The term communication process refers to the exchange of information (a message) between two or more people.

see that the media are part of the cultural context in which we operate. How we talk, what we talk about, what
There are many different models of the interpersonal communication process, but here are some of the key music we listen to, has a lot to do with the influence of the cultural context of the media."
elements: (Richard Dimbleby and Graeme Burton, More Than Words: An Introduction to Communication, 3rd ed. Routledge,
 the sender or communicator (the person who initiates a message) 1998)
 the receiver or interpreter (the person to whom a message is directed)
 the message (the verbal and/or nonverbal content that must be encoded by the sender and decoded by the
 Noise in the Communication Process
"Noise is anything that disrupts or interferes with the communication process. Noise can be physical or
receiver)
psychological, it can disrupt the communication process at any point, and it can be associated with any element in
 the channel (the medium by which the message is delivered and received) the system."
 the context (the setting and situation in which communication takes place) (Sandra D. Collins, Interpersonal Communication: Listening and Responding, 2nd ed. South-Western, 2009)
 noise (anything that interferes with the accurate expression or reception of a message)
 feedback (a response from the receiver indicating whether a message has been received in its intended form)  Feedback in the Communication Process
Put simply, effective communication takes place when a sender's message is fully understood by the receiver. "Feedback is the final link in the chain of the communication process. After receiving a message, the receiver
responds in some way and signals that response to the sender. The signal may take the form of a spoken comment,
Examples and Observations a long sigh, a written message, a smile or some other action. Even a lack of response, is in a sense, a form of
response. Without feedback, the sender cannot confirm that the receiver has interpreted the message correctly.
Feedback is a key component in the communication process because it allows the sender to evaluate the
 Sender and Receiver
effectiveness of the message . . . [and] take corrective action to clarify a misunderstood message."
"In the basic interpersonal communication model, the sender, also known as the source, is the person who initiates
(Sathya Swaroop Debasish and Bhagaban Das, Business Communication. PHI Learning, 2009)
the communication process. In a dyadic, or two-person, communication situation, the receiver is the other person
involved. In a public speaking or public communication situation, the audience is made up of receivers. The
numbers can vary from a few to a few hundred. The speaker may use only his/her voice or may need a public  Co-orientation in the Communication Process
address system. In mass communication, there could be literally hundreds, millions, or even billions of receivers. "An interesting manifestation of the attention paid to the receiver in the study of the communication process is the
concept of 'co-orientation,' which has become popular in the United States recently. The idea behind this concept is
"In dyadic communication or public speaking, the channel, or a means of sending or receiving information, is both that two persons can have similar perceptions and interpretations of the same object, and the greater the similarity
verbal communication (the spoken word) and nonverbal communication (gestures and one's appearance)." (co-orientation), the more efficient will be the flow of communication between the persons. Conversely, an intense
(W. A. Kelly Huff, Public Speaking: A Concise Overview for the Twenty-First Century. Peter Lang, 2008) flow of communication may increase co-orientation."
(Juan Diaz Bordenave, "Communication Theory and Rural Development." Communication for Social Change
Anthology, ed. by Alfonso Gumucio Dagron and Thomas Tufte. CFSC Consortium, 2006)
 Interaction of Senders and Receivers
"Because communication is interaction, participants take turns 'sending' and 'receiving.' This turn-taking is even
true for mass-mediated communication, for instance, the process whereby an entertainment program is created,  Shel Silverstein on the Communication Process
programmed, and aired for an audience's enjoyment. If the audience watches and enjoys the program, it is likely to If we meet and I say, "Hi,"
continue to be aired. If the audience is not amused, the program is cancelled. That's a salutation.
If you ask me how I feel,
"Interaction means that both parties--persons or entities--can affect the other. In this way, both parties are senders That's consideration.
and receivers. They are also co-persuaders in that they may take turns trying to affect one another by If we stop and talk awhile,
sharing symbols." That's a conversation.
(Robert L. Heath and Jennings Bryant, Human Communication Theory and Research: Concepts, Contexts, and If we understand each other,
Challenges, 2nd ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000) That's communication.
If we argue, scream and fight,
That's an altercation.
 Context in the Communication Process
If later we apologize,
"Context refers to the idea that every act of communication must happen in some sort of surroundings. . . . Most
That's a reconciliation.
obviously there is the physical context--whether we are talking to someone in our living room or on the terraces at a
If we help each other home,
football match. But then there is the social context, which is to do with the occasion involved and the people in it.
