Page 50 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

CONNECTIVITY

COMMUNICATION DESIGN

An extension of Information Technology (IT) into the creative or
content area. Communication design combines elements of IT science
(programming) with the creativity of the visual and sound artist (e.g.
animation). Production skills and team-based processes of the kind
associated with media production (film and TV) are also needed. The
output of communication design is therefore a hybrid of creativity and
technology.
As the IT sector matured around the turn of the twenty-first
century, it became clear that in order to continue growing, the new
knowledge-based economy needed to focus not only on IT
infrastructure and connectivity, but more on applications. Computers
and the Internet needed to be simple and robust to operate and
navigate, and commercial sites in particular needed to exploit the
games and entertainment appeal of computers in order to attract and
hold customers. Communication design became more prominent. Its
importance was that it took creativity into areas of the economy that
were not traditionally understood as having any creative ‘content’,
such as banking, education, health, etc. As these service industries
went online, they needed to harness the design flair, the information
architecture and the interactive techniques that communication design
had pioneered in such leisure areas as computer games and
entertainment websites.

CONNECTIVITY

The use of communication technologies for interaction, and a society
so characterised. The connectivity industry incorporates numerous
technologies and involves the creation of networks between personal
computers and other devices such as printers and modems, and with
other networks such as satellite systems. The word ‘connectivity’ was
used by IBM as a name for their proprietary service of coordinating
and bringing about communication between computers, a system that
inevitably tied users into IBM’s own closed network of products. In
1977 the International Standards Organisation (ISO) established a
committee to set standards to enable interoperability between
computers manufactured by different companies. Out of this process
the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) specification was created,
extending the possibilities for connectivity. As the computing industry

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