New Media and Society

There have been a wide range of effects of the new media on society. The pros and cons can go on for days. As posted in my previous blog, privacy has been lost completely to new media. On the other hand we have been able to share and spread information at a rate that is mind boggling. Economy has improved drastically as well as social interactions amongst people all around the world. Creativity and growth are things that have developed due to new media. Society has quite possibly become more knowledgeable due to new media. Information is so accessible, you can read wikipedia to find out just about anything you need to know about, go shopping, read books, read newspapers, play games.. without even leaving your home. But on the downside people have become too dependent on computers and new media. People don't even need to leave their homes. This promotes laziness and not experiencing the beautiful world that is not the web.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Issues of privacy and confidentially are closely related to new media. These days all of our information is easily accessible. For a small fee we can practically find out a persons life story. New media has made this type of accessibility irreversible. We are definitely not as protected as we once were many years ago. Every time we log into a website it is being recorded. Sure we have all these privacy settings on social network sites but does this really give us "privacy"? There is a world wide web in which we don't actually live in, therefore we don't really see its limits. I think it's safe to say there is no privacy in today's world and we can thank technology for this.

The Next New thing

It's very difficult to come up with a type of "new media" that doesn't currently exist. Any ideas I have are pretty out there but the media now probably seemed out there decades ago. With the technology that exists anything is really possible. An idea would be that people don't have to type things or text things, they would simply be thought and their thought would be seen in text on whatever device they are using. This may be possible in the future with some type of chip implanted in our brains, who knows.

Advice to Brooklyn College

If i was hired to use new media to improve the college I would come up with a few different suggestions. I would establish blogs addressing different issues within the school. I would develop some kind of sharing information network or study guides amongst students in each class. Every class in the college would have a website in which every student can receive questions/ answers to homework or class related topics. Students can receive information via mass texts, emails and so forth. I think this system would help a lot of shy students perform better in class. Another suggestion would to have a social network just for brooklyn college students. Taking Facebook a little backwards, only members of the college can be apart of the social network. This is a way of students making friends as well as sharing ideas.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

These virtual worlds can be used in many different ways. According to a CNN article --"you're not going out into the real world meeting people, you're going meeting people online and in your own home, so you're perfectly relaxed. It's just a fantastic tool to use to bring people together." An sufferer from autism was able to use chat rooms and soon realized that people used symbols to express themselves: the smiley signs, the angry signs, hug signs, etc., to enhance the text. He went on to say that subconsciously his brain was learning about communication from these sessions of chat. On the more negative side the toy Webkinz has been criticized due to the fact of alienation of kids and their parents.  Positives include expanding medical training in the virtual world. Virtual worlds definitely foster creativity. You can be who ever you want to be behind your computer. If you're shy in person you can show your true side on a computer doing things you enjoy with people with similar interests to your own. I think that the future of virtual worlds will look extremely close to reality. The graphics will be impeccable and we will feel as if we not only have an avatar representing us, but it will actually be us. 

Social Networking

Technologies can be used for just about anything. They are used as a form of communication, education, entertainment, enhancing businesses,shopping, research, statistics etc etc etc... There is basically nothing that you can't do with today's technology. You don't even need to leave your house anymore! For anything! Social networking sites are a great way to learn new things and meet new people. These sites are beneficial for many reasons. Businesses emphasize how much Facebook and sites similar to it have been the best thing for job recruitment ."Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" explains this in detail throughout the article. "With my Rolodex, I had to call any one of these thousand people and say, 'Hey, Bob. I'm looking for someone that does this, or I'm looking for someone in this industry, or I'm looking for a job, who do you know?'" Steckerl says. "With social networking, I don't need to go to Bob directly to find out who Bob's friends are. Or Bob's friends' friends. So, effectively, I have a thousand contacts that could potentially lead me to 100,000, now I have 8,500 contacts that could potentially lead me to 4.5 million."This is an amazing enhancement in businesses all over the world. People can hire the perfect candidates as well as do complete background checks before even meeting the person and viewing a spruced up resume. Another example of how it is beneficial is seen in an article about India and traffic violators. "The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos". This is a groundbreaking establishment. Crime can be heavily reduced by a website ! 
Despite all these benefits, there is in fact a "dark side" to these technologies in society. The internet has become an increasingly dangerous place. According to an article from iTWire .. "The advice is still to be wary of strangers on the street, especially if they’re offering you candy. But with social interaction now fully available in today’s immersive Web 2.0 environments that are both online meeting space and a new form of ‘virtual reality’, kids are finally learning they need to be as careful and as street smart online as they are off". Teens do use these sites as a means of meeting people and it is a lot easier then it used to be. The internet is a scary place. Your identity is no longer secure and anyone who is interested as to finding out about you is able to within minutes if not seconds. I believe these technologies might ruin us as a society. People have become so fixated on things such as Facebook that we are losing our true sense of self. People are becoming lazier and concerned about what other people are doing and updating their statuses opposed to actually going out and experiencing reality. Economically I feel technology will only heighten businesses and will lead to things we probably can not even fathom.

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Check Out Social Networking Sites

There are many social networking sites on the internet. The specific sites I took the time to visit are Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and Twitter. My impressions of each individual site vary. I am a user of Facebook but not of the other three. I had once been a user of Myspace but Facebook seemed to take over all of its users. Those two sites are very similar but different. Although Facebook has expanded greatly and you can practically find anyone, there are still privacy regulations and a way to hide things from specific people as well as them not have the knowledge that you viewed them. Myspace has privacy regulations as well but not as much as Facebook. When visiting those two sites I can see that Myspace has become more geared to sharing music and creativity as opposed to Facebook in which people are sharing their ideas and information with each other on a more clean cut professional looking format. I never really got into the whole twitter movement as it really is a means to "follow" people not so much as a means to be creative. The interaction is pretty minimal compared to sites such as Facebook and Myspace. On Facebook people have friends whom they may not necessarily be friends with but the amount of people that follow others are in the charts. Twitter is more widely used to follow celebrities and see what they are up to and their opinions. Friendster is a social network for your average gamer. Its more geared towards a specific topic unlike MySpace, Facebook, and twitter which contains information and opinions about a huge range of topics. It is definitely not as advanced and doesn't seem anywhere near as viral as the other networking sites. The other sites address real issues and real life. Friendster doesn't seem to compare but is a great example of new media, not only do we have video games that can be played on a television but we have games that can be played for free online with people from all over the world.