The Next New Thing

Every year, new additions to new media never ceases to disappoint. Whether it be social networking to virtual gaming, new media platforms have exponentially improved and are continuing to improve. The next new thing for new media can be a combination of virtual worlds, video recording, and birthday cards (yes, birthday cards.) With an advancement in technology, people will have the ability and the option to send a "card" that can record a holographic message of the sender to the receiver (visuals and audio all included.) Now is the decade in which we started to conference with people all over the world through a screen. Soon will be the time in which we will start to interact more closely than ever through my "next new thing."

Wiki So Far

For the assignment regarding Wiki, I am planning to contribute to the religion section. I am researching on how new media has affected religion, more specifically the growth of specific religions. I am working to find solid statistics and numbers on which these would be able to make my edits in Wiki substantial.

P2P

File sharing is basically consisted of users on the Internet distributing files, whether it be documents, music, videos, etc. P2P is an example of file sharing, but it allows users to share without having to connect to specific networks and platforms. Some examples of P2P file sharing includes BitTorrent (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05piracy.html.) According to Brian Shelter and Brad Stone, people have swapped copies of songs, tv shows, movies on the Internet for years. "Now, users do not even have to download. Using a search engine, anyone can find free copies of movies, still in theaters, in a matter of minutes."

Privacy and Confidentiality

New media has changed the lives of almost anyone who uses it. This is because of the issue of privacy and confidentiality. From loss of privacy because of social networking sites to loss of confidentiality due to illegal downloading and sharing, new media has raised a conflict that we all have to live with today. Social networking sites have recently become a target of privacy schemes. Many of these services either lost personal passwords, information, etc. to external users. The Internet has become way too expansive and information that goes on the Internet once stays on it forever. Privacy and confidentiality has definitely been breached to an extent because of new media.

Advice to Baruch College

New media can be used to improve Baruch College in several different ways. Using new media, the college can use methods of communication through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The college is doing some sort of communication like this new, but it can be much better improved. Another way to improve the college with new media is the use of online classes and lectures. Yes, Baruch offers several online classes a semester for students, but not enough. Many students at Baruch work part-time and have other responsibilities. Traveling to the college is very time consuming, so if I could, I would implement a more vigorous focus on online classes available to Baruch students.

Creativity and New Media

Using new media, I was able to get on Second Life and explore the virtual world. With this tool, I was able to interact with other people on this platform through different avatars ranging from people to animals to even vehicles. My personal favorite was the dragon shown in the picture below. There are so much places to explore and I believe provides experiences with people all over the world who has access to this program.

Creativity

New media has revolutionized not only how society lives, but how it thinks as well. Over the past years, we have seen creativity become more apparent as new media rose. From art to music to even learning, new media has left a mark with the creativity if fostered in our lives. In the article "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?" we are informed that a youtube video of Winnie the Pooh and his fellow characters were mashed with the hit-song at the time, "Crank that" (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html?_r=0). This video went viral and entertained millions of viewers all over the world. Another example of this type of creativity are song mashups. These mashups are composed of popular hits from the year. The following link is an example of the 2012 mashup that resulted in over 100 million views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCkYw3cRwLo. New media evidently fosters and provides society with more creativity than ever before. 

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are not a thing of the past anymore. They are used in many different ways including gaming, social meet ups , teaching, and even military training. Students experience this world through online classes and interactions. A virtual platform allows users to experience the nightlife of NYC (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/arts/television/06itzk.html). Soldiers train for the battlefield by being put through virtual war scenarios to be readied for them when faced in reality. Virtual worlds save people time and money and is extremely convenient.

Instead of commuting to school, students can take classes from home and use the saved time more efficiently. Money can be saved by refraining from using electricity in classrooms, etc. Also, having soldiers train in virtual worlds will save a lot of money that would be spent on artilleries, ammo, etc. These worlds can also be adjusted to match a specific situation soldiers might face to prepare them for the future.

The bad thing about virtual worlds is probably the lacking realistic experience. Although technology has improved tremendously over the years, virtual experience still cannot match up to the real thing. Actual classroom interactions and real experiences on the battlefields would be more beneficial than the virtual ones.

Virtual worlds foster creativity by connecting people all over the world. Now, we can virtually meet with people in different nations who may contribute to ideas we have or even enlighten us with an idea. IBM recently started a program called "JAM" that connects over hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to come together and blog about business ideas.

