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

Creativity

Creativity usually makes a business outstanding at the business market. It helps companies gain competitive advantages over others. New media fosters creativity in many ways. First of all, people are able to do their business in new ways. The development of social networking sites, e-commercials and role playing games are good example of new business.
 According to the article "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Users", "consumers often come up with ideas for products, and companies wait on the sidelines to see if they have mass appeal". The Internet is just like a huge database. People can easily exchange their opinions and thoughts. As a result, companies easier to gather those information that come from customers with diversified cultural background. In my opinion, those information usually inspire new ideas. As the article mentioned, some features of Twitter came from their users.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is a computer-based environment. Virtual world can be used to train employees, play role-play games, social with friends, etc. Second life is a perfect example of virtual world.  Saki Knafo gives a definition for second life on the article "In Room 100, a Second Life for Sid and Nancy", "Second Life is a multiuser virtual environment, a computer program that lets online users construct settings and hang out in them, using video-game-like characters called avatars". People can do things that they may not be able to do on the real world, such as experience the life of wealthy people. They could gain some sort of satisfaction through the second life. "Mr. Wilson pointed out: 'Everything fits; things don’t wear out. The virtual world represents a different value proposition'"(Ferla,1). The creation of second life extend people's life. It also helps the economy. I was surprised by the fact that "throughout the recession we actually saw an increase in spending"(Ferla,1). There has many people addicted to the second life, which is one of the bad effects of virtual worlds. It also could upset people to some degree. If you were successful in the virtual world, how would you feel about the hard time in your real life?
On the other hand, virtual world is also good for employers to train their employees. It is said that medical schools, hospitals and health foundations are using second life to improve their health care service and efficiency. It helps the employers reduce the costs of employee training. Even though virtual worlds could be modeled perfectly like the real world, it is still not the real world. There is no guarantee that virtual world expert players are also experts on the real world. 
Virtual worlds provides new ways of doing business and new ways to solve problems. It fosters creativity. Virtual world develops very well for the past several years, and I believe it will continue to do good in the future. The market of virtual world is still big.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook is the most familiar social networking site to me. It is very popular among students. Facebook users can communicate with other users through messages or the chat feature. Besides the chatting feature, Facebook also has many nice features, such as wall, pokes, status, etc. Facebook enable users to customize their personal privacy settings. Users can decide what information is going to share with which person through privacy settings. This is what I like the most about Facebook. 


Twitter has a 140 characters limitation on tweets. Therefore, users have to be careful of the words they are using in order to express their thoughts completely and precisely. Twitter becomes popular because of it's limitation saves a lot of times. Most of tweets are about users' daily lives, such as what they did and how they feel about something. Twitterers tend to be older adults compare to other social networking sites' users.


I have never used Myspace before. Myspace is a social networking site that enable users to share their favorite musics, movies, tv shows, etc. It seems like Myspace has a very good feature for users to share musics. Myspace also has many nice videos.


Unlike the other three social networking sites' homepage, Friendster has a lot of cartoon characters on its homepage. As Friendster states, it is a "social gaming destination of choice" website. It allows users to play games with friends. In my opinion, most games in Friendster is attractive to girls.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter discussion is limited to 140 characters. Therefore, you have to be careful on the words you are using to make sure that you could express your opinions completely and precisely. Because twitter discussion is online discussion, participants could be any twitterer. You need to put @ symbol before the username to post your response to a tweet. Blackboard discussion has no character limitations, but its participants are limited to students who registered the class. Students will not have the entrance to a certain class' discussion board if them do not register for that class. Class discussion is face to face discussion. You will get responses from professor or classmates  right there. In a class discussion, some students may be more active than some other students.

Social Networking

According to Nicole Ellison, he believes "the benefits provided by social network sites such as Facebook have made us better off as a society and as individuals, and that, as they continue to be adopted by more diverse populations, we will see an increase in their utility". I agree with him. Social Network is now using almost everywhere. One of the usages of social networks is for personal use. Social network makes it easier for friends to keep in touch with each other. The social network dissolves the physical distance between people and resembles them together. As the technology develops, social network is not only a bridge between friends,  but also between strangers. Through social network sites, people can make friends with different cultures, backgrounds, in different industries and different location. People can talk about any topics they want online, such as their daily activities, jobs, movies they saw, etc. Because social network is so popular, people also use it for business purpose. Making advertisements online is faster, cheaper and easier to reach the targets than on the television. With these technologies, more opportunities are being created. It helps save a lot of time and money. 


Along with new opportunities, the society is facing new challenges at the same time. "With children’s technical obsessions starting at ever-younger ages — even kindergartners will play side by side on laptops during play dates — their brains may eventually be rewired and those skills will fade further, some researchers believe", according to Hilary Stout.The relationships between people are changing as social network technology develops. Many employers check Facebook or Twitter before they make the final decision. There are some who believes that this is too over, but some believes that it helps employers make better decision. Privacy issue is the most important one arising as social network develops. People reveal their personal information little by little everything. Social network creates a huge database. It is said that information can be reassembled through computer and used to draw a rough picture about someone's identity. Many people do not ever take it serious until something bad happens.  


Social network development is amazing. I think it will continue to play an important role in people's lives. It is very likely that new social network sites will come out to better our lives.

Blogs V.S. Wikis

"Today's Internet is governed by the idea that crowds of people can create the news, share information and collaborate on online projects", said by John D. Sutter in "Wikipedia: No longer the Wild West?".  Blogs and wikis are two good example for the statement. Both of them are collaboration of  information. Individuals or communities share information, opinions and news with others. Everyone has free access to them. Everyone is free to create a blog or wiki. Because of individuals' limitation of knowledge and biases, there is no 100% guarantee for the information's accuracy.  

However, there are some difference between blogs and wikis.  In my opinion, blogs are more like online journals. People can share information and opinions together. The topic could be anything, daily life, movies, politics, gossips and so on. Blogs contain more opinions than facts. However, wikis are online encyclopedia. Wikis have more facts than opinions. I believe that wikis should be more strict about the information's accuracy than blogs.  According to Ezra Goodnoe, "wikis are designed to facilitate the exchange of information within and between teams. Content in a wiki can be updated without any real lag...users/contributors (with wikis, they're one and the same) simply visit and update a common Web site". Besides, wikis can be edited by anybody, but blogs cannot. 

In today's networked world, convergence of information becomes important. Wikis and blogs converge plenty of information that help people save a lot of time and money on information research. Personally, I like the Wikipedia. Whenever I need to do the research, I research the Wikipedia first. Although Wikipedia might has some errors, it still help me get a general understanding of my research.

Blogs allow readers to post their comments and arguments. Therefore, blogs is a great tool for the collaboration of different opinions. What's more, blogs can be linked with each other, which create a large online community. 

You Have No Way to Hide Your Secrets

As the Internet develops, information are transferred and gathered in  a unbelievable quick  and easy way.  Obviously, the Internet makes our life easier than decades ago. It provides a new way for people to do business.  It makes you easy to keep in touch with your friends. You are able to know your friends who are thousands of kilometers away from you through the Facebook or Twitter . However, the internet is a double-edged sword. One of the downsides of Internet is the difficulty to keep your private information safe. In my opinion, the social networking service is a tool for purposeful privacy exposure. It is difficult to choose which group of people could have the access to your blog. Your privacy is open for any possible audiences, even for someone you don't want. Many employers look for their potential employees' Facebook before they make the final decision.  

(By Haimei Hong)