About Someone Else's Term Project

Trevene’s presentation focus on the negative effects that social networking sites have on generation Y, which means us. In her presentation, she covered cyber bullying, sexual predators, narcissism, internet addition and job security as the negative effects of social networking online. She emphasized that 50% of American teens are affect by cyber bullying directly and indirectly. And, announced an extreme case of teenage girl committed suicide due to cyber bullying. I felt her presentation and her collected data to be very informative and convince. However, that is just one part of the online social networking. There are also many positive ways of using social networking sites. Anyway, this presentation makes me more alert of the negative sides of online social networking. And, her tips on how to protect us on social networking sites are what I actual did.

About My Project

I am glad that I am done with my presentation but not happy on my performance on the presentation. I have public anxiety, when I stranded in front of the class, I was so nervous that I forgot everything. So I basically just read through all the slides even with a two pages note on hand. I supposed to share three stories in my presentation, just forgotten all at the time.
Okay, back to the topic. My research topic is New Media and Generational Differences. As we all know, new media is basically internet related social networking and entertainment, where social networking plays a significant role in the internet technology era. People who share common interest actively interact with each other in the online world regardless of the physical positions in the actual world through the web 2.0 technology. Some most popular sites in the US like you tube, face book, twitter, craigslist…were products of web 2.0 technology. Internet and new media are interrelated, and are so popular. With 72.4% of US population use internet and consume new media in a regular base. With these 72.4% of internet users, it occupies people from different generations. So, what do different generations consume new media differently? According to a series of telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International:
- Baby Boomers (born 1946-64):make travel reservation online.
- Generation M (born 1964-79):Banking, Shopping, and look for health information
- Net Generation (born 1980-89) & iGeneration (born 1990 and beyond): most active in all sorts of online activities
◦ Watch You Tube Videos
◦ Download Apps
◦ Social Networking
◦ Gaming
Generational differences also raise value differences .In the social networking dominant age, with all the difference and popular social networking sites. Internet users tend to head toward to share information online. Youth are most actively in this practice by means of frequently update status in varies of ways. Such as video on you tube, diary on blog, pictures on face book…etc. While, old people concerning the privacy regarding post personal information online.
Smartphone is a form of new media. With varies of integrate features (camera, MP3, internet…etc); teens use phones in a new way. Communication is no longer the traditional way of face to face or phone to phone taking. Instead, phones are use as a portable device for texting, face book, youtube…etc.
Communication barriers also exist between generations. As Larry Rosen stated, “I tried to reach my teenage daughter the other day. I left a voice mail, sent an e-mail message and finally texted her and told her to check both and call me back.” In response, his daughter said, “I dont tlk on th fone. txt im fb me.” With all these new “invented” abbreviations, many people don’t really understand the phases of youth.
In conclusion, 21 century is an era of rapidly changes; everyone shall keep updating themselves not only informationally but also technologically. Young people are so fast on adapting new stuff, while old people are not. In the future, the gap between youth and old will be larger and larger. We need to take into consider that if the generational barriers exist between us and the older generations, it will also exist when we are old.

The Next New Thing

Today, I will like to introduce a new technology call SixthSense from the MIT Media Lab. As introduce from the demo video below, SixthSense technology is a wearable device like today’s cell phone which enables the new interaction between the real world and the world of data by the help of artificial intelligent. When wearing this device, we can do basically everything that today’s media offer. Things happen seamlessly and naturally. It’s just like what the technology call, the SixthSense. It is a revolutionary product of new media, like laptop in the computer industry and iPhone in the smart phone industry. And, the technology is really there, it's just not being finalize and commercialize. I highly recommend everyone to take a look on this demo video.





http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

Privacy & Confidentiality

In the internet base new media, with all types of social networking sites, personal information is really easy to be spread without our notice. Therefore, privacy and confidentiality must be taken into account prior to post anything online. I think with regard to these two issues of privacy & confidentiality, it is really out of our control in today’s internet base social networking. If you don’t post any personal information on the social networking sites, nobody is going to add you as friend, it violated the principle of socialize. Online social networking has become the fashion and will become the tradition of social life. In order to adjust yourself into this fashion, you must give out some of your privacy rights. Losses and gains are always two inseparate components. However, lost of privacy is really a serious problem. The identity thefts can use your information to do something harmful. I would like to share a little story of mine. Just 3 days ago, I received a mail with a $100 rebate card under my name from AT&T. But I never has any business with AT&T. I soon realized it must be someone who had used my information. And if there is a rebate card, then there must be a bill follows. So, I definitely can’t redeem this rebate card. And I called AT&T with regarding to this issue and cancelled the rebate card. AT&T also promised me, they will handle my case with no future obligation. This lesson taught us that internet and social networking sites are very unsafe, but I am still using them. Just can’t get away and live without it. That’s really IRONY.

