The Next New Thing

I think the next new medium will probably have to do something with providing a direct emotional or physiological stimulation. I've had a theory about what the next big thing would be in terms of what ultimate assets have human beings coveted since the dawn of civilization. Land, slaves, commodities, stocks, annuities, and information would be the ultimate asset today. We already affect the human psyche indirectly with media such as movies, music, and especially video games due to its strong, suggestive themes and a penchant for relating to a target market. I know this concept probably won't be realized in my lifetime but it would be interesting to hear music that actually stimulates your senses like a recreational drug or play a game that envelops your mind to the point where you feel like you're physically doing everything instead of using an I/O device. But once an industry sprouts from the idea that a mainstream medium can physically ensnare the senses of the customer, there can be assurance that there will be a very large marketable base, especially to those who can afford it.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

As part of my contribution I plan to add "Wikipedia in Education" under the education section since that aspect has been a major part of my research paper. The education page already includes Youtube and Twitter use in college and what a better way to add to it than the online encyclopedia accessed by about 398 million individual users per year. I also plan to add to the New Media in Gaming. With the holiday seasons in full effect I've been personally asked for advice from a few friends of mine of what system they should get for themselves or someone else. The factors included the quality of console hardware, the games provided, and surprisingly more important, the amount of people they know who have the same console. This compels me to research current generation gaming systems and compare them in-depth to what their strengths and weaknesses are and what their significant packages offer. In addition to proprietary gaming consoles I will include the PC since console gaming has been attempting to emulate the dynamics of the PC from almost all facets including but not limited to: graphics benchmarking, exploration and discovery of new genres due to enhancements in computing technology, and versatility of common I/O devices. I believe this addition will firmly define console gamings purpose in utilizing new media formats.

About My Term Research Paper

My research paper was entitled "Wikipedia - The Most Trusted Research Database authored by the Average User". As it says in the title the paper was mostly about Wikipedia's past, present, and future, the impact it had on different facets of society, and my personal opinion of the web site. I chose my topic because we (and by "we" I mean, at least, me), as savvy Internet users, use Wikipedia almost everyday for research, whether it be for school, work, or just plain fun. I scoured the web for reputable journals or experiments done that had to directly with Wikipedia or an aspect of Wikipedia that was relevant to its purpose. I also included some Internet news articles of the same nature as the scholarly sources. Through my research of Wikipedia I've learned a lot about its history, the drastic effect wikis have made on Internet research, the causes/effects of open-source software, and much more. The research paper has made me re-appreciate Wikipedia in much better light. Before I began my paper I assumed a few notions about Wikipedia. One of them was that Wikipedia has pretty much replaced the need for the public library system outside of containing a database of academic journals within its website. There was one study I found that concluded the Internet has not affected library usage as significantly as I thought. I'm still skeptical of that because of my own bias but I'll accept the statistical findings. Information on a topic that can be found almost anywhere can be found on the Wikipedia, let alone the Internet. Of course, I'm aware that Wikipedia hasn't always been the most credible website and there are some flaws with the system as with any. Understanding why something so anarchistic, yet effective enough to satisfy a great demand had been left untapped by the desire to profit from it motivated me to find out what makes Wikipedia tick. A significant conclusion that I found was that Wikipedia was surveyed against Encyclopedia Britannica, which concluded Wikipedia was on par with E.B. in terms of wholeness and credibility. I had heard of multiple news articles reporting on this study at the time but I did not feel the need to find out if it was true (I figured I'd take their word for it). The biggest contribution to "new media" would have to be the concept of open-source software. As human beings we tend to take things for granted when it doesn't cost us a thing to acquire it. This "market" for free software has an unusual trade-off system that is rarely found outside of charities and non-profit organizations: goods and services traded for what essentially is the mere ownership of property and "bragging rights". Of course, some open-source software is developed with the noble idea of advancing humanity. I do have a good collection of free software that I use almost everyday thanks to generous and talented programmers who take the monotony and excruciating effort to write code for the masses.

Advice for Baruch

Baruch College has implemented a significant number of new media to increase peer-to-peer communication, student to teacher communication, and to wholly enrich the academic experience. While there are some projects that have seen or are notorious for its lack of effective utilization Baruch has had moderate success with Blackboard, their own website, and the many organizations within Baruch that have created their own web sites, blogs, and forums to help garner awareness and camaraderie within the student body. Of course, students using established networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have almost always . These tried-and-true methods combined with the online projects Baruch spearheads (Starr Search's "Job Maven" blog, Baruch's organization hub website) give Baruch a colorful, yet successful win-lose ratio. Since Baruch has taken the initiative to be online as much as possible my personal advice to Baruch would be to continue to implement different types of media to serve the student body on either general or specific issues and topics.
The key for establishing new media communication is using a system that starts off as simple to use and mostly "undefined". There needs to be less parameters, obstacles, and rules to deal with when using a new medium whether it be a blog, a forum, or something completely avant-garde. As the new network progresses in popularity new issues will unfold and become prevalent in the use. Users will complain notify the admin about the problems or issues needed to be resolved. As long as the communication between the administration and the students are clear the medium will not only hold as another effective way of publicizing issues at Baruch it will help galvanize an effective means of communicating between the students and the administration themselves. Over the years, Facebook has not kept its format. I don't think a year has gone by where it hasn't changed at least twice per year. Just tonight, Facebook decreased the total font size of the news feed probably to fit in more per page. However, Facebook
I would give one last piece of advice to Baruch from my own experience here: create a dedicated transfer students page FOR TRANSFER STUDENTS! The Transfer Student Organization is a great addition to Baruch and their contributions have been more than helpful. However, there were some things that the administration just happened to forget to mention to me when I first came here. The administration here mostly assumes that you know most of everything when your first walk through the glass doors. This web site should be separate from Baruch, preferably done as a freelance project. The collective information from frustrated transfers would definitely the incomers who have no idea what they would be getting into. Hopefully, someone will read this post and get the idea to start one up.

