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.

"The Social Network"

***WARNING: SPOILER ALERTS! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!***


On the last few posts I've mentioned and referred to the recently new film that's come out in theaters called "The Social Network". For those of you who have no remote interest in short-lived fad culture "The Social Network" is the new, "rave" movie of the month to see according to corporately-funded product placement and the precise targeting tactics of a well-paid marketing team. "The Social Network" tells the story of the early Harvard days of Mark Zuckerberg, Co-founder and CEO of Facebook, and how the creation and rise of Facebook came to be the behemoth of social networks it is today. Jesse Eisenberg ("Zombieland") depicted the character of Zuckerberg as a gifted, yet deeply aloof Harvard undergrad who is obsessed with trying to "distinguish himself" in an institution of the best and brightest America has to offer. The movie starts off with Mark eventually getting dumped by his girlfriend after he vents his frustrations through backhanded compliments and borderline narcissistic juxtapositions that would make Donald Trump blush. So now Mark's drunk, depressed, and worst of all dumped. Is he so different that he'd actually go home, sleep on it, and move on with the rest of his life? Not at all.

In shallow spite he creates a website called "Facemash", which is compiled of pictures of Harvard women posted on the directory (dubbed "facebooks") of each Harvard house and displyed as a attractiveness contest similar to www.hotornot.com (Note: This is after he publicly blogs about the comparison of women to farm animals. LOL!). As he goes through each houses' website Mark narrates the methods of his data mining in detail using the technical jargon that 99% of a usual audience wouldn't even bother to learn let alone understand. This happens to be one of my favorite part of the movie, not because of the character's expression of inner sexual frustration, but because I knew enough of what he was saying to have a genuinely nonchalant expression and respond to rest of that scene with thoughts like "Easy enough", "There's a faster way to do that", "I did that when I was 10" (/brag). Anyway his site garners enough web traffic to overloads Harvard's server database in what was presumably thought to be a denial-of-service attack. Soon after, Zuckerberg creates "Thefacebook" the original predecessor of "Facebook". From this project Zuckerberg has an epiphany of how the structure of today's society is followed with students joining exclusive clubs, guys having to go through courting and "the game" to fulfill their sexual desires, and how this incorporates with the survival of the individual human being (...or maybe it's just me)

I'm going to stop the detail here because the rest of the movie follows the lawsuits of his (ex-)business partners, post-pubescent drama following the entrance of Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster, portrayed by Justin Timberlake) and the obvious legal and technical stuff that you can all read on Wikipedia (seriously, it's all there, you don't need to pay $12 to know the story).

And now we have Facebook, that seemingly addicting website that you can't just log off of, that you can't leave for one day without getting the itch to check on what your friends are doing this very minute, that you need to change your password and have someone hold the account until you finish studying for that big midterm next Monday. What's interesting about this movie is all the hoo-hah about making the real Mark Zuckerberg look like the greedy, self-centered, narcissistic asshole that Eisenberg's character portrays pretty decently with regards to his previous movie credits. The movie's poster shows the caption "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies" superimposed on Eisenberg's stoic countenance. Technically, the script is based on author Ben Mezrich's "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal", which was consultant primarily by Eduardo Saverin, who was portrayed in "The Social Network" by actor Andrew Garfield and currently holds 5% share of Facebook's stock. So what does this all mean? Should we think of Mark Zuckerberg as the quintessential overnight billionaire who sacrifices his humanity for personal wealth? Is it fair to justify this impression based upon a movie? How about a book that tells the same story with the input from a Facebook business partner? What about the fact that Zuckerberg donated $100 billion to Newark public schools prior to the national debut of "The Social Network", despite his honest attempts to keep the two events separate from each other? Did he try to save face or was he being a philanthropist?

These are questions I had raised for myself before, during, and after the movie. All I can say is: I don't know. All I know is Mark Zuckerberg created a "monster", a monster we all love to hate, hate to love, and, for most people, quick to use on a daily basis. Honestly, it's inspiring me to create something, something I can share with the world one day that'll benefit me and the rest of mankind. Someday I'll look back at this and laugh and wonder "If I was so cool, why didn't I do that when I was 10?".

The Power of the Social Network (cont'd) - Pros and Cons

Now that I've described to few of many social networks that are out there and described their own unique purposes let's explore the overall utilization of this concept. There are pros and cons to anything - plain and simple - to everything; everything has a trade-off, one thing for the other. In the economics part of academia there is one famous saying that most econ students learn in their first year: "There is no such thing as a free lunch". But where does this all lead to?