That's cooperation.
This might be a group of friends in a club or a family meal or a group of mourners at a funeral. And then there is
And all these ations added up
the cultural context, which refers to an even broader set of circumstances and beliefs, which still may affect how we
Make civilization.
talk. For example, it would matter if the funeral was in a Hindu or an Anglican context. It is particularly important to

(And if I say this is a wonderful poem,
Is that exaggeration?)
(Shel Silverstein, "Ations." A Light in the Attic. HarperCollins, 1981)
A feedback mechanism is a set of procedures and tools formally established and used to allow
humanitarian aid recipients (and in some cases other crisis-affected populations) to provide information on their
experience of a humanitarian agency or of the wider humanitarian system. Feedback mechanisms can function as
part of broader monitoring practices and can generate information for decision-making purposes. Feedback
mechanisms collect information for a variety of purposes, including taking corrective action in improving some
elements of the humanitarian response, and strengthening accountability towards affected populations. For one
thing, they can help close the gaps between accountability rhetoric and practice. Currently, however, there is a
need for evidence on what works, and doesn't in different contexts. A feedback mechanism is seen as effective if,
at minimum, it supports the collection, acknowledgement, analysis and response to the feedback received, thus
forming a closed feedback loop (see figure above). Where the feedback loop is left open, the mechanism is not fully
effective.
Media as an Information Industry
The information industry or information industries are industries that are information intensive in one way or the
other. It is considered one of the most important economic sectors for a variety of reasons.
There are many different kinds of information industries, and many different ways to classify them. Although there
is no standard or distinctively better way of organizing those different views, the following section offers a review of
what the term "information industry" might entail, and why. Alternative conceptualizations are that
of knowledge industry and information-related occupation. The term "information industry" is mostly identified
with computer programming, system design, telecommunications, and others.
First, there are companies which produce and sell information in the form of goods or services. Media products
such as television programs and movies, published books and periodicals would constitute probably among the
most accepted part of what information goods can be. Some information is provided not as a tangible commodity
but as a service. Consulting is among the least controversial of this kind. However, even for this category,
disagreements can occur due to the vagueness of the term "information." For some, information is knowledge
about a subject, something one can use to improve the performance of other activities—it does not include arts and
entertainments. For others, information is something that is mentally processed and consumed, either to improve
other activities (such as production) or for personal enjoyment; it would include artists and architects. For yet
others, information may include anything that has to do with sensation, and therefore information industries may
include even such things as restaurant, amusement parks, and prostitution to the extent that food, park ride, and
sexual intercourse have to do with senses. In spite of the definitional problems, industries producing information
goods and services are called information industries. Second, there are information processing services. Some
services, such as legal services, banking, insurance, computer programming, data processing, testing, and market
research, require intensive and intellectual processing of information. Although those services do not necessarily
provide information, they often offer expertise in making decisions on behalf of clients. These kinds of service
industries can be regarded as an information-intensive part of various industries that is externalized and specialized.
Third, there are industries that are vital to the dissemination of the information goods mentioned above. For
example, telephone, broadcasting and book retail industries do not produce much information, but their core
business is to disseminate information others produced. These industries handle predominantly information and
can be distinguished from wholesale or retail industries in general. It is just a coincidence, one can argue, that some
of those industries are separately existing from the more obvious information-producing industries. For example, in
the United States, as well as some other countries, broadcasting stations produce very limited amount of programs
they broadcast. But this is not the only possible form of division of labor. If legal, economic, cultural,
and historical circumstances were different, the broadcasters would have been the producers of their own
programs. Therefore, in order to capture the information related activities of the economy, it might be a good idea
to include this type of industry. These industries show how much of an economy is about information, as opposed
to materials. It is useful to differentiate production of valuable information from processing that information in a
sophisticated way, from the movement of information. Fourth, there are manufacturers of information-processing
devices that require research and sophisticated decision-making. These products are vital to information-processing
activities of above mentioned industries. The products include computers of various levels and many other
microelectronic devices, as well as software programs. Printing and copying machines, measurement and recording
devices of various kinds, electronic or otherwise, are also in this category. The role of these tools are to automate
certain information-processing activities. The use of some of these tools may be very simple (as in the case of some
printing), and the processing done by the tools may be very simple (as in copying and some calculations) rather than
intellectual and sophisticated. In other words, the specialization of these industries in an economy is neither
production of information nor sophisticated decision-making. Instead, this segment serves as an infrastructure for
those activities, making production of information and decision-making services will be a lot less efficient. In
addition, these industries tend to be "high-tech" or research intensive - trying to find more efficient ways to boost
efficiency of information production and sophisticated decision-making. For example, the function of a standard
calculator is quite simple and it is easy to how to use it. However, manufacturing a well-functioning standard
calculator takes a lot of processes, far more than the task of calculation performed by the users. Fifth, there
are very research-intensive industries that do not serve as infrastructure to information-production or sophisticated
decision-making. Pharmaceutical, food-processing, some apparel design, and some other "high-tech" industries
belong to this type. These products are not exclusively for information production or sophisticated decision-making,
although many are helpful. Some services, such as medical examination are in this category as well. One can say
these industries involve a great deal of sophisticated decision-making, although that part is combined with
manufacturing or "non-informational" activities. Finally, there are industries that are not research intensive, but
serve as infrastructure for information production and sophisticated decision-making. Manufacturing of office
furniture would be a good example, although it sometimes involves research in ergonomics and development of
new materials.
