Creativity and New Media

For this assignment, I chose to use secondlife.com. This website allows you to create an avatar and basically live life how you can in reality, you share information regarding twitter, facebook and personal interest. Basically allowing yourself to live in a virtual world. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Help%20People%20Island/35/84/23
In the link above you can see that even in the virtual world with all the unbelievable capablities whether with a unicorn or mystical creatures you can still visit places like clubs and other places you can see in the real life. You can also interact with all the other people online to dance, sing and other things. By creating your own avatar you get an image of yourself with the infinite capabilities of the internet.

Creativity

New media certainly does increase creativity, it impacts society and how people want to live their lives. In the article Disney tolerates a rap parody of its critters, but why? it says " YouTube videos that turn Bambi, Simba and Winnie the Pooh into rap stars?" basically allowing people to use their creativity to take animated characters and pretty much change their personalities or the way they act. New media just allows us all to change the way we want to do things from making videos or songs you can use new creative ways to accomplish the same task.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Nowadays you look at companies and corporations that do a lot of business overseas simply have their meetings in their own buildings and office. They call this a video conference, what it does to help is it cuts down the time and money for traveling to other countries or even other states to just be able to have a conference anywhere with a webcam. In the article "Going to the virtual office in the second life", they use this as an innovative way to cut budget cost. You can also use the virtual worlds to teach online classes; students get to be in the class without actually being in the class, they will still copy notes and lectures just not be there in person to do it. 

The pros of virtual worlds are great way to save time and money with the traveling and all. It helps some of the people who are too shy in reality to really do what they wouldn't do, like speak up in a controversial issue or just offer an opinion they might be hesitant about because they fear they will look inferior to others. The cons would be taking the personality straight out of the interaction, or whatever is left of it. You can't really judge how the other person is feeling and you stare at a screen besides getting to actually know a person. In the article "I've been in that club, just not in real life", you see this person living his life on a computer. Its not really a nice way to live your life, I mean you might even be more daring cause its computerized, but its not the same as just experiencing it first hand.

These virtual worlds can do a lot to foster in on creativity, for one you can use a computerized world to accomplish things you would never do in real life or just not able to do. For example, if a person is handicapped and missing legs, in his own virtual world he can climb mountains or just enter into marathons in the virtual world.

The future is looking bright, when you look at virtual worlds they will probably make more innovations to just make it more lifelike. What better way to feel like you're connected then actually connect you in. Technology is limitless nowadays, if they can create virtual worlds for you, I'm sure someday they will be able to connect you into it using your brain wave frequencies to make it seem like you are actually like there like the movie Surrogates.

blog about twitter

Twitter is a simple website that allows you to talk about your daily activities or what you're thinking. When compared to blackboard for discussions it's less organized and when you look at twitter there is a limit to what you can write as oppose to blackboard people can write paragraphs to support their points and ideas. Classroom discussions are more out there and usually not all the students get to talk at the same time as oppose to twitter you are more likely to pay attention because most of the tweets are short, sweet and to the point. The only problems you may get sometimes are that twitter will not be able to be more detailed to explain a certain subject.

Social Networking Sites

There are 4 major social networking sites that we use now a days that have become very popular, being facebook, myspace, twitter, and tumblr. Through these sites you can see how each of them have evolved to improve the other ones. One of the oldest ones, Myspace is a network  that has the friend's of your friends listed while finding out about ones personal life and being able to comment to one another without even having to leave the comfort of your own home. Twitter though is basically a service where you talk about how you feel or even a short message to everyone who is following you, roughly 140 characters so people can know what you're thinking or where you are. Facebook, being the more popular site among these is a mixture of myspace and twitter. It allows you to leave comments on all your friends pages while at the same time writing on your status what you're thinking about or how you're feeling. Tumblr is a bit different, this is a blogging site that allows you to use it like a dairy, journal or even like a site that allows you to  post whatever you want.

Social Networking

Social networking is defined by using sites to basically connect with other people. It allows us to talk to other people without even leaving the privacy of our own homes or even see what they are up to without having to call or talk to them. Some sites you may know are facebook, myspace and twitter. We use these in our everyday lives and have come accustom to having them around. However, these sites aren't just for personal use, today businesses like marketing corporations use them to research on their targeted demographic as a way to basically reach out to them and see what they like without even having to pay the huge sums of money of advertising and surveys. Its a great way for the company to do business online and also answer any questions the consumer may have. Other companies use social networking to hire their potential employees, they type in a simple term for marketing researcher and as many as hundreds of names may pop up that are qualified for the position and more. On an article social networking technology boost job recruiting by Frank Langfitt he says that "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever." Pretty much talking about the ease it has made recruiting to find not just people qualified but the talent level in mere minutes. Though these sites are great for businesses it also is great for society. It allows them to connect with people across the world in China while you're sitting at home and saves you all the cost of a long distance phone call. Using these sites you may also find and reconnect with lost friend you may not have seen for a while. Thought there are many positives of social networking what are the negatives? In the article Antisocial Networking? By HILARY STOUT she says "Children used to actually talk to their friends. Those hours spent on the family princess phone or hanging out with pals in the neighborhood after school vanished long ago." Pretty much talking about how social networking takes away from the personal face to face interaction. Now a days kids just say hi and bye and it isn't even in person they say it through texting or facebook. You take away all the outdoor activities kids use to do and replace it with staying indoors to talk to people virtually. If this isn't bad enough social networking also increasing privacy risk for hackers to get your information and potentially steal your identity. Soon enough I think social networking can might as well and take over the whole internet at the rate its going. It dictates us almost, gets us so addicted that we cant stop, its like a drug. So before you go on saying how great social networking is remember everything else it does as well.

Blogs Vs. Wikis

When looking at blogs and wikis you can safety assume there are vast differences and similarities, for one they are both 2.0 web technology which allows you to interact with people, rate or comment without directly being there. However, blogs and wikis are also very different. Blogs are mostly more opinionated or can be used as a type of journalism. While wikis are almost like a page that just gives out information through other sources or users.

Blogs can be a way of simply expressing yourself, whether that be personal or professional, its a way of saying things on your mind without getting condemned. In an article found on http://www.associatedcontent.com "Through blogs, people are able to write about topics that interest them and comment freely on what is going on in their lives and in the world around them." Though blogs are used by some as almost a personal diary that everyone can read, it also is used on a more professional level with newspapers and companies expressing their thoughts or opinionated information. Blogs are often used as a collaboration by posting a question or opinion and then followed by many others questioning, challenging and just overall posting a discussion where everyone pitches in order to make the blog a discussion board.

Wikis on the other hand is information shared by everyone. In an article on http://www.informationweek.com  "the simplest online database that could possibly work." It can be operated by anyone and everyone to put together information in one place. Different from a blog is that wikis are mostly used as a source of information and is not usually a place for discussion. It can be changed and updated by almost anyone and though not always true since it is updated by people like me and you it is more often useful in looking up information. A new use for wikis can also be used as making group projects for school by just putting in the data and then having the students add in their own data to complete it.

The emergence of these two web products have been huge on the community as it has been some of the most popular known things to do on the web. By creating blogging people have a new way to create discussion boards and communicate as well as expressing themselves. Wiki helps make search for information a breeze when everyone pitches in to put their own input on what they know about the contents in the database.