Next New

The next new media could be having all these electronics out today such as a smartphone or a tablet embodied into our own human system. Just as how new technologies appear in movies, one of these features includes holographic. Although we already have holographic, it is nothing like what is shown in the movies such as Black Panther and Iron Man where characters name Shuri and Tony Stark uses the hologram to help them do their scientific research. Microsoft has made something similar called "holoporation" which allows consumers to project a full-body likeness into a remote location. But this technology is far away from being sold commercially. When we have the holographic technology ready to use, some of the advantages are storing an unthinkable amount of information and data,  using as a tool for visualizing patient data while training students and surgeons and being complex optical device and difficult to make will make an incredible commercial security market and many more advantages. I believe with the works that have already been done, holographic will eventually enter into the mainstream as how smartphones and laptops have entered into our lives.

Wiki So Far

I have not added any content yet, but I was doing research in relation to cloud computing. I have been looking into Aliyun, which is the Chinese platform of cloud computing that came from the famous company Alibaba. Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of global cloud computing services to power both its international customers’ online businesses and Alibaba Group’s own e-commerce ecosystem. In January 2017, Alibaba Cloud became the official Cloud Services Partner of the International Olympic Committee. On the cloud computing page only consists of firms in the States, so I would like to bring some diversity in this platform from other countries.

P2P

File sharing is the ability to transmit files including documents, multimedia and graphics and many more from one computer to another over a network or the internet. File sharing has always been debated whether it should be done or not, especially by the production studios and music labels. "Using a search engine, anyone can find free copies of movies, still in theaters, in a matter of minutes" (New York Times). P2P file sharing is the process of sharing digital content like electronic books, multimedia through a direct connection between two peers or nodes over the P2P network. An example of a P2P file-sharing platform is BearShare. BearShare lets one finds, downloads, shares, and publishes audio and video files. It lets the users to quickly locate and download any type of file available on the P2P network. 

Reference:

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05piracy.html

Advice

If I was hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the college, I would make some suggestions such as providing better communications system and a better mobile view with school websites. I would first provide a better communications system by have a 24/7 automated response regarding the frequently asked questions that can be easily solved so we would not lose the time to try to reach to a representative. For the questions that may need further assistance then are proceeded to an online chat. Usually by online chatting most probably would have been solved, if not, then they can make an appointment to meet in person.

The second thing that I would improve is that mobile device’s view of the school website, whether it is the home page or blackboard. These websites seem to not fit the mobile devices size and it is difficult to navigate the web with the unfitted screen.

Privacy

Protecting personal information security is one of the important factors when one is surfing the web nowadays. With the beginning of the new media era, whatever one posts on the internet will remain on the internet forever even if he or she deletes it later on. With such public and social advancements, the privacy and securities policies and constantly being updated. These social networks can help individuals create a public or a private account for others to see. The government and tech companies spend billions to try to protect their citizens and their customers’ information private. Hackers are able to hack and get sensitive information and create an identity theft, which can cause serious damage to the person. It is important to stay on top of your own belongings which can be more than physical objects, but with social media accounts, social security numbers and etcetera.

Creativity and New Media

This is an avatar I use on my iPhone with iMessage, it is able to capture my facial expression and it is a lot of fun using this feature.

Creativity

With the emergence of new media, people are able to express their creativities to the rest of the world via platforms like YouTube, and other people can put in their thoughts and potentially create something better. Whether it is imitating a character or creating a piece of art through a time lapse. There are many forms of creativity. An example can be a mash-up where people edit videos with snippets of animated movies and TV shows. This would usually cause copyright problems with the originating companies, but it has become a way, people create things and it became part of the mainstream. “Our audiences can creatively mash video from our content as much and as often as they like,” said Dan Martinsen, a Nickelodeon spokesman. “By the way,” he added, “that was a very nice edit job by whoever did the SpongeBob mash.” It has become acceptable for people to use it as a form of creativity. Along with the new media, people are able to show their creative piece of work to the rest of the world. 


Reference:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/10/050110crmu_music

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual reality is a computer generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment. With this technology advancement, virtual worlds can be used as a representation of reality to practice many different things such as medical surgeries, class room lessons, video games and etc.. 

There are many pros to this technology, such as the improvement of gaming experience, virtual prototypes, training programs for military, medical training, psychological therapy, and many more. In the article by the Wall Street Journals, "Avatar II: The Hospital" shows that online simulations can teach the nurses to make what decisions to make during emergencies without really doing any harm in the real world.  In another article by New York Times "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You" gives users the opportunity to live a lavish life to try on all kinds of designer clothing and go on lavish vacations. This gives them a feel of lavish living without spending much money to do the actual activities in real life. 

However, there are also some cons to this virtual world. This includes that the virtual world cannot captures the real world because it is difficult and time consuming to recreate every little object of the real environment, and the users behavior can be impacted by virtual worlds. The article "Virtual world may impact real-world behavior" showed that with a research done to see the behaviors after participants randomly assigned to be a hero or a villain turned out that their behavior were affected by the role they played.