As stated above, this list of candidates for information industries is not a definitive way of organizing differences
that researchers may pay attention to when they define the term. Among the difficulties is, for example, the
position of advertising industry.
Information industries considered important for several reasons. Even among the experts who think industries are
important, disagreements may exist regarding which reason to accept and which to reject.
First, information industries are a rapidly growing part of economy. The demand for information goods and services
from consumers is increasing. In case of consumers, media including music and motion picture, personal computers,
video game-related industries, are among the information industries. In case of businesses, information industries
include computer programming, system design, so-called FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) industries,
telecommunications, and others. When demand for these industries are growing nationally or internationally, that
creates an opportunity for an urban, regional, or national economy to grow rapidly by specializing on these sectors.
Second, information industries are considered to boost innovation and productivity of other industries. An economy
with a strong information industry might be a more competitive one than others, other factors being equal. Third,
some believe that the effect of the changing economic structure (or composition of industries within an economy) is
related to the broader social change. As information becomes the central part of our economic activities we evolve
into an "information society", with an increased role of mass media, digital technologies, and other mediated
information in our daily life, leisure activities, social life, work, politics, education, art, and many other aspects of
society.
Media as a Channel
All the modes of advertisement that are used to reach out to the consumer are called media channels, e.g., print
media, radio, television, and internet. Each of these has its advantage and disadvantages.
Film Industry
The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions
of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-
production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew personnel.
Though the expense involved in making movies almost immediately led film production to concentrate under the
auspices of standing production companies, advances in affordable film making equipment, and expansion of
opportunities to acquire investment capital from outside the film industry itself, have allowed independent
film production to evolve. Hollywood is the oldest film industry of the world[1] and the largest in terms of box office
gross and number of screens.
The Purpose of Broadcast Media
Broadcast media is the most expedient means to transmit information immediately to the widest possible audience,
although the Internet currently challenges television as the primary source of news. Most people now get their daily
news through broadcast, rather than printed, media. Integration of the Internet has increased the pressure on
broadcast media groups to deliver high quality information with minimum cost. Improving operations is more
important for these groups now than ever before.
A Brief History of Broadcast Media
Broadcast media originated with the development of the radio in the twentieth century. Prior to the radio, news
and other information was transmitted across telegraphs and, later, telephones, but both technologies transferred
information from one party to another. Radio allowed for information transfer from one party to multiple parties
and, just as importantly, freed information transmission from physical wires. Radio was in its infancy prior to World
War I, and governmental restrictions during the war prevented its rapid expansion. After the war, the development
of radio technology increased quickly although programming remained limited. During the 1920s the US
government developed guidelines and regulation for radio broadcasting that influenced the development of NBC
and CBS.
By the 1930s radio had become well established as a medium for entertainment and information. By 1946 NBC, CBS
and an emergent ABC (formed from a court-mandated division of NBC similar to NBC’s formation from a court-
mandated division of AT&T’s radio and telephone operations) began regular television broadcasts, including
newscasts that were generally ten to fifteen minutes in length. Although slow at first, the acceptance of television
increased rapidly during the boom of the 1950s, and television ultimately replaced radio as the chief source of in-
home entertainment by 1960.
