The Next New Thing

I think a new type of new media that could be invented some time soon would be cross between Youtube and Facebook. I think that this type of new media could be really interesting. Especially if combined with the upcoming virtual reality technology. People could upload live videos of what they are doing, for example, I can record a video of myself cliff jumping in California during vacation and share to my Facebook. With virtual reality technology, my friends on Facebook could view my uploaded video and experience it with their headset. This could also be combined with GoPro, since GoPros are great for recording active videos.

P2P

File sharing is the act of sharing downloadable files on the Internet with other Internet users. This act is very common and often illegal. Often times the files being shared are supposed to be bought but are being shared and dispersed to thousands of Internet users for free. There are many off-shore sites that people can visit to download torrents, pdfs, and more.

P2P is peer-to-peer computing which equally disperses the liability amongst the people involved. This means that people intertwined in P2P both upload and download the content being shared. A popular network is BitTorrent. BitTorrent involves "seeding" which means that a user can upload a file and allow other users to download the file as long as they stay online in the P2P network. The uploader provides the "seed" for the other users. As discussed in "The BitTorrent Effect" article, the more popular the original seed file is, the quicker it can be downloaded.

It is obvious why there are so many new laws being brought to light in regards to P2P sharing. Many industries such as entertainment and book publishing lose tons of money each year due to file sharing. The touchiness of the subject is discussed in "Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?". The topic of freedom of information being a defense for online file sharing is brought to light in this article.

Privacy and Confidentiality

New media has made communication easier and faster than ever before. We are able to virtually connect with one another live any second of the day. Since so many people use new media to communicate, there is a ton of information stored on servers and websites like Facebook. This can cause some problems when it comes to privacy and confidentiality. Many people are not aware of the amount of personal information being stored constantly while they use new media. In addition, new media such as social media sites encourage people to post various things about themselves. This can include anything from address to selfies. With this social media trend, people tend to share way more about their lives than they normally would. All of this information is stored permanently regardless of whether or not the individual deletes their postings later on. This information can be sold to corporations or given to the government. In addition, many employers search through prospective employees' social media accounts which can be intrusive on their personal privacy.

Advice to Baruch College

If I were hired by Baruch to implement better use of new media, I would immediately revamp the Baruch website, Blackboard, and CunyFirst. In general, all three can use a lot of change as far as media upgrades. Blackboard has discussion boards which work similarly to a blog in my opinion, to encourage more collaborative discussions, there should be an option to create Blackboard wikis. The Baruch website looks very out-of-date, I would redesign the site to make it more interactive and visually appealing. CunyFirst is just a mess. New media can be used to make communication to administrators on CunyFirst much easier. I would install some sort of messaging feature so that students can easily talk to an admin when they run into problems (which is currently very often).

Creativity

As mentioned in my previous post, types of new media including virtual reality, can be used to manifest creativity. Traditionally, creativity and creation is often viewed as an individual effort. Reiff,  McKitterick, and Neill talk about this in their thesis: Creators, Audiences, and New Media: Creativity in an Interactive Environment. They talk about how the traditional way of viewing arts and creation is to view the creator as producing work that comes from a completely internalized place. New studies show that creativity can be, and is often, fostered through collaboration and interactive environments. They also talk about how these studies are easier to conduct in the world of new media because of new media itself. "In the Internet age, we can observe the process of crossing these boundaries. Creators can respond to questions about inspiration and can further address these answers later, expanding on them in instantly archived blogs, comments, or articles".

So, in addition to providing a platform to study interaction, the Internet is a good example of a modern day new media that fosters creativity.

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

The topic of virtual worlds is very interesting because it's partially developed and growing yet is still relatively young and unknown. The directions in which we can take virtual reality are basically endless. In many ways this is both exciting and scary. Just like everything else and just like social networking, virtual worlds have benefits and drawbacks. As discussed by Dawley and Dede, virtual worlds can be of great benefit for educational purposes. They offer situated learning through immersive technologies to create learning situations that often contain a lot of features that real-life learning situations do not. For example, virtual worlds can be used for role playing. People can "go back in time" to learn history as if they were actually at the event.

A specific con of virtual worlds that I had not known prior to the reading, is the concern that they can be used as a place to launder money. In the article, "At Hearing, Real and Virtual Worlds Collide", other cons are briefly mentioned. Some of these include: child safety, religion and cults, economic problems. I think in addition to these concerns, a major con could be that it becomes habit forming and somehow takes precedence over reality. People may lose touch with reality if they get addicted and in a way "stuck" in a virtual world.

