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.