Edward R. Murrow laid the foundation for modern television newscasts on CBS with the first program featuring
simultaneous transmission coast-to-coast. Newscasts in the 1960s expanded to half-hour programs, and included
The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC (later the NBC Nightly News) and the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
Color television, first introduced in the 1950s, spread slowly both because of the associated production costs, and
because many people who had first purchased black and white televisions sets were slow to transition – based in
part on the limited availability of color programming. Cable television expanded the possibilities for broadcast
media, and in 1980 Ted Turner launched CNN, the first 24-hour news channel. It has since been followed by
numerous other networks devoted entirely to news broadcasts.
Modern Trends in Broadcast Media
The development of the Internet has challenged the broadcast news organizations. Just as 24-hour cable news
channels diminished the audience for the major networks, the Internet has begun to draw the audience away from
television in general. More and more people report every year that the Internet is their main source of news. An
increase in media broadcast outlets and declining viewership have generated intense competition within the
industry in the early twenty-first century.
Publishing
Publishing is the dissemination of literature, music, or information — the activity of making information available to
the general public. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers, meaning originators and developers
of content also provide media to deliver and display the content for the same. Also, the word publisher can refer to
the individual who leads a publishing company or an imprint or to a person who owns/heads a magazine.
Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works such as books (the "book trade") and newspapers.
With the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include
electronic resources such as the electronic versions of books and periodicals, as well
as micropublishing, websites, blogs, video game publishers, and the like.
Publishing includes the following stages of development: acquisition, copy editing, production, printing (and
its electronic equivalents), and marketing and distribution.
Publication is also important as a legal concept:
1. As the process of giving formal notice to the world of a significant intention, for example, to marry or
enter bankruptcy;
2. As the essential precondition of being able to claim defamation; that is, the alleged libel must have been
published, and
3. For copyright purposes, where there is a difference in the protection of published and unpublished
works.
There are two categories of book publisher:
1. Non-paid publishers: A non-paid publisher is a publication house that does not charge authors at all to
publish their books.
2. Paid publishers: The author has to meet with the total expense to get the book published, and the
author has full right to set up marketing policies. This is also known as vanity publishing.
Photography
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the medium of photography to be, "the process or art of
producing pictures by means of the chemical action of light on a sensitive film on a basis of paper, glass, metal,
etc.." If we are to break apart photography and trace its roots back to their origins we would find that according to
the OED, "graph," when used as a noun means, "A kind of symbolic diagram (used in Chemistry, Mathematics, etc.)
in which a system of connections is expressed by spots or circles, some pairs of which are colligated by one or more
lines." To trace "-graph" as a suffix, we find that its root is Greek and was used to form an adjective of the passive
voice of "written." "Photo-" as a prefix simply means light. The word, "photograph is a conjunction of Greek words
and means 'mark produced by light'." ( Encyclopedia of Aesthetics , p.491) If we combine some of the elements of
these roots we can see that photography has something to do with some form of writing with the use of light. The
Grove Dictionary of art defines photography in relatively the same manner as a "term used to describe the
technique of producing an image by the action of light on a chemically prepared material." Here we see that the
medium of photography as a process or technique. If we combine some of the elements of these definitions we can
conclude that what is ultimately produced from this process or technique is either a picture or an image.
(see representation)
In his book, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes argues, "a photograph can be the object of three practices (or of three
emotions, or of three intentions): to do, to undergo, to look." (Barthes, p.9) He considers the photographer to be
the operator, those of us who look at the photographs to be the spectators, and the person or object
photographed, the target. It could be argued that all three (operator, spectator, and target) need to be present in
the medium of photography. Photography, in its concrete form (the photograph) functions as a medium in which
something is transmitted to a receiver. Photography, when used to describe all aspects of the medium (the
photographer, the process, and then the photograph or image produced) can also function as a medium through
which something is transmitted. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a medium to be, "An intermediate agency,
means, instrument or channel. Also, intermediation instrumentality: in phrase by or through the medium of.
(specific medium)" (OED) The image of the object photographed, the target is transmitted by the photographer (the
operator) through the medium of photography (specifically in the photograph) to the spectators.