The future of virtual worlds look bright.  Companies are already starting to take an initiative to indulge their employees in the virtual world through daily conference calls and meetings online (http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collaboration/index.html). Technology improves by day and soon enough, virtual worlds will probably become a huge part of everyone's lives.

Blog About Twitter

Discussions on Twitter and on Blackboard can differ in various ways. The main distinction between the two is probably the character limitation placed on Twitter "tweets." This leads to a shorter discussion on Twitter which can be a good or bad thing. A concise set of posts and replies can be easily read; however, it would not be as detailed as discussions on Blackboard that have no such limits. In comparison to an in-class discussion, I believe a Twitter discussion is very similar. They both pose environments in which participants can freely discuss and comment what is on their mind. The only difference is the more willingness to participate for those that are hesitant to participate in a classroom setting. 

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites have been a part of my life ever since grade school. I have an account in all of the following: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I've noticed several differences that really distinguishes each of these sites from each other. Myspace was the first social networking site I signed up for. My impression of this site is its compatibility for music. It is easy to share personal or others' music through Myspace, which is why artists tend to be members of it as well. Facebook has the impression of being a mediating platform in which people from all over the world can post comments, thoughts, statuses, pictures, and even videos on others' pages. This creates a site in which we all can use to connect without limitations with people. Twitter is something new in my life, and has made an impression of a quick, but effective method of communicating ideas and thoughts. LinkedIn has had a lasting impression on me because it connects professionals and students with potentials. All of these sites have their own unique characteristics, which makes them all popular and attracts users. 

Social Net'g

Social networking has become a part of everyday life. Whether it be through Facebook, twitter, and even LinkedIn, people all over the country and even the world are connected and can interact through social networking. There are so many ways to use these technologies, while the most common use is for keeping in touch with friends. Through social networking, we can share thoughts, posts, articles, pictures, and even videos! We are even able to do all this with people living thousands of miles away.

Another use of social networking is staying in touch within the professional world. LinkedIn is a network site in which prospective and current professionals connect with each other to build hopeful and useful relationships for the future. There are millions of active users from students to corporate executives of Fortune 500 companies (Langfitt, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf).

There are obvious benefits to these social networking sites, such as easy methods of communication. We are now able to interact with anyone with access to the Internet. However, when such massive amounts of people are somehow connected together, there is a downside. Privacy is a major issue and according the the article "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy?" students actually do care about what people can see on their Facebook. (Parry, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/who-cares-about-facebook-privacy-students-do/25877). The downside is that information that goes on these sites will always be accessible someway, somehow; privacy is breached by these social networking sites.

Throughout the past decade, these technologies have advanced. We can now video chat with whoever else has access to the network anywhere around the world. Although problems such as privacy do exist, I believe that the benefits definitely outweigh the downsides. In the future, I believe social networking will take its next step to holographic interactions. Although it may seem farfetched for now, it won't be long before technology advances once again.

Blogs vs. Wikis

In American culture, blogs and wikis have both become a phenomenon with the rise of the Internet. Blogs have become tremendously popular amongst the younger generation, with websites like Tumblr and Google's Blogger trending across the nation. Wikis have also become popular, with students and hopeful learners exploring sites like wikipedia to obtain information. Blogs and Wikis both allow netizens in the Internet world to post, publish, and share their ideas with whomever they want. The greatest distinction between the two is that blog posts are written by a single person, while wiki posts are contributions of many people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki). 

Although blogs are meant for a single person's use to post on, they also can be used for collaboration between people. According to the article, "Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog," veterans are sharing their experiences of war with the new media world. Like this, blogs can be used to bring people's common interests and ideas together for a sole purpose. In regards to wikis, there should not be any change made. Wikis are sources of reliable information passed on and edited by experts in the field. As a result, these sites should be kept consistent and professional. It does not need to appeal aesthetically because the content itself is appealing to whomever is utilizing it. 

Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy

Social networking has become the new way to communicate between friends, colleagues, and coworkers. Some companies even use social networks to market themselves to the countless numbers of users within the networking platform. There are over a billion active users that go on Facebook whom all have profile pictures, tagged pictures, status updates, and interests. Now, uploading all of these things would not be a problem if you know how to change your privacy settings; however, if you do not, these information will be open to the world to see for who knows how long. Also, there are loopholes to information being leaked on social media and privacy being breached. Is there a way to prevent this loss of privacy? Or will this just be something we need to get used to as the new media generation?

Hi my name is Sung Jin Park. I am new to blogging, so I hope to learn much about it throughout the next few months!