According to Thornburg, the rhymes of history is one of six forces that drive the emergence of technologies. Rhyme of history is the belief that “a new technology is a fresh emergence of the impact felt many years before from another technology” (Thornburg, n.d.b). This force further explores the third quadrant of the McLuhan’s tetrad that focuses on what is being rekindled from the past.
An example of a technology that represents a rhyme of history is Google Docs. Google Docs is an online processing tool that allows users to create, edit, and store a variety of files (i.e. spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, etc.). With the ability to store the products online, this rekindles the use of floppy disks and other storage devices. With Google Docs, an Internet connection is all that is needed. Google Docs is also an excellent collaboration tool. Individuals are able to edit and view documents synchronously and asynchronously. Users may also communicate via the chat feature.
Check out this introductory video:
For more information, go to: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=15114
References
Thornburg, D. (n.d.a) Rhymes of History. Retrieved April 8, 2011 from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4930730&Survey=1&47=5513753&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1
Thornburg, D. (n.d.b) Six forces that drive emerging technologies. Retrieved April 8, 2011 from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4930730&Survey=1&47=5513753&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1
Angela,
ReplyDeleteGoogle docs is somewhat of a smaller scale of what Kelley speaks about one machine. Part of a centralized location through which we can acess office documents. Google in itself is one machine, all inclusive of web searching, web sites, documents, readers, mail, talk, maps, video and blogs among numerous other features.
Angela,
ReplyDeleteI have had to use Google Docs on occasion for class projects with my online classroom peers. It certainly makes it so that classmates who are on entirely different schedules can work on the same project when they are able to contribute. It is wonderful not to have to create a synchronous meeting in order to work with my peers. That is not always convenient or possible.
For most other situations though, I find Track Changes and email just as effective for collaboration, if not more so. But, that requires that the people you are working with to understand you and your preferred practices and that there be a very clear flow of processes.
Kimberly
Angela,
ReplyDeleteSuper job! The first time I used Google Docs was in Walden classes. I have since used it many times for storaging documents. It is great for me to post in my google documents tests I have created or other worksheets to share with the other elementary school without saving it to a disk or attaching to an email.