Virtual worlds can definitely foster creativity. Again, this is probably one of virtual reality's strong suits because the possibilities are endless. With the ability to access and/or create learning experiences, people can learn in new ways. This in turn will obviously foster creativity. For example, if I were to use virtual reality, I could maybe create a situation where I go back in time and meet Vincent van Gogh and learn more about his painting techniques. The information that I learn from that type of simulation would probably be much more engaging and memorable than reading about it in a textbook.

I think the future for virtual worlds is definitely full of possibilities but just needs to be harnessed and controlled the right way. Just like most other things technological, with such great potential benefits, there are always potential downfalls. I think our human race can learn and accomplish greater things with the help of virtual worlds. It can be life-changing for our species, but at the same time it could also destroy us if we don't handle it with care and good intention.

Blog About Twitter

Twitter discussion has its similarities and differences with Blackboard and in-class discussions.
Firstly, all three of them rely on the interaction of two or more people. Any discussion in general requires people to communicate their thoughts, ideas, opinions, etc to one another. On Twitter, I find that it's quite difficult to have a long, complex discussion due to the 140 character constraint. Although, you can make your way around this by tweeting multiple times, but I find that it's overall constricting the thought processes. On a more positive note, Twitter is an easy and fast way to get thoughts out into the public and directly to the people who follow you. It is also a more casual way to communicate, which makes short-hand more acceptable than Blackboard. Blackboard discussions are more formal and structured than Twitter. In-class discussions are obviously very different from the two because it consists of face-to-face interaction. I think that of the three, in-class discussions is the most demanding and elaborate. It requires immediate responses from one student to the next in order to keep the conversation flowing. On Twitter, people can respond to tweets within seconds, minutes, hours, or even days or years later.

Social Networking Sites

So I will be comparing the four following social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.

The similarities and differences between these sites are actually pretty interesting. Each has its own purpose and style. Each involves different types of social interaction.

In my opinion, Facebook is definitely the most socially comprehensive out of the four sites. It reveals the most personal information about its users. Each user profile displays their photos, name, location, age, birthday, relationship status, friends, "likes", and so much more. Facebook seems to encourage people to upload all of this personal information by advertising themselves as a friend-based network. When I say friend-based, I mean that Facebook has the "add friend" feature, therefore, any two users that are not Facebook friends have limited viewing access to each other's profiles. For two users that are friends though, all of this information is usually pretty accessible. Facebook also seems to have the most extensive messaging features. Nowadays, not only can you directly message people back and forth but you can video chat and send phone calls.

Twitter can also be used to display a ton of personal information, but through a different style. Twitter  communication is based on user "tweets". People are able to post statuses up to 140 characters long. It's really up to each user how personal they would like to get with these statuses, but this freedom allows people to get creative with what they are saying and how they are saying it. Twitter also has a privacy feature like Facebook. Twitter users can set their accounts to private which only allows their approved followers to view their tweets. Also like Facebook, there is a direct messaging feature, but much less extensive. In my opinion, most of the communication done on Twitter is done publicly. Facebook can be quite private with its extensive messaging. The type of interaction is quite different too. The idea of twitter is that users post a status. It can be a thought, word, mood, literally anything, but it is not necessarily to start a two-way conversation. People can retweet each other, which is like reblogging a post.

Similarly to Twitter, Instagram can be as personal as the user wants it to be. The most obvious difference though, is that this social network is entirely photo-based. People can still comment back and forth as they would on a Facebook picture, but there is no option to post anything else. They do have a direct messaging feature incorporated into the app, though. Just like the two other sites, people on Instagram can "like" one another posts, and there is a similar privacy feature. Unlike Facebook, and similarly to Twitter, Instagram is based on "followers" and "following" rather than "adding".


Tumblr seems like a hybrid of Twitter and Instagram. Tumblr originally, and for the most part, was created and is a blogging platform. But, it has become just as much of a social networking site as the other three. Unlike Instagram, many users on Tumblr post and repost photos that are not theirs. It is based almost entirely on reblogging. A seemingly unique aspect of Tumblr is the anonymous questioning feature. Users can write to each other's blogs anonymously. This site is also based on followers and following. Out of the four sites, this site seems like the most emotionally expressive one. People on Tumblr seem to express themselves much more than on the other sites. This could possibly be because many of users' posts are not of themselves, therefore can somewhat "live" or express vicariously through pictures that they find ideal or interesting.

