PLEASE EMAIL YOUR RESPONSES TO THE INSTRUCTOR, BARBARA LATTANZI blattanz@email.smith.edu
You are not being graded on this in any way! For the ones you don't know, you can skip them or feel free to guess at them. Enjoy!
1. List up to 3 software applications (if any) with which you consider yourself familiar. (Indicate how familiar: "very", "moderately", or "a little").
2. Name the computer operating system with which you feel most familiar: Windows PC, Macintosh, Linux, or other.
3. List your 3 favorite computer games (if you have any favorites).
4. Name 3 multinational corporations
5. What computer programming languages (including HTML scripting) are you familiar with (and to what degree)? [Note that familiarity with programming is definitely not a requirement of this course]
6. Do you have experience (to any degree) playing online MMORGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games)? If so, name one of the MMORGs that you find most interesting?
7. Have you ever had an extended conversation with some individual within a MMORG that had nothing to do with the game?
8. Do you participate in off-line, non-electronic role-playing games? Which ones?
9. Do you have a cell phone? If so, do you use SMS ("short message service" text messaging)?
10. If you use a cell phone, have you ever experimented with friends in using the phone for a performance or game?
11. What is a flash mob?
12. Have you ever used locational mapping devices that incorporate GPS (Global Positioning System)?
13. Have you ever taken apart a computer or other electronic communications device, whether to fix it, to make it do something novel, or to just see what it looked like inside? Describe.
14. Have you ever made your own music using an electronic toy or computer game?
15. Have you ever had a blog?
16. Have you ever contributed to someone else's blog by adding a comment?
17. Have you ever participated in "live" or "real time" communications on the Internet - for example, in an IRC channel, or Internet chatroom?
18. Have you ever contributed to a Wiki or other collaborative website?
19. Did you ever give yourself a fictional identity on the Web? Did it have any lasting effect, such as thinking differently about your own identity?
20. Have you ever constructed a place within an Internet graphical chat community (virtual world) that others could visit?
21. Have you ever had sustained communications with someone online whom you never expect to meet in person (i.e, casual communications lasting longer than a few weeks)?
22. Have you ever participated in a social networking website such as Friendster, MySpace, etc.?
23. Speculate on where digital electronic devices such as cell phones or computers are made and who makes them?
24. Put the following list of technologies in order (as best you can) - from the oldest technology to the most recent: cinema, radar, computer, photography, television, fax, stereoscope
25. How old is the World Wide Web? (estimate within 5 years)
26. How old is the Internet? (estimate within 5 years)
27. Have you ever spent time reading a software manual while you were away from a computer?
28. True or False: The continent of North America, with approximately 5 percent of the world's population, has nearly 25 percent of the Internet users on the entire planet.
29. True or False: The continent of Africa, with approximately 14 percent of the world's poulation, has less than 2 percent of Internet users on the entire planet.
30. What is the Digital Divide?