Social Networking has no doubt change the world. Whether for the better or worse is subjective to the individual. It has brought new wealth to corporations that fiend for any type of en masse method to get their message or brand across. It has created new businesses that thrive solely on the mass popularity of a/the social network to sustain itself. People from anywhere can connect their own representation of cyberspace (i.e. profile) with another person anywhere in the world - even from Iceland to New Zealand - as long as both computers have access to the network from the Internet. "The Internet has flatten the world" is a budding new maxim in our generation. I agree with it (figuratively, of course) and it has made my life a litte more convenient.

In my case I can organize my friends' info into a streamlined database that automatically handles new information as it comes. Now I don't have the convenient excuse of forgetting anyone's birthday because Facebook punctually reminds me everyday of who's birthday that us, subconsciously drilling into my guilt-ridden soul that I should take the minute amount of time to go to their wall and type in "Happy Birthday" to whoever. However, in all seriousness, Facebook had brought me closer to my family in Italy than I can be without physically being there. My grandmother just turned 89 in August and I talked to her over Facebook. With the help of my uncle (who at 58 has a profile and admittedly is above most people his age when it comes to being tech-savvy) I was able to communicate to my grandmother in my broken Neapolitan dialect of Italian to wish her Happy Birthday, tell her about how my life is going here in New York, and ask how she's doing. I could have done this as easily over the phone but there's just a sort of inspiring moment I had when my grandmother, who still drinks wine with her "blended" mush of food and still works the farm on a blue moon, can still have the ability to message me through a device she has only seen in her golden years. Forget businesses and keeping with your old classmates, just being a witness and a participant to that is nothing short of the magnanimous power of the social network.

Now on to the dark side, the tradeoffs. If you honestly think that having a profile on the Internet that contains all of your submitted information is safe from anyone who has any malicious intent against you, I'd suggest never going on the Internet until you learn the world is not, and never will be, perfect. The moment you click that submit button and transfer packets of data that are eventually converted to text, pics, videos, etc., is the moment Facebook, or whatever social network your on, co-owns your property. That's right, Facebook has rights to those suggestive photos of last night's party or your candid shot of aliens in the night sky in the middle of your neighborhood desert. They own every piece of information you put up on your profile and every other profile and they enforce that ownership seriously. Not only that, speaking of that party last night, let's assume you did some things you'd rather not remember let alone let the world know. Well, maybe some of your not-so-honest friends would and, in fact, intend to show the world what happened. Before you even brush your teeth on your way to work/school and you check your email to find an album of pics dedicated to your (dis)honor. What now? You can't take it back; the damage has already been done. Research conducted by Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of public policy and management has found that individuals' perceptions of privacy are flexible depending on the context of an interaction. In a recent "Information Best Security Practices" conference at the Wharton School at UPenn, Acquisti states that "people [say] privacy [is] important to them, yet they engage in behaviors that indicate a remarkable lack of concern". Your privacy on the Internet is at significant stake no matter what you do or don't. As long as you have a reasonably visible identity on the Internet you are liable for your actions and the actions of others potentially against you. The only way to avoid any and all of these pitfalls is to not participate in any online social system. But...can you resist? Kinda reminds me of the abstinence stance :).