Advice to Baruch College

As regarding to employ new media to improve Baruch College, I will suggest to build a school wiki that include every class. The wiki should be like the one we have for this class; all class materials are accessible for students. In this school wiki, there shall include forums for students to communicate with each other and since Baruch is a business school, in the school wiki, there shall have a section where students can trade their school materials. This will not only save us money but also get us into practices of doing business while we are in school. It is like killing two birds with one stone. I personally don’t like to check over the flyers that are post on wall, especially in the beginning of school. There are just too much flyers (flyers on top of flyers) and too many students trying to find cheap textbook, pretty unorganized. If we can do all these online, it will be much better. The school wiki can have many more features from communication to collaboration, to entertainment…etc.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

Sometimes it is hard to start a topic and sometimes it is hard to add new information to a topic that already contains so much information. I signed up to be a contributor on the page call “How Business is Using Social Networking” of our class wiki. There already contain so much information. I can’t think of anything new. Therefore, I just edited on others works. However, I did add a paragraph about the relationship between mobile phone users and business world under the subtitle “Cellular Social Networking.” I will continue adding new information to the page when I find something relates to it.

My New Media Class - So Far

So far, I enjoy my new media class. Professor Friedman is not just traditionally lecturing the class (which I feel boring) but teaches the class materials through interesting class discussions, plus she can always find funny YouTube clips that are related to the class materials. I especially like the Plain English Clips which explain the essential features of new media in a way that are easy to understand. Thus far, I have finished all my assignments for the class, but I have a hard time on finding relevant articles to my research topic on google scholar. Ahhhh! I haven’t started my wiki contribution yet, almost forgot this part of the class. Today’s wiki lab wills definitely get me start on that. Aside from that, I have no other problem. And now I am a bit more actively on varies of social networking sites like facebook and twitter, but only blogging for class purpose because I don’t like formal writing.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Internet or the online communities are what we consider the virtual worlds. In the case of Second Life, members can create an avatar that they want to appear in the virtual public. And live as if it is in the real life. People make friends, do business, build house…etc. The good thing about virtual world is the ability to fulfill something difficult or impossible in the real world. In an article from iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction. David Savill is a patient of Autism. He has difficulties in social interaction in real world but live a perfect life on Second Life. Company like IBM , now looks into and explore the potential uses of technologies. Virtual world such as Second Life can be use to train employees and held meetings. This is very cost effective, especially in today’s economy, everybody wants to save money. Virtual meeting not only save money but also time. Virtual world also foster creativity because digitized contents are really a good source to play around like combining varies songs and movie clips. In the future when more and more real world models move to the virtual world, it will become just too convenience for people to stay home and have their jobs done. Then, there will be less and less real world interactions.

Twitter Discussion

Twitter is a very efficient tool for status update. But when use it for a discussion; it is not that efficient because of the 140 characters limitation. I prefer short but for discussion twitter is too short. When you have strong feeling toward a discussion, it often end up that you are not able to express your opinion within the 140 characters. Twitter is also kind of unorganized in which it often confused me on who is replying to which posts. We also can’t change/edit our posts. One good thing about twitter is that we can catch everyone’s point in a glance. As compare to Black Board discussion, twitter is somehow more users friendly. Black Board is very organize but it also make Black Board very annoying, I have to click so much time to get to my destination page and the system was down frequently. But it is improving and become more stabilize this year. I think the traditional face to faces class discussion is still the most productive, interactive and sometimes more interesting.

Social Networking

The invention of cell phone and internet or the combination of the two brought a significant change in human social networking. We can even say that they are the evolutionary products in term of social networking. With the daily advancing internet integrated smart phone, we are now living in an era that the physical positions of human bodies don’t matter. People can be reach anywhere anytime in seconds within the network coverage. And we are now able to work remotely; corporate on projects without considering the geographical location, and instantly share our lives with friends in sites like face book and twitter. To certain extent, advance social networking technologies increase the efficiency of work and communication. But there are also dark sides to it. That is when people are too in to it, and then it became addiction. For example, one day I was walking on the street, I saw two polices on patrol. One of them was walking with full attention to his blackberry with two fingers typing, I guess he was texting. He was on duty but it was like he exists and not exists at the same time. His physical body was on duty whereas his mind was somewhere else. I really doubt the quality of his job.
I think in the near future, the social networking technologies might evolve into deviceless. That is when we are able to communicate directly through the air without the supports of any physical devices. I will call that the truly air communication.
Source:
"What Are You Doing? Media Twitterers Can’t Stop Typing" by Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times, February 28, 2009, p. C1.

