Week 2 Notes

• The difference between hardware and software has always been quite evident to me. I always think of it this way:
• hard = something you can touch
• soft = something that is "untouchable" yet relies on hardware to exist
• Why is the software section so much longer than the hardware section? I guess it's harder to explain to someone especially if they have never encountered a computer program before.
• Comparing Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to Henry Ford and Lois Chevrolet is... odd. It just makes me feel funny but honestly what they did to the software industry is technically the modern equivalent.
• I enjoy trying to wrap my mind around how software is wrapped up in so many things at once. The layer structure presented on this wiki is interesting.
• I feel like the reasons for digitization always have to do with the amount of space available in a library or archive and the amount of money it may cost/save.
• The problem with digitization is the format of a digitized item. I feel like we're constantly arguing about converting files to certain programs in the library community. We are quite frightened of the idea of a digitized item that took so much time and effort becoming obsolete because of the format it was digitized in.
• I don't understand why the Europeans are so worried about being put on the same level as the Americans or being outdone by us. Calm down and do your thing.
• Google has had a monopoly on "book search" and digitization for the past five years and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
• As soon as this article on data compression started talking about algorithms my mind kind of blanked out. I cannot do math or calculus for that matter.