We could describe the medium of painting to produce pictures and images as well. However, painting is obviously a
different medium than photography and uses highly different physical substances. The Oxford English Dictionary
regards painting as "the representing of objects or figures by means of colours laid on a surface; the art of so
depicting objects." (OED) However, the objects and images represented in a painting induce very different effects
than those in a photograph. "The subtle emanations from anobject in a photograph are incomparable with anything
in painting. Photography shares with film this exclusive and peculiar property--'the sense of nearness involved in the
thing." ( The Art of Photography, p.8)
One of the debates over the medium of photography deals with the idea of the medium ofdrawing being nested
within the medium of photography. In her Keyword Essay on drawing, Dawn Brennan argues, "drawing functions as
a medium both to and through other forms of art." We see drawing to be nested inside other mediums such as
painting and architecture, yet is this really the case in photography? "What seems to be missing from any
reasonably correct description of how a photograph is made is some account of how it is drawn. It seems right to
think of photography as a kind of mechanical or automatic drawing, but there is no drawing in photography."
(Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, p.490) Yet, photography must be distinguished from other things which are
mechanically produced for mass culture that take on no element of art, and are merely there for their functional
value. To suggest that photography is in a way a form of drawing, is to suggest that its creation was on some level
by an artist and not solely by a machine.
Photography, as compared to other mediums such as painting and drawing, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its
discovery was derived from what scientists already knew about the ability of light to change certain substances. It
was during the 16th century that it became known that when exposed to light salts of silver would darken. Even
modern day photographs possess a silver halide base. Louis-Jacques-Mande-Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot
were the first to introduce two successful methods of generating photographic images; the daguerreotype and
photogenic drawing. "Daguerreotypes were direct positive images on copper plates coated with a thin layer of
silver." ( Grove Dictionary of Art ) Both processes took awhile to be perfected. It was in 1840 that the daguerreotype
process was improved so that it was now possible to photograph human beings due to a reduced exposure time.
This process is known as calotype. In 1851 the waxed paper negative process was introduced which was an
expansion of the calotype process. This allowed for the photographing of landscapes and architecture. Then came
the emergence of wet collodion photography which was the ability to produce a negative on glass, this ended the
production of daguerreotypes and photogenic drawing.
For Daguerre and Talbot, their invention was a means for replacing older forms of media. They "saw their pictures
as continuous with the tradition of picture making preceding them; each viewed his new process as a replacement
for drawing pictures by hand..." ( Encyclopedia of Aesthetics , p.489) However, when these early forms of
photography were first introduced many were skeptical about the advantage of using photography over older
media such as drawing. It seemed to them that it would serve the same purpose. Below we see one of Daguerre's
first daguerreotypes, Still Life, which was produced in 1837.
If we look at the history of the medium of photography we find that the first photograph was produced during the
middle of the 19th century. The earliest photographs produced were, "portraits, topographical views, and
renditions of architectural structures." ( Grove Dictionary of Art ) Photography satisfied the desire of the middle to
upper class individuals to be able to have an accurate representation of something. In Camera Lucida, Roland
Barthes argues, "photography, moreover, began, historically, as an art of the Person: of identity, of civil status, of
what we might call, in all senses of the term, the body's formality." (p.79) Before the daguerreotype process was
transformed and perfected, many portraits were daguerreotypes. Below we have the earliest photographic portrait
taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839. He titles it, Self Portrait.

Walter Benjamin posits that there are two different values to a work of art. The first is their cult value and the
second is their exhibition value [see aura]. He argues that along with our ability to mechanically reproduce works of
art, we have shifted the emphasis from the cult value of the work of art to the exhibition value. Their existence
alone is no longer what is important, it is their display that allows them to derive any meaning. Benjamin argues
that, "In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line." (Benjamin, p.225) After the
emergence of the portrait which offered a, "cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead," (Benjamin, p.226)
the cult value of photography seemed to become lost. Photography becomes incorporated into politics and is used
for displaying evidence of a crime and recording historical events. "As man withdraws from the photographic image,
the exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value." (Benjamin, p.226) [see memory, (2) ]
One of the many questions consistently debated by theorists surrounding the medium of photography is, what is its
"special" relation to reality? [See reality, hyperreality.] Edgar Allen Poe argues, "photographs are... 'infinitely' more
precise than any human hand, and no skills of manual dexterity can compete with them." ( Encyclopedia of
Aesthetics , p.491) Photography as an art is by no means a precise representation of reality. "If in this sense the
