Laptops

I chose to research the the beginnings of the laptop. I thought this would be very interesting due to the fact that they are so common now. Everyone in college has one and so do most children in high school. Some of the earliest articles I could find about laptops were from 1987. It really surprised me that this was not the time in which laptops were invented but the point in time that they became reasonable affordable for their time. One scholarly article I found on the JSTOR database said that from when laptops came out until 1987, when the article was written, that they had become much more reasonably price and more reliable. this same article went on to say that the reasonable price was over two thousand dollars and some of the biggest selling points were that it had two floppy disk drives and only weighed eleven pounds. If you have never seen a floppy disk it is a flat disk that had less than two MB of memory(I have attached a picture if you have never seen one). So in the end the overall meaning of laptop has not changed, its is still a self contained portable computer, but the current laptops do not resemble their predecessors very much.

E-BOOKS

The e-book also known as "Book 2.0"  received it's first mention in the news in an article by the New York Times in 1998.  My term was first introduced as the electronic book and was soon shortened to e-book.  Unlike probably most terms in the information society, the e-book's definition didn't change; part of the reason being that it was created so recent.  The only thing that has change about the e-books besides the obvious advancement in speed, screen resolution, and appearance is the cost of it.  It was expected to be $1000 when it was first released and now companies wouldn't dare sell an e-book for that much because only a few people would buy it. Some thing interesting about the e-book is that the first one was patented in 1949 powered by compressed air but unfortunately it didn't widespread.

Smartphone

I used the term "smartphone" to relate to the modern information society. After looking through The New York Times, LA Times, and Chicago Tribune, I found that the term was first used in a display ad in the Chicago Daily Tribune in July of 1919. However, there were obviously no smart-phones back then and I realized that the word "smart-phone" was describing a picture of a stool. I don't know why it was called a "smartphone" but it was. The earliest article I found that actually related to an actual smartphone was from Jan of 1986 in the LA Times. It described a smart phone as a "pay phone" with a computer built in. This relates to what we know as a smartphone today with the only difference being that a smartphone today has much more computing capabilities and accessories that come with it. I thought it was very interesting how the term was used back in 1986, because I genereally think of smartphones as something that didn't come about until recently.

Instant Messaging

The term I chose to research that relates to the modern information society is “instant messaging.” After researching this term’s earliest uses in newspapers such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, I found that the very first articles that reported about instant messaging were concerned with it’s use in offices. Instant messaging was originally thought of as a way to communicate between coworkers on large IBM computers in the office setting. No one was thinking about people using this technology on personal computers. Specifically, these newspapers reported on Wang Laboratories’ use of instant messaging on smaller computers. The Los Angeles Times first reported on this in 1982, while the New York Times did not report anything until 1989. I thought it was interesting that these two separate entities first reported on instant messaging because of the same company.

When I looked at instant messaging through scholarly article databases, these too included articles having to do with business. On ProQuest, the article that included the term “instant messaging” was about how Mobil Oil was switching to a new processing system that would be better for their marketing, and it included instant messaging. On Project Muse, the article I found was a lengthy list of technological terms, published in 1999, for people to get familiar with. The last article I found was on JStor, which was published in 1986, discusses whether or not instant messaging is a threat to society.

Overall, I think that “instant messaging” carries a different meaning today. I do not think people associate it with business as much as they think of it as a part of everyone’s day to day lives. People instant message their friends before they would instant message their coworkers. It is much more common to send a coworker an email than to send them a message on Facebook chat.

Text Messaging

I chose the term "text messaging" because it is very common if not more common than making a phone call to reach others. Historically, it was first used in 1982 relating to office functions along with terms such as e-mail and voice messaging. It was first used (in relation to cell phones) in scholarly databases in 2003, a time when picture and text messaging was just beginning to spread. Today, it strictly means texting from telephone to telephone, but it's interesting how the term was used earlier to describe computer messaging when that was just developing.

The term “MP3 Player” was first used when the first mp3 player (Diamond Rio PMP 300) came out in 1998, calling it “Internet music in the palm of your hand”. "MP3" is abbreviation for MPEG Layer 3, which is an audio file that can be condensed to 10% of the original size without significantly harming the sound quality. The "Rio" was the first portable device that can actually store these files from the computer and play it back making it an alternative to portable cassette or cd players. Experts in the past predicted this device to transform the music industry by allowing us to purchase and download a song, an album, or an audio book from the Internet, which they hit right on target. With the introduction of device came along the issues of copy right protection and led Recording Industry Association of America to go to court, attempting to block the company Diamond from introducing the Rio (mp3 player). Years later, Apple introduced its own musical jukebox, nearly replacing the term “mp3 player” with “iPod”. Today, mp3 player is dominated by smart phones, which in most cases are more technologically advanced and have the full ability to work as a portable music player.

The History of "Googled"

In today's world, it is practically impossible to be unaware of Google and its vast empire. The offices of this Internet giant have moved from a garage in California in 1998 to now with 70 campuses in more than 40 countries. Increasing prevalence of this Internet search engine and its growing influence on society led to the introduction of a new term in the American vocabulary: "googled." I wanted to research the origin of this term in culture and what I found was pretty fascinating.

A ProQuest search for "googled" led me to the first use of the term in a major newspaper, when the LA Times on February 9, 2001 used it to describe a new trend in dating in this online age. Before a date, someone could look their date up on Google or "google them " to check them out in advance. You could now avoid bad dates and find topics of conversation even before the date. So at its origin, "googled" was primarily a dating term.

By 2003, when the first uses of the term in scientific literature appeared, the definition of the term had evolved more towards its current meaning. The Duke Law Journal published an article in December 2003 titled "The Virtues of Knowing Less: Justifying Privacy Protections against Disclosure". The article described "googled" to describe a danger of the increasingly Internet-driven world. People could now "google" each other and uncover private information, then spreading it over the Internet for everyone to see. It's interesting how the privacy concerns of 2003 are still discussed in 2014, as websites have access to more and more of our personal info.

As Google expanded its scope over the beginning of the 21st century, the use of "googled" increased in popularity as well. A Google ngram shows that the verb was used in books 7 times as often in 2008 than in 2002.