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.