photograph is identical with actuality it is, of course, also a rhetorical construction of the photographer. This is why
connoisseurs of the medium may treat it as an art object." (The Art of Photography , p. 8) Many have also discussed
the idea of the relation between photography and death. Friedrich Kittler in his book, Gramophone, Film,
Typewriter argues that photographs and photograph albums, "establish a realm of the dead..." (Kittler, p.11) They
guarantee the object photographed will be preserved. They induce in the spectator a feeling that the target of the
photograph is real, and this reality we equate with being "alive." Yet, Barthes argues we take this a step further,
"because of that delusion which makes us attribute to reality an absolutely superior, somehow external value; but
by shifting this reality to the past ("this-has-been"), the photograph suggests that it is already dead." (Barthes, p.79)
The photograph was what allowed for the creation of film. It made possible the establishment of a whole new
medium, cinema. In film, just as in photography, we are given this illusion of reality. He argues, "...the world of the
movie that was prepared by the photograph has become synonymous with illusion and fantasy..." (McLuhan, p.192-
193) McLuhan argues that the camera has the ability to objectify people. Celebrities become images that connote
these elements of illusion and fantasy. He states that the camera can, "turn people into things, and the photograph
extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise. The movie stars and
matinee idols are put in the public domain by photography." (McLuhan, p.189)
In the late 1800's, photography was mainly classified as an industrial art rather than a fine art, due to its mechanical
nature. "Many writers on the art of the period concentrated on what they took to be the crucial distinctions
between photography and painting, elaborating the differences in terms of oppositions between materiality and
ideality, between the technical skills of photographic manipulation and the artist's practiced skills of hand, between
the mindless machine and the mind of the painter." ( Encyclopedia of Aesthetics , p.491) However, in 1889 a fine-art
photography movement was founded by photographer Peter Henry Emerson. He called it "naturalistic"
photography. His position was that, "a photograph could be a work of art, irrespective of its genetics, if it
occasioned 'aesthetic pleasure' in the viewer... the artistic value of some photographs in the prints themselves and
in the habits and expectations of viewers--not in the way photographs came into being." ( Encyclopedia of
Aesthetics , p. 491-492) Below we see an example of Emerson's "fine-art" photography, entitled Gathering Water
Lilies and taken in 1886.
In the 1930's, Benjamin suggested that the question should not be whether or not photography is an art but,
"whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art." (Benjamin, p.227)
Benjamin sees photography to be the great new revolutionary medium that due to its reproducibility changed how
we value art. Art becomes art only when it is exhibited to the masses, which is only possible through its ability to be
reproduced.
The medium of photography in the twenty-first century could be seen as having four primary estates: "fine art,
advertising, amateur photography, and journalism." (The Art of Photography , p.8) The function of photography
differs greatly in each of these estates. However, it can be argued that, "In present photography, as the museum
culture becomes ever more commercial (no longer the mere preserver but the active creator of culture), the
relations between these once separate orders of photography become increasingly interdependent." ( The Art of
Photography , p.8) There is no longer a clear line between photography as a fine art and photography as a
functional art. Today we can see many photographs that would be considered fine art in advertising and journalism.
Both still place the emphasis on the exhibition value of the photograph. The images in the photographs take on new
meanings with new connotations. Advertising uses these images to represent cultural fantasies and illusions.
Journalism uses it to depict a historical event or to allow the world to travel to a new destination through observing
photographs of it. It is the display if the image and the photograph that makes these four estates possible.
The medium of photography is known most for its reproducibility, its ability to communicate with the masses, its
notion of reality that is induced in the spectators, and its ability to abolish time and space and allow for anyone to
feel they have witnessed an historical act, been to a far away place, or communicated with the realm of the dead.
Beaumont Newhall argues in his book, The History of Photography, that "the ability of the medium to render
seemingly infinite detail, to record more than the photographer saw at the time of exposure, and to multiply these
images in almost limitless number, made available to the public a wealth of pictorial records exceeding everything
known before." (Newhall, p.85) Yet, we must not forget the aesthetic and artistic value of photography. It is not
merely a mechanically reproducible medium with many functional purposes and objectives, but it is also an art form
created by a more modern and methodical type of artist (the photographer) who wants to depict the world in a
different way than the painter or the sculptor. The artist gives us in a sense a kind of coated reality of his
construction that can only be transmitted through a photograph.
Ali Geiger
Winter 2003
Internet Industry
The Internet market includes an Internet infrastructure service segment and an Internet application service
segment. Internet infrastructure services mainly include Internet access services, domain name registration
services, Internet data center (IDC) services and CDN services, while Internet application services mainly embrace E-
mail box, search engine, instant messaging, online games, online advertising, E-business and other new application
services.
