The Next New Thing

The second life is very popular nowadays. A new type of the New Media that I would suggest is similar to the second life role-playing games. The new type would enable us to be movie director and producers. We could input scripts in that software, choose and control virtual actors and actresses to act. We could make our movies or TV shows. What's more, it could also have a grading system to grade the movies or shows we made.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

My task for class wikis this semester is contributor of the topic "New Media and the Environment". I am doing the research about how the New Media affects environment. So far, the general terms I have added is "globalization". It is kind of surprising to me that the New Media plays an important role on the process of globalization.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the distribution and transmission of digital data on the computer environment. It allows people to access various types of data online, such as musics, movies, and e-books. P2P file sharing, which stands for peer-to-peer file sharing, is one type of the file sharing. Users shares files through the Internet with each other directly, without the existance of a center service. A nice characteristic of P2P file sharing is the speed of downloading the file will increases as more users download it.

Examples of P2P file sharing are BitTorrent, KaZaA, Gnutella, etc. BitTorrent is popular. "Its popularity is such that it is estimated to be responsible for between 40 and 50 per cent of all internet traffic. The beauty of BitTorrent is in the way it breaks up a large file into pieces and spreads these around users who download them and upload them to others at the same time" (Nuttal, pars. 9-10).

Privacy & Confidentiality

In my opinion, privacy and confidentiality are the two of the most important topics in the world of new media. New media makes information exchange more efficient and easier. One of the downsides of new media is people's privacy is less secured. Because of the high efficiency of information exchange, any piece of one's privacy is released on the Internet, it would be accessible from anywhere around the world. People join social networking sites by sacrifice their privacy information. Privacy is even more important in the business world, since it is closely related to the company's success and competitive advantage.  As the social networking sites develop, the loss of privacy becomes even more serious. Therefore, I think there is a need to secure certain type of information. Confidentiality, which requires  permission to access certain information, is  applied to protect privacy. To some degree, even though confidentiality protect privacy, it interfere with freedom of speech at the same time. Like the example of the YouTube, many videos have been removed because of the copyright issue.

Advice to Baruch College

Baruch college sent out emails to students about Baruch's weekly activities. But honestly, I think very few people   really look through the long list. I myself always skip that email. Since most students have Twitter and Facebook account, I think the Student Life Office could post special activities at Baruch at Twitter page or Facebook page to inform students. Therefore, students won't miss any interesting events. It is a good way to let more people know about the events and Baruch. What's more, students could have discussion on the social networking page to  help Baruch make progress.

About My Term Research Paper

Facebook was the social networking site that people visit the most frequently. Statistics show that average people spend 55 minutes per day on Facebook. Nowadays, the social networking site play an important role in people's daily life. It provides an opportunity to have an expansive view of the world and its people. That is to say, the social networking sites have changed our life to a large degree. As a member of the Internet generation, I myself is interested about the Internet issues. One of the Internet issues, which I believe is the root of other problems, is loss of privacy. That is why I want to do a research paper about privacy issue. From my research, I learned that social networking sites elicit participants give out their personal information by requiring them to fill out online profile. As an unlimited international community, social network makes those information spread to anywhere around the world. In other words, social networking is a purposeful loss of privacy. Even though Facebook allow users to change their privacy settings, it is not enough to protect your privacy. There are information revealed both knowingly and unknowingly by the participants. Even your friend list can tell information about you more than you thought. In fact, most people do not pay attention to their online privacy unless there is something bad happened.

As Gross, Heinz III and Acquisti concluded, “the easiness of joining and extending one’s network, and the lack of basic security measures (such as SSL logins) at most networking sites make it easy for third parties (from hackers to government agencies) to access participants’ data without the site’s direct collaboration”. And what more, study also shows that through information assembling, it is possible to create a picture about one's identity, "sometimes down to the Social Security number” (Lohr, pars. 4).

To protect privacy online is not an easy task. It is hard to balance legislation and freedom of speech. We could use law to regulate the virtual world, it works well only when apply to the illegal invasion of privacy, such as identity theft. When comes to cases that break no laws, the more law interfere, the less freedom of speech users would have. The surveillance of users’ online activities would be a lot more bother. People could hardly rely on legislation to solve the privacy issue. Do not have the expectation to have both absolutely freedom of speech and privacy online at the same time. There is no absolute freedom. Freedom always comes with responsibilities. If you want the freedom to post whatever you liked, you’d have to accept the possible consequence. It is you who need to take the most of responsibility of what you put on your social networking page and who you reveal your privacy to. The best way to keep your privacy from unknown number of people is do not put it online.

Creativity and New Media

Among all the products of new media, role playing games is the most attractive one for me. I always dreaming about being another person to experience a different life. Role playing games make my dream possible to come true. There are different types of role playing games. Basically, Asian role playing games mostly about fighting with enemies or killing monsters. Thus, players will earn virtual currencies. American role playing games mostly about tasks fulfillment or riddles resolution. There also has role playing games like The Sims Online, which exactly like the real world. This type of role playing games require players control their avatars to social, work and do the things real human being would do. My slide shows the three types of role playing games.

http://www.slide.com/r/prhHhaUy7D9wg2Hs87i00XMLfhPzxEFQ?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original