The Power of the Social Network

The power of the social network in this day and age is colossal. The concept of a person's contacts, whether it be friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, etc., being easily accessible to that person is invaluable where and when the Internet is the super-platform of communication. Businesses, especially advertisers and marketers, see the digital "word-of-mouth" as gold mine to spread the word to as many people as possible in a cost-effective setting. Social network giants like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster have been repeatedly tempted to sell their accounts at a price much like dating websites do. However, the most successful ones have kept it free of charge because of the potential velocity at which the entire network can grow. Since the popularity of social networking began there are many competitive social networking companies vying for the potential user to create and maintain an account on the network. As a college student that has grown up with the change form Web 1.0 to 2.0 I reminisce of earlier times where MySpace and Sconex were the sites to be on, subconsciously sizing up real-life friends to how many friends they have on this social network, or whether or not you kept Tom as a friend or not. Hell, I remember a time when AOL was the "social network" back in the day. It wasn't as free financially or conceptually as today's social networks are but it had fulfilled its purpose well for its time. I recently saw the movie "The Social Connection", which is (loosely) based on Mark Zuckerberg and his rise to power in creating Facebook and more on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich. It was entertaining to say the least if the movie, which I suspect, doesn't exactly cover the origins of Facebook truthfully.
My Facebook profile is used more for leisure and social network (e.g. finding out about parties, keeping tabs on friends, use as an alternative communication tool). However, LinkedIn is strictly business for me. I use LinkedIn as a digital addendum to my resume and keep connections solely on the basis of the chance that I may further my career, which will be fully decided by the time I graduate. The layouts between Facebook and LinkedIn are distinguishly by most aspects. Facebook's profile formatting displays the person's name in bold, picture, date of birth, relationship status, gender of romantic interest, and political and religious views. It also shows your networks which primarily consist of high schools and colleges that the person is or has been a student of. These networks separate student bodies en masse in order to make finding friends from your local area easier. There is also space to add activities, hobbies, favorites that include, music, books, television shows, and movies, and a favorite quotes section. There is also room for photo albums, which can contain anything from your trip to Europe or last weekend's party, videos, and applications that range from games to other social knick-knacks. Photos arguably have the most versatility on Facebook since they can be "tagged" to a profile (for example: a picture that has you and two friends that both have a Facebook profile can be linked to their respective profiles without their consent. Of course, they have the option of "de-tagging"). All of these features are provided to the user in order to obtain the perfect (or less than perfect depending on opinion) digitalized social experience.
MySpace is what I would consider the predecessor to Facebook in terms of rank of popularity. MySpace was the site that initially caught my interest into social networking. Back in the day, MySpace used to be like Facebook, with the profile picture, age, hometown, and the other personal information. The big difference with MySpace and Facebook is that MySpace was almost completely HTML and XML based and that customizing a profile was not only considered easy, it was ubiquitous. MySpace's system was so easily accessible anyone would have been hard-pressed to find a decent profile without any background, music playing in the background, or any silly applications that gave the "kiddie", yet fun personal touch.
LinkedIn has a more refined, minimalist display, which professional job-seekers create and market their digital representation to a potential employer. Appropriately, most of the profile is in a resume format, with additional "skills", "summary", and "recommendations" sections. It also shows "connections" to other profiles instead of "friends". LinkedIn also has a news feed, but has less coverage compared to Facebook's. LinkedIn's privacy policies and application recommendations are tailored to the benefit of the professional as opposed to the casual social network user. LinkedIn is a social network that attracts a specific target market of the user instead of the all-around, something-for-everyone, market that Facebook currently dominates.
I use both Facebook and Linkedin religiously, digitally separating business and pleasure. There are no links from my Facebook to my LinkedIn account and vice versa solely for that reason. LinkedIn provides me with an accessible, reliable history of my school and work stints. Facebook is my platform to get in touch with all my friends and sync their information to whatever device that needs the collaborative information (e.g. my cell phone's address book). Facebook and LinkedIn have their merits to their specific service and they provide their respective services wonderfully. Most of the executives who run such successful websites are usually linked to each other in some way, shape, or form. For example, the Founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has funded Facebook during a part of its inception into the social network market. Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster along with Shawn Fanning, was President of Facebook and was portrayed in "The Social Network" by Justin Timberlake. Needless to say, even the social network executives find their own product addicting.

The Blog vs The Wiki

Blogs and wikis: two forms of communication born and used under the same realm, yet so different in how they are utilized. A blog is usually defined as an online journal, a virtual spot for an individual to share their experiences via the Internet. These experiences range from the minutia of details of someone's day or a expert opinion, review, or criticism on a particular subject or item. Blogs are seen as personal, individual, unique to the person who creates and maintains it. Wikis, on the other hand, are created specifically to inform the reader about a particular subject in an encyclopedic fashion. Individual wikis may have many authors, most of them anonymous, some that are registered users, and even fewer who have expert or significantly plausible knowledge about the subject at hand. This put the entire wiki site's content at risk for being false or vandalized. Wikipedia is the pinnacle of this type of utilization, garnering its international popularity and success by providing access to detailed information on an accessible platform. However, despite Wikipedia's success there has been much controversy to the veracity of Wikipedia, particularly because of the open-edit system.

