The Next New Thing

There are so many types of new media out there that have advanced the way we do things with so much ease and efficiency. A type of new media I could suggest is being able to type things without actually using our fingers on a keyboard. We already have technology that allows us to speak into a microphone and it types what we say. Imagine if we didn't even have to do that much. It would be a device which would read our minds and be able to write our thoughts based on that. You wont have to worry about being loud and disturbing others, or having others listen in on a private thought. It would makes things easier if you have you hands full doing one thing but you need to write something down at the same time.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I have not contributed anything to the class wiki so far. However, I am doing research on the effects of new media and social change. New media has had such a huge impact in our daily lives and will continue to grow. I plan to include information about the effects and what new media has done and can do for us. I also plan on incorporating the pros and cons into the effects and any other information I find necessary to the page.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is basically the sharing of digital data with other people through the internet. This can include pictures, videos, music and any other type of digital information you may have. P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing is practically the same thing, but it is with people who are within you network. Being able to share files has become so much easier with the availability of these networks. You are able to share data with friends family and any other people around the world. It makes everything easy to find and to access. Some examples of P2P file sharing networks include KaZaA, Gnutella, and FreeNet as well as many others. You can also use emails, forums and blogs as a source of file sharing.


In Jamie King's article Content producers should take advantage of P2P, not fear it, he tells of making the best of the content we have available to us. P2P file sharing can allow people to spread content around the world. It can spread a message or bring one another together. P2P has brought a lot of data together and has allowed millions of users access to practically anything they might need.

About My Term Research Paper

I chose the topic of social networking: better of worse that the real thing. I used several articles as part of my research paper and they gave a great insight on this topic. There are many pros and cons to using social networks but the pros outweighed the cons. I chose this topic because it is something that was interesting to me and affects all of us in some way. I learned about the many different ways that social networks can help people and can provide assistance to them in some way. This is one of the major influences today in new media and I believe my papers covers quite a few topics on this subject.

Creativity and New Media

I decided to try out Second Life to see what it was like. There are so many things your able to do that maybe you couldn't or at least wouldn't be able to do at this minute. The possibilities are endless in this virtual world and you could anything you would do in real life. Below are just a few of the many things I was able to do in Second Life.

See what going on at Wall Street with
all the protests that started recently.

I was able to go and relax in
 a pool, even if its cold and rainy here. 

Visiting a Haunted House just
in time for Halloween.

It was so easy to interact with
others, if I needed help figuring
out how to do something.

Creating a nice outfit to go around
and visit some of the local places.

A chance to create my own
unique outfit  for myself.

Creativity

New media opens the door to so many possibilities. It allows individuals to interpret things in a unique way and leads to creativity. With all these different tools available, it’s so much easier to bring an idea to life. In Brooks Barnes article Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?, YouTube users take the traditional Disney characters and turn them into rappers but creating mash-ups which can be very entertaining to viewers. Although Disney considers "any unauthorized use of Disney property is stealing" they still allow the videos to remain. It is just a matter of choosing what actions are worth fighting against and which they can just leave alone. However, YouTube is a new media site that fosters so much creativity due to the content of there videos. You could find practically anything on the site, whether your looking for something funny, educational, serious, or just plain entertaining. Without the availability of new media we would still be limited from obtaining information.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

            Virtual worlds have created a whole new way to perceive the world. Some people may look at it like a game but for some people it really is a second life. Not only can we use virtual worlds for personal reasons, it can be used in the business environments. We can create a whole new life for ourselves, being able to do so many things that in real life don't quiet seem that possible for us. Also we are able to recreate places and things from our past that may not exists or may not be the same as in Hotel Chelsea as mentioned in Saki Knafo's article In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again. Businesses can use virtual worlds as a way to reduce expenses and bring together people from all over the world.

            With everything that's good, we always have something bad and it applies to virtual worlds as well. What we can see as a pro for virtual worlds is that it is an easy way to become social, meet new people and being able to engage with them, which for some people may not be so easy to do. People with disabilities can become a perfectly normal person in a virtual world if they wanted, being able to do thing that their disability would have otherwise prevented them from doing. For companies, it allows their employees to join in on a conference with the comfort of being at home, taking away the hectic traveling discomforts and on the whole reducing costs for them. The con to all of the this though, is that it removes the element of physical human contact and may not always give people the chance to get out all of there ideas if they didn't get the chance to before as mentioned by Surinder Kaha in Mark Tutton's article Going to the virtual office in Second Life.

            Virtual worlds foster creativity in a by allowing people to express themselves however they want. They are not tied down to one particular task or aspect in something. People can feel free to share there ideas and create some form of it in a virtual world. You do not need to worry about someone judging you or criticizing your creativity which will then lead to more people being comfortable in expressing their ideas. I think the future of virtual worlds is very bright and full of so many possibilities. We have only just begun make use of this type of new media, soon we will have hundreds of different functions for it.