Privacy & Confidentiality

The Internet was invented fifty years ago as Department of Defense project used for military purposes. In 2010, the Internet has become part of civilian life in the way radios, televisions, and newspapers have, except in such a profound that it can encompass its predecessors and then some. What isn't new is the trade-off between free speech and privacy. The FCC was created in response to the invention of the radio and the mass demand for it in every home. Since then, the FCC has been the government's enforcement into radio, television, printed media, and in very scant cases (thankfully) the Internet. It is only because of the ubiquity and accessibility of the Internet that the FCC or any other government agency has a significant presence. That doesn't make the Internet perfect, especially in terms of discerning what you say or do on the Internet. Discussing privacy and confidentiality on the Internet is like discussing what color the curtains should be for your bathtub that's placed outside on your front lawn. The use of "new media" for its intended purpose sort of defeats the purpose of having comfortable privacy/confidentiality policies. In other words, there is an inverse relationship between free speech and privacy on the Internet. The relationship is not completely set on a zero-sum scale. A competent webmaster can view the IP addresses of any visitor or commenter on his/her site and find out valuable and personal information (e.g. what Internet Service Provider they have, which house they live in within a half-block radius). This is a justified perk to have in case the website gets hacked or suffers a "Denial of Service" attack. On the flipside, very few new media websites (which include Wikipedia and other wikis) show personal information automatically for the sake of identity and security. The user has the ultimate liability when it comes to the case of their cybersafety. Just like free speech and privacy in America, it is protected respectively under certain circumstances. You can't expect protection from someone taking a picture of you in public unless the photographer plans to profit from it, nor can you explicitly express desiring to harm someone and consider that constitutionally sound.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

I love the concept of an alternate reality. As an American, I'm a big fan of choice and having the volition to exercise my free will or not. Video games have been an outlet for me to indulge myself in that concept. I look at it as interacting "outside the box", experiencing outside the confines of our given reality. Of course, anyone can lose themselves in a reality they have more power over, it causes some people to actually lose their grip on the real world. We hear the sensationalist news stories of kids shooting up their schools and neighborhoods and their attorneys file suits on video game developers who allegedly influence them to commit these crimes. I can understand regulating the amount of exposure to adult situations to kids who frequently play video games but to completely shift the blame other than the parent or the child is a blatant abdication of responsibility. Alternate realities aren't deliberately made to be harmful to people. If a person can't distinguish between the realm they exist in and the other realm they interact through then there is something intrinsically wrong with them. This is solely my opinion.

Virtual realities have their pros and they are certainly worth their weight in platinum. For the sake of this argument I will now specify virtual realities as "video games". All video games were developed to entertain, some toward a specific market, others to the masses. Just like any other type of game, there's at least one objective and certain procedures and parameters to the game. One gains the reward of accomplishment when they complete the objective inside these parameters. Those who do it outside those parameters are called "cheaters" or "hackers"; they are usually frowned upon or ostracized for their unfair play or unsportsmanlike conduct. However, most video games now have eased up on parameters giving the gamer more creative possibilities to achieve the goal. These scenarios improve problem-solving and critical thinking skills significantly in the real world. Most close-minded people would scoff at the idea of video games being anything more than a recreational, childish waste of time. Well, that's what they said about tanks, submarines, and planes, and look at what we did with that. I've read a CNN report (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html#cnnSTCText) about how people with autistic disorders use "Second Life" to counter their obstacles. "Naughty Auties", a virtual research centers with those for different types of Autism, including Asperger's syndrome, can interact with other people via their Second Life avatars without having to so much bear a "real-life" social situation.

Regarding the future of virtual worlds, I think in due time it will be frequent to visit one "reality" from another. Alternate forms of reality will be created for anyone to experience a new realm with all of their senses stimulated simultaneously as in the realm we live in now. People can customize their version of what they want reality to be and can immerse themselves in for as long as they like. Question is, would they ever want to go back to their original reality?

About Twitter

I made a Twitter account long ago before it became as popular and ubiquitous as it is now. I understand the use of it as a requirement for the class but honestly: I hate Twitter. It's basically just Facebook's status messaging to me and while it does serve its purpose for some people I certainly have no personal use for it. Also, communicating on Twitter is horrible. I like to put in as much detail as I can when dropping a comment; if I wanted to be short and concise I'd switch to an IM client. Following Twitter could be as useful as having an RSS feed if the site is compatible with Twitter and updates regularly while being Johnny-on-the-spot with the tweets. I did read the article about a professor using Twitter as an alternative communication for an entire classroom. I totally like the idea but using Twitter for that is limiting, especially when you can only type in a max of 140 characters each tweet. What if you were in a 3000+ class and you wanted to make a point that had a lot detail or technical jargon? You couldn't do that with Twitter it'd be impractical, you'd have students tweeting "(part 2 of 4), continued on next tweet, etc." before or after every tweet. With a forum discussion (i.e. Blackboard) you can make your point however you want. Of course, an in-class discussion has the one dynamic no other technology can and will ever possess: the human dynamic. Bottom line: If you update Facebook statuses every 15 minutes with the minutia of your life, go with Twitter. If you want to have a full length discussion about a certain topic, go with a forum. If you want to have a network of students who can readily access vital information with a personal identity, go with Facebook. And if you want a discussion in real-time, where every participant is on their toes to prove themselves, nothing beats a fac-to-face debate.