Old Media vs. New Media

Technology growth is one of the many active facets of human society. As technology changes so does our language, which changes according to our new definitions used to identify and distinguish the technology of yesterday and today. Enter "old media" and "new media". New Media is a relatively new phrase that denotes the ways our society currently accesses information and current events in. Most media formats belonging to the category of "New Media" is mostly accessed through the Internet via electrical-based, graphic-user interfaces with Internet access (e.g. PC, Smartphone, Workstation). "Old Media" denotes the formats that were or are being vastly replaced with New Media formats. Books, TV, radio, and the newspaper are a few examples of old media. They all share one thing in common: each medium is physically tangible and can only broadcast information through their own set of proprietary protocols. Physical tangibility is easily seen with books, newspapers, magazines. Television and radio, on the other hand, are broadcast via EM waves on a physical set and the information cannot be "held". However, visuals can't be broadcast on a radio set (as opposed to radio waves) and even radio stations outputting through television must be converted into frequencies used for television before broadcasting. New media, which includes but does not limit: wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, and streaming television, are all broadcast through one perpetually accessible source: the Internet.

The internet is a global network of a myriad of local computer networks that are used to exchange data between different parts of the world. The Internet is the primary nexus for every new medium that has been invented and implemented into today's society since the invention and application of the silicone chip. From Wikipedia to Skype to CNN to Google to World of Warcraft, the Internet has become the absolute standard to broadcast information to any magnitude of an audience. Without the Internet, the category of "New Media" would have no relevance to our society whatsoever. An old medium exports the information via its own source whether it be text, still photos, videos, or radio waves and does not rely on anything else other than its own individual source.

However, new media are still a new implementation in today's society. Many people, especially those who are older and grew up with the prominent industries of newspapers and television back in the day, are prone to be inept or even resistant to the new ways of learning about our world. I was born in a time where the Internet had only become a ubiquitous data exchange and the world was completely brand new. I remember my times with dial-up and AOL, frustrated at how long it took to load a web page or download a song. But since I grew up learning how to use a computer through experience and little formal training (if you count typing class in elementary school), I'm more adept at using the computer and accessing as a young adult just as anyone older than me who still remembers how to use 8-tracks and vinyls when they grew up with it. This comical Youtube video shows how the technology barrier is prominent and that most people are naturally resistant to change.

The fact is success in our society is achieved by, among other things, being dependent on integrating with new technology. In this Forbes article, Anthony Savikas writes about how the initial reaction to new technology parallels that of the natural fear and resistance to change. Fear is most prone to those in powerful positions based on the social dynamics that allowed them to create and maintain those positions. The most prominent positions are top government and military officials and the wealthy merchants. It is not rocket science to understand that many of them do not want to compromise anything they have worked to gained over their lives and will pull whatever strings in their power to make sure the status quo is maintained in their favor. Anyone who wishes to change these dynamics, deliberately or inadvertently, will incur the wrath of those already powerful and little support from those who would benefit from the change. However, Savikas quotes "how common big changes are in our cultural history (and that we nearly always end up better off in the end)".

In the end, society changes regardless as we discover new ways to make our lives longer and more convenient. The medium is only useful to the masses who use it. If we're still listening to commercial radio stations in the next 50 years because of its appeal as a privately-funded, genre-specific playlist, so be it. Eventually, all that we are using now will somehow be obsolete in the new technological generations to come. I just hope when I get old that I embrace the new tech coming out instead of sitting there and frustratingly reading a manual on how to work this newfangled contraption.

Wikipedia - The Most Trusted Research Database Authored By The Average User

Hello all,

This is my approved proposal for my final project. It's under the working title "Wikipedia - The Most Trusted Research Database Authored By The Average User". The project will focus mostly about how WIkipedia has changed the way we search for specific information about a particular subject. The function of schools and libraries have changed drastically thanks to a system that is not only accessible to anyone with internet access but can be edited by anyone with various degrees of expertise on that subject, including none. Does that mean that only certain people with a specific, significant amount of expertise should be able to edit a wiki or should the general public have an equal say? Where is the line drawn? How do students access and learn information? How do schools adapt to this technology? Do they resist instead? How do local library branches cope with being an expensive brick-and-mortar version of a free technology? Should people have to pay to access this information? All these questions have been answered in one way or another by those who are familiar to the technology. However, the use of wikis is still relatively new to the developed world, which means traditional institutions (i.e. schools, libraries, even our own government agencies) have not yet fully adapted. My project focus on a brief history of wikis and the impact it has on the macroeconomic status of our current global economy.

The Start of a New Blog...

Well, this'll be my first post on my new blog. This is really just the test post. More to come...