Creativity

New media and creativity go hand in hand.  New media has provided countless outlets for creativity and have provided a space where anyone can express themselves and use their imagination.  In the article, "The Math of Mashups," it states, "Mashups find new uses for current digital technology...If the is an electric guitar of mashup, its a software program called Acid Pro, which enables one to put loops of different songs both in time and in tune with each other."  Creativity is being fostered by this computer program called Acid Pro by allowing people to easily create mashups.  With new media there is always new programs being introduced that make it even easier to put your creative mind to work and make anything you can imagine.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are becoming a growing interest in mass media that is being used by incredible amounts of people.  Virtual worlds are used for business, entertainment, educational and recreational purposes.  With virtual worlds it can foster creativity especially in games where design is limitless and you can create a character or "map" that reflects your imagination.  There are many pros to the virtual world experience including its use in educational purposes.  In the article "Avatar II: The Hospital," a virtual world program is used to teach med students how to interact under pressure in a hospital by creating a virtual hospital that is bombarded by patients and need medical attention.  This article explains how using this program can help students learn how to react under pressure and get a sort of hands on experience by using the program.  A con to the virtual world can be seen in article "Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life."  In the article it states that the limitations of the virtual world make it hard to share national and organizational cultures.  This can make it hard to communicate between one another as colleagues and see the point of view of the other person without having face-to-face contact.  I can see the future of virtual world moving toward VR (Virtual Reality) headsets where a virtual world will really start to feel real like you are immersed in the very world you chooses to experience.  Research and design is currently going into this making a headset a very real thing for our future.

Social Networking Sites

The four social networking sites that visited were Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.  My favorite one of the four is Facebook, since I feel its a happy middle between nonsense and actual informative information.  Facebook can be a place where you can learn information about a certain topic and spread ideas quickly.  It also enables people to start a conversation in the comments section of whatever is being discussed and there is not limit to how much you write like in Twitter.  I found that even though their are "Trolls" on Facebook like in any other social media site it is easier for you to find information and keep in touch with people that you would like to communicate with.  With Twitter it feels like it is just an ongoing drama factory that is either weak minded arguments that are being riddled all over the place or is just a place for people to say what they are doing every minute of the day.  It feels as if it is like people are just trying to rub whatever it is they are doing into everyone else on Twitter.  Its like we are back in elementary school and kids are teasing each other about what lunch they brought in today.  LinkedIn is unlike every other social media site where it is seen to be strictly a place for career development and networking.  Businesses can use this site to recruit potential applicants and people can use it to advertise themselves to potential jobs.  I found this site to extremely useful when used correctly by people who want to further their careers.  Instagram is a site that is used exclusively to post pictures.  Whether it be selfies, pictures of food, landscapes, or memes, Instagram is a place where photography can be expressed.  This site can also be used to show videos and is also enabled with a comment section that can be used by viewers to start a conversation on the picture being displayed.  Out of all these sites, as I said before, I feel that Facebook is the best since it has the ability of Twitter and Instagram to post pictures, and rant about nonsense, but can be used in beneficial ways. 

Blog about Twitter

A Twitter discussion can have some benefits to a blackboard discussion.  It is quite easy to find a conversation or a topic that you are looking for because of the hashtag method used by Twitter.  The hashtag link makes it easy to find an ongoing Twitter discussion that you can add your thoughts to and get instant feedback from.  However, Twitter gives you only 140 characters of space to write down your ideas so it can feel like your thoughts are incomplete and you don't have enough room to say what you want to say.  Blackboard can be beneficial in this way since there really isn't a limit to how much you write in a post.  I think an in-class discussion is the quickest way you get feedback opposed to the other methods since it is a face to face discussion.  However, people can feel like they do not have enough time to express their thoughts since you cant erase what you said before you say it like you can erase what you write before you post it on Twitter and Blackboard.

Social Networking

Social networking is a broad category that includes man different outlets including Facebook, Twitter, Instgram and LinkedIn.  Social networking can be used to create and solidify relationships via a social networking site such as Facebook.  Social networking can be used by businesses and professionals to pass on a free flow of ideas and provide a space for networking that can foster positive business relationships.  Sites such as LinkedIn provide a place where job recruiting has become easier and more efficient for both the recruiter and the potential employee. According to "Social Networking Boosts Technology Recruiting," it states "LinkedIn says users include executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies. Typing keywords into a search engine, Crawford can scrape the entire network to dig out high-quality candidates that she can't find elsewhere."  This shows how LinkedIn helps promote job recruiting and makes it easier to find qualified job candidates.  But social networking could have a dark side to it because of how it is effecting the younger generation.  According to the article, "Antisocial Networking"?, it states "Fifty-four percent said they text their friends once a day, but only 33 percent said they talk to their friends face-to-face on a daily basis."  This statistic is showing how children are starting to become less face-to-face oriented and are focusing more on relationships via technology.  I see the future of technology lying with social networking.  Social networking has already expanded into business and news and i only see it going further.  People control the flow of information and social networking is giving them the power to do so with ease.  I can only see social networking growing stronger and becoming an everyday part of peoples lives.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and wikis have many similarities, but are different in the sense on how they are used.  Blogs are usually a social media outlet used by one person to express thoughts, opinions or feelings.  Blogs are an effective way for it's user to portray there own opinions to their audience and get feedback through the comments left by the viewers.  While wikis can also be used by a person to express thoughts, feelings or opinions it is usually a place of collaboration for multiple people to provide information to the viewers.  The major difference between blogs and wikis is that there us no need for a comment section for an audience since everyone has the ability to make changes to the content of the pages.  Blogs can be seen as a good way to provide information without the interference of the possibility that a person can edit the information while providing false facts.  However, wikis provide a sense of convergence and collaboration that can be seen as beneficial to the information provided.  For example as stated in the "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia" article, "wikis are very good for a departmental project" and proceeds to explain that it will be highly likely that you will encounter international wikis used for collaboration projects.  Wikis can be seen to be extremely beneficial to a company who does business internationally since it will provide an easy way to have ideas presented instantaneously anywhere in the world at anytime promoting a sense of convergence. Blogs can also have tremendous impacts for a society.  For example in the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid," people were blogging about drug activity in their neighborhoods, which lead to a conversation and an eventual drug bust in the neighborhood.  This shows how much of an impact a blog could make.  Just by speaking up on social media authorities were able to listen and put a stop to the crimes being committed.  

New Media's Face

     In my paper I will discuss New Media and how it transformed into what it is today with special detail to how Facebook came to be such a popular form of New Media.  I will then take the time to examine the negative effects Facebook has had on New Media, such as information overload and false information being presented as truth.  But then i will examine the positive impacts Facebook has had on society.  I will attempt to portray Facebook's constructive progress, such as its ability to present information at extremely fast rates and its ability to promote connectivity among the world.   Hopefully through my research it will leave the reader with enough information to come up with their own opinions on Facebook and the effects of New Media.