The crucial feature of the industrial Internet is that it installs intelligence above the level of individual
machines — enabling remote control, optimization at the level of the entire system, and sophisticated machine-
learning algorithms that can work extremely accurately because they take into account vast quantities of data
generated by large systems of machines as well as the external context of every individual machine. Additionally, it
can link systems together end-to-end — for instance, integrating railroad routing systems with retailer inventory
systems in order to anticipate deliveries accurately. In other words, it’ll look a lot like the Internet — bringing
industry into a new era of what my colleague Roger Magoulas calls “promiscuous connectivity.”
Optimization becomes more efficient as the size of the system being optimized grows (in theory). Your software
can take into account lots of machines, learning from a much larger training set and then optimizing both within the
machine and for the group of machines working together. Think of a wind farm. There are certain optimizations you
need to make at the machine level: the turbine turns itself to face into the wind, the blades adjust themselves
through every cycle in order to account for flex and compression, and the machine shuts down during periods of
dangerously high wind.
Bombardier’s forthcoming C-series midsize jet, for instance, the jet engines do nothing but propel the plane and
generate electricity (they don’t generate hydraulic pressure or compress air for the cabin; these are handled by
electrically-powered compressors). The plane acts as a giant hardware platform on which all sorts of other systems
sit: the landing-gear switch communicates with the landing gear through the aircraft’s bus, rather than by direct
connection to the landing gear’s PLC.
The security implications of this sort of integration — in contrast to effectively air-gapped isolation of systems — are
obvious. The industrial Internet will need its own specially-developed security mechanisms, which I’ll look into in
another post.
The industrial Internet makes it much easier to deploy and harvest data from sensors, which goes back to the
system-wide intelligence point above. If you’re operating a wind farm, it’s useful to have wind-speed sensors
distributed across the country in order to predict and anticipate wind speeds and directions. And because you’re
operating machine-learning algorithms at the system-wide level, you’re able to work large-scale sensor datasets
into your system-wide optimization.
That, in turn, will help the industrial Internet take in previously-uncaptured data that’s made newly
useful. Venkatesh Prasad, from Ford, pointed out to me that the windshield wipers in your car are a sort of human-
actuated rain API. When you turn on your wipers, you’re acting as a sensor — you see water on your windshield, in
a quantity sufficient to cause you to want your wipers on, and you set your wipers to a level that’s appropriate to
the amount of water on your windshield.

System-wide optimization means that when you can operate each turbine in a way that minimizes air disruption to
other turbines (these things create wake, just like an airplane, that can disrupt the operation of nearby turbines).
When you need to increase or decrease power output across the whole farm, you can do it across lots of machines
in a way that minimizes wear (i.e., curtail each machine by 5% or cut off 5% of your machines, or something in
between depending on differential output and the impact of different speeds on machine wear). And by gathering
data from thousands of machines, you can develop highly-detailed optimization plans.
In isolation, all you’re doing is turning on your windshield wipers. But if your car is networked, then it can send a
signal to a cloud-based rain-detection service that geocorrelates your car with nearby cars whose wipers are on and
makes an assumption about the presence of rain in the area and its intensity. That service could then turn on wipers
in other cars nearby or do more sophisticated things — anything from turning on their headlights to adjusting the
assumptions that self-driving cars make about road adhesion.

By tying machines together, the industrial Internet will encourage “platformization.”Cars have several control
systems, and until very recently they’ve been linked by point-to-point connections: when you move the windshield-
wiper lever, it actuates a switch that’s connected to a small PLC that operates the windshield wipers. The brake
pedal is part of the chassis-control system, and it’s connected by cable or hydraulics to the brake pads, with an
electronic assist somewhere in the middle. The navigation system and radio are part of the same telematics
platform, but that platform is not linked to, say, the steering wheel.

The car as enabled by the industrial Internet will be a platform — a bus, in the computing sense — built by the car
manufacturer, with other systems communicating with each other through the platform. The brake pedal is an
actuator that sends a “brake” signal to the car’s brake controller. The navigation system is able to operate the
steering wheel and has access to the same brake controller. Some of these systems will be driven by third-party-
built apps that sit on top of the platform.

This will take some time to happen in cars because it takes 10 or 15 years to renew the American auto fleet,
because cars are maintained by a vast network of independent mechanics that need change to happen slowly, and
because car development works incrementally.

But it’s already happening in commercial aircraft, which often come from clean-sheet designs (as with the Boeing
787 and Airbus A350), and which are maintained under very different circumstances than passenger cars. In