Response to “Who Killed the Newspaper?”

I was reading the Economist (August 26th 2006) at brekkie and came across this article titled “Who Killed the newspaper?”. It highlighted the steady decline of the newspaper over the past years and predicted that well in another generation, this form of media will not exist.

So i went to uni to our wonderful new state of the art law building, built for future generations of legal scholars (albeit with no power points or wireless…very visionary) and i took a visit to the library. The library consists of two levels of our law building and i wondered to myself – look at all these masses of books, cases, reviews et al…when will all these dissappear and become soft – in what i like to call electrified. Will the same thing that is happening to Newspapers occur with legal documents?

 The article goes on to say that the majority of 15-24 use internet as a source of news information. I would say this is quite similar for univeristy students. With the rise of Austlii and the use of such databases as lexis nexis, students i believe are more inclined to use these resuorces then the library books…

The library has plenty of spare shelves and plenty of extre space to build new shelves, but i can’t see that these will be filled up…as our legal documents will be found less and less in hard copy.

Expert systems…can they be relied on?

After listening the discussion on expert systems i recalled the time i heard of this type of software for the first time. I took a computer course called Information Processess and Technology for my HSC. As an elective for the subject, we studied a topic called ‘decision support systems’. i have been quite fascinated by this subject, as covers how more and more computerised systems will be replacing humans or aid us in making decisions. If created correctly, then these expert systems are an amazing tool, however, if the system is created poorly then it will produce uselss results. Ultimitely the expert system can be only as good as the expert who feeds it information-garbage in garbage out. In the legal industry i believe expert systems can be an amazing tool to make legal practitioners lives easier, the only issue is that alot of points on law have no definite answer – not maths problems – so therefore the extent to which the system can be used, is somewhat limited. In terms of administration law it would be perfect…cause it is factual based with definitive asnwers. As rusell descirbed in class bodies such as the RTA, Centrelink among others would be able to use expert systems appropriately.

Wiki wiki

This is my first introduction to the collaborative process that is a wiki. It is such a great medium to create knowledge. I found out that wiki wiki means hurry quick in hawaiin. i can see why this media is called wiki, as can be seen from yesterdays class. In 1 hour we created a wiki so quickly and a structure formed at such speed. I hope that the class will work nicely and complement each others skills and producing a knowledge base we can be proud of.

I was only introduced to Wikipedia probably the worlds largest wiki and i have fallen in love. Very user friendly…great to use in class when you don’t know a term…however i have been warned to not rely on the content 100%.

Computers

 After perusaling (not sure if that is gramatically correct, but this is blogging so i assume it is permitted) the web i came across this photo from Popular Magazine 1954 edition. The caption reads that this is what scientists think a home computer will look like in 2004. I think its pretty hilarious…what do we envisage our technological world to be in 50 years?