The biggest take-aways from the book The Medium and Memory was when the used Microsoft’s example that new media is “at your finger tips” the reason this quote made me think was because for all new media we have laptops, mini notebooks, and cell phones that can easily access all these different types of new media. With “traditional media” there is usually a process for example in photography, you would take the picture and have to wait for the film to develop. With books you would have to obtain actually physical copy of it, whereas on the internet you may be able to find the book on e-books. This new media affects the engineering design field because when a designer needs a copy of how something is built but the book is all the way on the other side of the world it would be hard to obtain. With E-mail, we could just e-mail the information right there and then instead of sending it in the mail which may take up to a few days. The biggest take away from the KUOW’s pod cast on new media it was when one of the gentlemen mentions that Ashton Kutcher says that Twitter is “it’s the battle about proving one person can have a voice.” When I heard that quote it made me think that any one on the internet can say anything, whether it be true or false people still have the choice to believe it or not. In the engineering design field this type of communication would be bad because information can be interpreted incorrectly. Imagine asking a question to a professional and he replies with a “Tweet”, messages that are important have a greater chance having an error.
Photography and Print have a huge role in the engineering design field. Photography is used all the time at my company because if designing a main, gas meter set , or regulator station, I may need to go out to a certain place to see exactly what they need to know to design a the system correctly. So i take pictures so that i may bring it back to the office and use it as a reference. Print is also a huge part of the Engineering Design field because once something is completely designed we must keep records of what is out there. For Example, when I design a station there is a blue print, there is also an electronic copy but, we also have a paper copy of the records just in case of an emergency.
New medias such as Internet, Email, and cell phones have greatly impacted field. With internet we are able to search for information that we need to obtain, which is a lot easier and quicker than looking through tons and tons of books. With books there is no search command. Email has saved me so many times working in the engineering design field because there has come times where I have worked on a job with a contractor. During this process we had to email each other many times to complete the project. It there was no email it would be hard because every time there was a job that needed to be checked I would either have to mail it or drive across town just to deliver the job. Cell phones have also played a big role because it is a way a reaching a person anywhere they go as long as they have reception. In times of an emergency this is especially important, for example during my first month working in the engineering design field there was an emergency in the field that needed the attention of one of the senior engineers, and with the use of a cell phone he was able to give detailed instructions on what to do. I think that with new media our lives have been made a lot simpler. With new media developing so rapidly it is hard to stay on top of the latest things but once we learn and adapt to these new things I believe that the use of the technologies will become second nature.
