Manovich

The Manovich essay really showed me how the development of technologies fueled the creation of further technologies. A kind of perpetual force of motion evolves essentially beginning to maintain itself on its own. One thing leads to another, so forth on so on, in a never ending progression. When I think about IT this way it tends to start making more sense to me. Technology in general seems to follow this progression. Some key points from the reading I found especially relevant: The specialization of technologies. By this I mean both the customization and standardization of technologies and the infrastructure which props up around it. For example, the Industrial Reveloution and all of the changes it entailed, social, economic, legislative, bureaucratic, represents a prime example of how one technological shift can in turn cause shifts across a varied range of others. The evolution of IT helped subsume these advances into the status quo. Some other interesting points which came about because of this specialization: "fractal structure of new media" = modularity. So digitization has lead us to new media and the quicker dissemenation of info. The advent of AI really intriguied me because I never thought of AI as a tool of info retrieval, easing the overload of info for the user to interface with.