The Next New Thing

A new type of new media could be a collaborative site that will allow users to create projects together. It would be a sort of google docs but based on a site. Unlike google docs, other people would be able to comment on the project. They would have to prove that they know something about the subject so it wouldn't be completely random people, but knowledgeable perspectives.

This could be used for professional projects as well. Just because you might not personally know someone, doesn't mean that they don't have anything positive to contribute. If a businessman was working on some presentation, another businessman from some could comment and add pictures, idea, etc.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

So far I have not posted anything besides the bio. My topic is new media and ethics. I have been doing research; reading several articles and other blog posts. This topic is connected with my minor of IT and social responsibility so it should have a good beginning for that. I think that copyrights are also connected because if you are copying something that is copyrighted, it would most likely be unethical, at least in the eyes of the owner.

About My Term Research Paper

My project was about the digital divide and how it effects different people. I chose to write about this because I remember reading several articles in another CIS class about the divide. To do my research, I used google scholar and the ebooks that google scanned into their system. This is probably the first time that I really used their ebooks and I found it to be very useful.

The topic relates to new media because without the ability for people to be online, much of new media is unavailable to them. How can you read a blog or a wiki if you don't have internet or even a computer. In many areas of the world, it is not really a problem since everyone is still accustomed to getting information from newspapers, radio, maybe tv, and word of mouth.

Some interesting things that I have learned are that 3% of Africans have internet access, compared to 50% of developed countries. 76% of Africa's phone users use mobile phones. The US has 55% mobile phone of total phone users. Most European countries have more mobile users than landlines.

Privacy & Confidentiality

People are creative, even if they don't think so. Given the chance, they will create something new and interesting. However, what they create is usually based on something that already exists, and chances are that it is copyrighted or protected in some other way. Youtube was huge is spreading people's creations around the world. The Soulja Boy song that used Disney characters for the artists was clearly based on protected material, but the makers of the video still used it. While there are positive (appearance of Disney characters in new, interesting way) and negetive (Disney characters associated with un-family friendly material) effects, Disney didn't take any clear actions.

If people use mediums such as twitter of facebook, they need to accept that everything that they type when using the services, will not be private. Facebook recently updated their terms of use to say exactly that; user's pictures, updates, comments, etc, can be used by Facebook and sold to third parties. Although I don't know Twitters terms of use, I expect them to be similar. These services are only private and confidential for the people who run them.

Advice to Baruch College

One of the things I think Baruch should do is create more online classes. This makes it much easier for working students and students who otherwise don't have time to physically go to classes on a predetermined schedule. New media would be incorporated because it is mostly online. Blogs, wikis, twitter, etc would be the main means of communication between the professor and students. I think that this would require a professor who is very familiar with these technologies and students who have some basic experiences with them.
One of the ideas that Fix Baruch (USG candidates) is exactly this. I think that online classes would free up some space around campus (less people walking around), and would encourage the creation of new classes.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are something that have yet to be fully utilized. But there are already many creative uses. Some companies use virtual settings for meetings. "Parmar told CNN that he recently held a meeting with 12 technical leaders from across Europe and Asia. While that would typically involve flying everyone to a central location, he said the meeting was held using the new Sametime 3D." Unless the meeting is very important, participants can log on instead of traveling around the world.

Virtual worlds can be used so ordinary people can get in on the action. A hearing about about online virtual worlds was shown on SecondLife. People were able to see and hear what was going on, and could participate themselves.

It is up to the user how they want their world to look like. So anything is possible. Even flying pigs.

From what I have seen, virtual worlds do not look very nice. They look like a video game from 2003. This is probably because so much programming and graphic editing is required to make it look better, but I think that should be the future; a real looking virtual world.

Twitter Discussion

I found that twitter discussions can be easy, but not without understanding how twitter works. If there is a keyword like #3810NET1B, it becomes very easy; all you need to do is click on it and you will see all posts with that keyword. But I'm sure that a lot of keywords are used by people who don't even know each other. So once you want to search using that keyword, you see your discussion and the discussion of whoever else used that keyword. It can be interesting to read other people's discussions.

Blackboard discussions are more similar to blog comments. There is an initial post and then all the replies/comments are in chronological order. Twitter discussions are newest tweet first, so you have to read down.

Overall it was interesting since I had not used twitter that much before.