Social Net'g

Both corporate and non corporate sources can use social media and networking to their advantage. We see this being done all the time. The majority of companies these days have Facebook pages, Instagram and Twitter handles. We have also seen numerous non corporate people and groups doing this. For corporate companies, social media can be a good platform for them to connect with their customers and society in general. For example, companies can tweet business or product news to inform their followers. They can also take stances on  controversial social issues. Many companies have been gaining both new customers and customer loyalty by commenting on controversial topics. For example, Starbucks has taken a stance on gay rights issues. By making their stances public through social media and news statements, they have gained a progressive reputation. This is beneficial for them and their company business strategy. Social networking can also directly effect business strategy by now offering monetizing plans. Facebook now offers advertising. Companies can reach even more people now by using this feature. According to Reuters and the Chicago Tribune article, "Facebook search: Facebook adding search feature", Facebook has over one billion users. This makes their social network platform an extremely ripe place for companies and other sources to advertise themselves and reach tons of potential customers. "The initial focus is on getting users more engaged, so this is making Facebook more useful and sticky".

Non corporate sources can also benefit from social networking. Social media accounts don't always have to be used to reach a crowd of customers or post new products. Besides for personal use, people and groups have used social media for many other purposes. For example, in 2010 traffic police in New Delhi, India, found a way to fight street and traffic crime with the use of Facebook. "The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. " By using these pictures, the police were able to issue tickets and fight the extremely high traffic accident rate in New Delhi. My most immediate thought is that this is a great use of Facebook. The police in New Delhi are able to lower traffic accident rates while issuing more tickets to violators. But, after some further thought, I realized that this could also be an intrusion of privacy and community. If people are exposing their fellow community drivers, more and more people may start to feel uncomfortable and under constant pressure. It can also raise some issues of whether or not non-police citizens should be able to judge whether something is a criminal act when police aren't around.

So, as mentioned, both corporate and non corporate sources can benefit from social networking, but as also mentioned, there are some dark sides. With social media being present online, posts by all users are permanent. They can always be "deleted" but they are always accessible- they leave an "imprint". This can be positive or detrimental. If a company or person posts something that they later no longer believe or feel is appropriate, the damage is already done. Their followers, along with non-followers (for public profiles) have already seen the post and already formed their opinions. We see this happening all the time. For example, singer Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa had a Twitter "brawl" in which Kanye eventually deleted a majority of his tweets. But, with millions of followers, his tweets were bound to be archived and uploaded as breaking news articles and posts on sites such as EliteDaily and Buzzfeed.

Blog v Wiki

In my opinion, I think that one of the biggest differences between blogs and wikis is that the latter is created through collaborative effort. Some blogs can have more than one contributor but in most cases they are created and maintained by a solo writer. Wikis are websites that grow continuously from various users adding content. As defined Rob Edmonds (Up from the Grassroots), wiki is defined as "a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all content very quickly and easily". Additionally they are, "designed to improve information sharing and collaboration known collectively"(Locher, "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia").

Wikis are also composed of pages that can be edited, changed, and added by multiple users. Blogs are composed of posts and entries and are left in the chronological order in which they are published. In a way blogs can be collaborative by allowing viewers to comment on posts, but this interaction is very different than that of the shared writing process used in wikis.

Wiki pages tend to stay relevant because they offer knowledge-based information and are constantly edited and changed by users. Blog posts are not usually updated, therefore they are timely and lose popularity/views and relevance as time goes by. Blogs themselves can still be just as relevant as wikis. They just need to be added to constantly with new posts rather than a single post being edited and added to.


I think that in the future wikis can potentially be used for exchanging and updating medical information resources. For example, hospitals can each have wikis where they add new information regarding diseases, surgical procedures, etc. With this, they can share them with other hospitals and have doctors and nurses update and edit information, making each hospital's array of information stronger and collaborative. This could be especially helpful for surgical theories and thesis research because if a doctor is stuck on a certain element, another doctor can add their insight and potentially help the other doctor make a breakthrough with their thinking.

We all know that social media has changed the game- but for better or for worse?

Social networks are dominating the internet and mobile world. With their widespread popularity and power, social networking has inevitably become a controversial topic of discussion. Because of this, I decided that it would be interesting to analyze both sides of the pro and con social networking arguments. So, I have chosen to conduct an analysis on both the positive and negative effects of social networking. In order to do this, I will first come up with all of the good and bad effects I can think of myself. Then I will consult websites, statistics, psychology studies, etc to find data that corresponds to the effects. Since the effects of social networking are becoming more and more heated, I am sure there will be tons of data to support all arguments.