21st Century Software Technologies Inc

[Renau Sheard]

Onceagain, Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe offer a volume that will set the agenda in the field of computers and composition scholarship for a decade. The technology changes that scholars of composition studies face as the next century opens couldn't be more dramatic or deserving of passionate study. While we have always used technologies (e.g., the pencil) to communicate with each other, the electronic technologies we now use have changed the world in ways that we have yet to identify or appreciate fully. Likewise, the study of language and literate exchange, even our understanding of terms like literacy, text, and visual, has changed beyond recognition, challenging even our capacity to articulate them.

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This paper provides a synthesis of the literature on and recent trends in new technologies and its effect on 21st century children (0-18 years old). It begins by providing an overview of recent trends in the access and use of new technologies as well as a summary of online opportunities and risks. It then explores a variety of factors, including economic, social and cultural status which underlie these trends and lead to online and offline inequalities. Building digital resilience is an important skill for 21st century children. Effective strategies to accomplish this include encouragement of active rather than passive Internet use, e-safety in the school curriculum, and teacher and parental Information and Communication Technology (ICT) support. A focus on younger children (primary school or younger) and the effects of new emerging technologies would be helpful for future research.

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The 2000s have, so far, been the era of mobile computers and social networking changing the shape of our cultural, political and social climate. All of those huge changes, for better or worse, are bound up in that tiny phone.AG

Though few people noticed, online social networks actually began at the end of the last century. The first was Six Degrees in 1997, which was named after the theory that everyone on the planet is separated by only six other people. It included features that became popular with subsequent iterations of the form, including profiles and friend lists, but it never really took off.

Bitcoin is yet to take off as a mainstream form of payment or transform the global economy like it might have promised, but we are barely a decade into the great cryptocurrency experiment. It has inspired thousands of imitators, including those currently being developed by Facebook and China, and it may be another 10 years before its true potential is finally realised. AC

First, at the beginning of the century, came 3G, and then 10 years or so later came 4G. Every decade of this century has been marked by new advances in the speed and reliability of mobile data connections.

The real revolution of the gig economy was not the technology that powers these apps: there is little difference between calling for a cab and summoning an Uber, really. Nor was it what the companies like to suggest, that they have opened up a new and inspiring way of working that allows anyone to clock on whenever they log on.

Virtual reality has been the future before: ever since the first stereoscopes, people have been excited about the possibility of disappearing into other worlds that appear before their eyes. But it has never quite arrived.

Through the 2000s, just about everything came to be hooked up to the internet: you could buy smart kettles, internet-enabled doorbells, and a video camera for every room in your house. And to control them came microphones and speakers that you put in your house and could talk to.

Before there was Spotify, there was Napster, and before people were watching movies on Netflix, they were downloading them through PirateBay. Piracy has been one step ahead of legal ways to consume media but in doing so it has led the way for new platforms that now dominate our online lives.

Streaming has not only changed the way we listen to music and watch films, it has also given rise to new ways to create content. Live streaming video games on Twitch is one of the fastest growing mediums, while live video broadcasts through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube give people instant access to everything from street protests to rocket launches.

Developers can also give people continual updates and extra content through downloadable content, and ask players to repeatedly pay for upgrades through microtransactions. Those changes have made a game not a stable, definitive thing, but a world that is continually developing (and generating more money). AG

SpaceX in particular has made huge strides in this respect, fulfilling a spectacular mission to have its rockets land back down on a barge floating in the sea. But the breakthroughs have not been without their problems. The involvement of commercial companies has come with its critics, who argue that it could compromise safety and make private companies yet more powerful. AG

It took nearly 50 years for the automobile to dislodge the horse and cart as the main form of transport, but the next great transition in road transport may be just years away thanks to the advent of two new vehicular revolutions in the early 21st century: electric-powered cars and self-driving technology.

The way Amazon has changed shopping is profoundly important, of course. By offering the ability to buy just about anything you want online and have it arrive quickly, it precipitated a revolution both in online shopping and on the high street.

Before this century began, making long distance phone calls was a costly and frustrating endeavour. Voice delays were an accepted part of calling between different time zones and conversations between participants had to be significantly adapted in order to not interrupt or talk over each other.

Founded by Jimmy Wales in 2003, Wikipedia was not the first online encyclopedia. It was not even the first online encyclopedia created by Wales. Three years earlier, he had helped found the peer-reviewed encyclopedia Nupedia, which was free to use but had strict controls on who could post.

Just as technology has heralded a new era of surveillance, it has also enabled new forms of privacy, like virtual private networks (VPNs) and encryption software. These will be among the weapons in the fight to prevent an Orwellian dystopia from being realised. AC

With the development of those apps, getting around has changed fundamentally. They have come alongside other changes like the availability of small vehicles such as scooters that are distributed around towns, and the promise of smart and self-driving cars. We possess a wealth of information on where we are and where we are going that previous generations could never have imagined, and it is being used in ways that will rewrite both real and virtual landscapes.

Location data is some of the most valuable on offer to technology firms, and companies like Google and Facebook have faced questions about what they gather on users and why. But it is so useful precisely because it is so personal; it offers great value to us, too. AG

From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things.

On October 8, 2010, President Obama signed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) into law. The CVAA updates federal communications law to increase the access of persons with disabilities to modern communications. The CVAA makes sure that accessibility laws enacted in the 1980s and 1990s are brought up to date with 21st century technologies, including new digital, broadband, and mobile innovations. The following are highlights of the law.

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