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.

Blog about Twitter

            A Twitter discussion can actually be call a discussion compared to using blackboard. Since we are limited to 140 characters, we are not given the chance to write mini essays on the topic. If forces us to be brief and to be able to get to the point of what we're trying to say. With the tags in place we can easily follow what others in the class are saying as well. Although sometimes you might need to have a detailed explanation for something, twitter is not the best place to find those, in this case you might find it easier to use blackboard. 

            As for the in class discussion, I believe that's a better way of communication than using Twitter. There can be a lot of misunderstanding with online discussion but in person you can find a lot more clarity. Also, when you’re trying to have discussion on Twitter and you need a response right away, you may not be able to get one if no one is reading your tweets. However, when you’re in class you have a room fill with people listening and able to give you a response.

Social Networking sites

          Some of most well known social networking sites include Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Linked In. These four social networking sites in general have similar functions and uses. They connect people with friends and families as well as new potential friends. It gives them a way to communicate and see what update is going on in their lives or around them. There are so many aspects to each of these sites, some have a more specific function and are able to do stuff others cannot.

          Let’s start with Facebook, which can fairly be assumed to be the most popular among the others. It originally started off with just college student but has expanded to practically anyone. It reunites us with long lost friends and family members, it allows us to meet new people as well, and it is somewhere where people can have conversations with one another, keep up with what’s going on with each other, view photos and so on.

          Myspace seems to have the same functions as Facebook it is just a different layout. You can find your friend and family and keep up with them. I believe that the only major difference is that Myspace has a lot more customization; with the layout and apps you can add to your page.

          Twitter too can connect you to friends and family, but it has the capability to do so much more. You can follow the thoughts of people you want. You can be able to hear about the latest new update, learn about something that with a company. Also you can give feedback about a good or service you received. Doctors can find about from others possibilities of handling a situation, or share news on the latest breakthrough. There are so many other ways to make use of twitter. In a general sense, it allows people to connect to any and everything that may be of interest to them.

          Through Linked In, you can be connected to network of people too. However, this social networking site has been used for a more professional purpose. It allows people to find out what companies are hiring and what skills they are looking for. As for companies or other employers, they can search for new potential employees that they can benefit from by having them work with them.

          Social networking sites are changing the way we communicate with one another and it is broadening our horizons with all the potential is shows us. It has become an ever expanding part of our daily lives.

Social Networking

Social networking has opened the door to so many possibilities. Not only is it a way for people to connect to one another, it is a way for people to connect to opportunities in life they otherwise would never had been able to get through on their own. Through social networking we are able to keep reconnect with old friends, find relative, meet new people and keep up to date with the latest social buzz going on. It is also a way for businesses to reach out to their customers and allow them to be interactive and keep them posted with what's new and what they have in stored for the future. Another aspect of the social networking is being able to find a job or for employers to find possible new employees. In Frank Langfitt's article Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting; he talked about how great these social networking sites are. "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever."

There are many benefits to this technology as I described above with the ways it can be used. However with everything good there is some bad. Clive Thompson talks about how some of the changes in Facebook's news feed has become and breech of privacy in his article Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. When Zuckerberg decided to add the news feed, everything anyone has updated is posted so that theirs friends could know about it, “it was now like being at a giant, open party filled with everyone you know, able to eavesdrop on what everyone else was saying, all the time." Privacy features had been added to customize what you want to be seen, but no matter what there still is not any complete privacy available.

I feel that social networking will become a part of practically everything. It is already a big part of our society today. I just think as time goes on there will be a bigger dependence on social networking sites to evolve and expand.

Blogs vs Wikis

Blogs and wikis are both part of today’s new media. They are similar to one another yet have there differences. They both allow people to keep up to date with information. Being able to be updated on what’s going on in the world today is important to many people and they look for the fastest, cheapest and most convenient way to be able to do so. Blogs and wiki do this for us.

Blogs give us a way to all become journalists with what ever news we might have. It allows readers to keep up with our stories and participate by leaving comments leading to a discussion about the topic. In Melissa Gerry’s Celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media, she explains to us how we can follow the blogs of people like Perez Hilton and Trent Vanegas and keep up to date with celebrity gossip, much faster than we would by waiting for magazines and news articles to be released. “People may choose to read these blogs for free rather than a magazine at the supermarket”. The whole idea of newspapers and magazines might soon be an outdated form of media.

Wikis give people an easy way to have all the information they need at a convenient location. Anyone can contribute to the wiki which leads to having the most accurate information necessary. We can use it for business purposes, schools, government agencies etc. In Margaret Locher’s More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia, she explains the ease of using wikis. “They don’t require a lot of personnel to support them and many of the tools are free. At some companies, end users run their own wikis, without help from IT (and Sometimes without IT’s knowledge...)".  I can’t think of a new way to use a wiki because many people have use wikis to their full advantage, from planning a simple trip to organizing a project to biographical or historic information and so one. However, I’m sure down the line someone will think of a way to develop this form of new media even further.

Social Networking: Better or worse than the real thing?

The way we communicate with one another has changed drastically over the decades. Long ago the only way we could communicate was either in person or through a messenger. Then the telephone was invented and created a whole new way of talking with one another. Cell phones revolutionized the telephone even further and now the Internet has changed the whole concept of communication. It has become so simple to get into contact with someone and being able to keep in contact with them even after years have passed. It seems like this has become a very good thing but there are some faults in this new form of communication. Social networking has taken out the personal element of communication which can be either a good or bad thing, depending on the circumstances. For my research paper, I will try to take a closer look at the impact of social networking on our society as a whole. I will examine how individuals have been affected by this new media. Also, a comparison using the social networking sites versus the old fashioned way of being there in person.