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.