Virtual worlds can challenge its users to come up with creative thoughts and be tested in the virtual settings without doing harm to the real world if it did not work out. In a way it limited a lot of risks and helped coming up with creative ways to solve and test problems. I think the future of virtual worlds will be very useful to many people whether it is doctors, teachers, or gamer. It will be able to bring an incredible experience and be able to innovate creative ways to solve problems.

References:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22Avatar.html 

https://www.health24.com/Mental-Health/News/Virtual-world-may-impact-real-world-behaviour-20140210 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909804575124470868041204.html?KEYWORDS=avatar+ii+the+hospital

Twitter

Twitter, Blackboard and in-class discussions are some ways to have discussions, but the use of them are somewhat different. When using Twitter for a discussion, one usually have to be concise with his or her idea, and it is usually less formal as people is generally more expressive as he or she is behind the computers. While on 
Blackboard, because one knows that it is for a certain course, so there is definitely a more formality in the way one speaks his or her thoughts. An in-class discussion can sometimes be hard because some students may shy away from telling his or her opinions on the subject, but I believe that in-class discussions may be the best way to get across one's opinion and to have an immediate reaction from the students or the professor will enable an efficient discussion. 

Social Networking Sites

Everyone these days has at lease one social networking sites, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn. Although they may all just be social networking sites, each site has very distinct differences which is the reason why one person would have multiple social networking accounts. 

Facebook was one of the first networking sites I started using. It has many different features such as posting a photo or video to posting an entire album or to posting your thoughts for those you would like to share with. It was a great way to connect to friends and family away from you. In addition, you could follow any news or celebrities of your preference and it will come up in your news-feed as soon as you open it.

Twitter is different from Facebook as people generally express their thoughts more in this social platform, whether it is about politics, entertainment news, sports or music. Users can also find what subjects are trending in the moment they are using Twitter with the hashtags. One thing about Twitter is that it could be confusing at first, because the home page looks messy. It took me sometime to get used to the format of Twitter. 

Instagram is definitely a platform for more of the younger generation where they posts pictures or videos that they would like to show to friends and family or even to the rest of the world. But usually these pictures are captured in the best moment so that the user can get more likes than the previous posts. It has become almost unhealthy mentally for the user to feel pressured to get more likes. 

LinkedIn is distinctively different from the above three social networking sites because LinkedIn are primarily used for recruitment process. Whether it is sending a thank you email to your interviewer, or linking yourself to the people you know in order to meet more people who could potentially be your future colleagues. 

All these social networking sites have been widely used by many audiences, but there are some differences between each of these sites which is why one person can have multiple social networking sites and he or she will say that it is all for a different purpose and would not feel as if he or she has way too many accounts. 

Blog Social Networking

Blog Social Networking can be a way to reach out your ideas to a wide variety of people out in the internet. Former President Barack Obama "had used the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work." Obama was up against Senator Clinton, who already had a lot of recognition, and then Senator McCain. This just shows that there is a tremendous power in opening citizen access to government. There are many benefits of these technologies to society, such as being able to know all these information almost instantly and at a very low cost. 

But along with the benefits also come with some dangers. As people are behind the screens, they tend to have more courage to express things that they usually would not say face-to-face. For example, JuicyCampus, a site that encouraged students to talk trash about their peers in an anonymous forum back in 2007 has brought up a lot of controversies before it was shut down in 2009. Nowadays there are many younger audiences on the Web, I would hope that netizens be aware of these audiences and be aware of the actions that they're doing can be reflected into children and it is not healthy for children. Although people should speak out their opinions and thoughts, they should be aware with the word choices and impacts of a violent sentence. 

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html

https://www.chronicle.com/article/theyre-backtheyre-bad-/48220

Blog VS. Wiki

A blog is theoretically a linear format, where articles are offered in a reverse chronological order (youngest first), usually written by a single or few people, and edited after posting. A wiki is a nonlinear collection of pages, ideally connected by many internal links, with no chronological concept. Wikis were originally invented to be editable by all comers, enabling a read-write web. They are usually contributed to by many people (with sometimes wildly different opinions on basically everything). They encourage editing wrong or outdated information, so that the whole subject stays up to date.

The convergence of has a great impact in society advancements. Media has allowed industries to expand and develop new technologies through media sharing data, research and etc. In an article by the New York Times, "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid" shows how media was used to alert and notify a community in Brooklyn of the drug use in the area. This blog helped the community become a safer place through creating awareness. 

https://www.cio.com/article/2436789/more-on-how-to-build-your-own-wikipedia.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/nyregion/26bayridge.html

Analysis of MeiTuan: How did MeiTuan survive and succeed in the dominated e-commerce in China

I chose to do my project on the analysis of 'MeiTuan,' which is an app similar to 'Uber eats' or 'Grubhub' but has even more abilities such as ordering tickets to a Broadway show to booking a hotel and etcetera. This app is functional all around the globe. China’s consumer internet has long been dominated by e-commerce giant Alibaba and social media titan Tencent. But this hasn’t stopped one young company from capturing an ever larger share of people’s online spending. In this research topic, I will touch upon some of the hardships that exists for young companies to succeed in China in a very dominated society, as well as some of the strategies MeiTuan used to succeed as its estimated to be $30 billion in value just in the past year. I plan to touch on all these aspects and much more in depth.