented to help scientists know what works where already out there and interralate to their works. This lead to his creation of the World Wide Web. Rice descriped two different sites, SportsLine and Everythind2.com. SportsLine resembles a newspaper like format. Links, columns, and headline stories help present information to its audience. Everything2.com on the other hand has active participation. There are no independent works but instead everyone builds on to each other.