Check Out Social Networking Sites

This is a busy week for me. Finally has time to create two new blog posts for my New Media class today. My first post is going to compare three social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, Friendster). Really, I am not a big fan of any of them. For the above three social networking sites, Face book is the only one that I have apply for an account. No, actually I have two accounts on face book. I created my first face book account when I was in high school and never log on again since my first visit. It just didn’t appeal to me. And I have totally forgotten that account already. Here I would like to share a short story that is years after my first visit on face book, I created my second face book account. In the very first day, I added two of my friends to my friend list. After two days, when I log on again, I saw a long list of friend request, both known and unknown. I accepted those that I knew and the really first message I got from face book was from one of my high school classmates, said, “Min, finally has one, lol!” I was like, what? Am I outdated? Since then, I went back to face book every once in a while to check the status of my friends (i.e. pictures and posts). I very good thing about face book is the feature that you can find friends from the friend lists of your friends.
My space was popular years ago. To me it was history already. Since at least for me, everybody will ask to add them on face book and not my space. Along with face book, Friendster is another social networking site that I haven’t heard of until today. Both are similar to face book with more customization, but neither appeal to me and I am not interest in explore more on these two sites.
LinkedIn is a professional social networking site where members build and expand their network with varieties of professions that are definitely going to help in some point of their life. Employers are looking for trustees within their networks on LinkedIn. This site seems to appeal to me that I plan to create my profile on LinkedIn shortly; start to build my connections.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are two of the most popular used web based new media, where anyone with an internet connection can access to the contents and create their own. Both Blogs and Wikis are free. They are widely used by users around the world to share information in the online community.
I think the main difference between blogs and wikis is that blogs are individuals or personal, where wikis are more collaborative. In blogs, owners share their personal stories, feelings, and opinions on topics that interest them. And provide a space for visitors with common interests to comment on their posts without any change to the original contents. Blogs work as a platform for individuals to communicate information. On the other hand, in wikis, individual users start a web page on interesting topics and/or facts, seeking for the collaboration of others to a finish product by allowing distributors to freely revise and edit on the contents. Wikis work as a tool for individuals and teams to collaborate toward a common goal. It is this efficiency and borderless way of communicating and collaborating brought people around the world more closely together than ever before. (Wikis at work: Up from the grassroots by Rob Edmonds E.learning Age; Oct 2006; p. 14)

Old vs. New

How do we distinguish “new” media from “old” media? First, let’s look at the question itself. Why are the words “new” and “old” in quotation marks? 21st century is the era of change; things are change in a rapid pace. Things that are new today will become old in a short time. However, when it comes to the term, media, I think new and old can be distinguishing by how users consume media. For instance, when we borrow or buy a book (old media) we read it and comments on the book by express our thoughts with friends. Now, we may go to the online forum (new media) of that particular book and share our thoughts with other forum members. In the old day, people wrote diaries, now they post blogs; people sent mails, now they send emails. New media are the new ways of doing old things.

New Media and Generational Difference

For my research, I am going to discuss what are new media and the impact of new media on our lives. When we say of new media, the first words that pop up of our minds are blogs, wiki, and face book. And yeah, new media are mostly internet related social networking and entertainments. We can say that internet is the new media. According to statistics on internet usage, 72.4% of US population are using internet in a regular basis. Of this 72.4%, it occupies people from different generations. My research is also going to focus on how different generations employ the new media differently.

What is New Media?

I think new media are the enhancements and/or the evolution of the old media in ways that enhance efficiency and facilitate the users by the help of popularity use of computer and internet. Average people can easily access to almost all types of information online. And share theirs as well. It can be says that internet is the foundation of the new media. Nowadays, the mainstream new media are the web based social media e.g. blogs, wiki, face book, YouTube…etc. With blog, everyone can write down their stories and publish them to the public for free. Then, readers can comment on the writings. And then, writers comment back to the reader, back and forth. That had already built up many solid friendships on the virtual world. Perhaps, later turn into real world friendship. Many companies also use blogs as a tool for promotion which, for sure, have saved them a big amount on advertisement. Take YouTube as another example, the free or low cost tools for shooting and editing make it possible for everyone to become a video producer. Most videos we see on YouTube are produced and published by average people like you and me. (Clive Thompson on How YouTube Changes the Way We Think) I also think that new media are greener than the old media. We can now be able to access to our materials with just an internet accessible device. Many publishers are now publishing in both physical and web versions. Even, this class is web based. No more carrying heavy textbook around!