New Next

New Media is evolving at a relentless pace, but what I have not seen too much of is New Media catered to the disabled. I think it would be helpful if there were new media technologies that can transcend the limitations of senses; in particular for the blind and the deaf. A device that can transmit information directly into a person's visual and auditory cortex would be awesome. Images are meant to be seen just as music is meant to be heard. It would be nice to include the disabled to the New Media revolution as well. The advantage to such technology is that it is not limited to the disabled. Such inventions would render screens and earbuds useless for regular people. We would be able to see images and hear noises broadcasted without the need of smartphones or such devices.

P2P

File Sharing:

File sharing is the distribution of digital copies of files such as audios, images, videos, and documents. Sharing can transpire through physical USB drives, emails, and clouds.

P2P File Sharing:

P2P is the shorthand for peer-to-peer file sharing. It is essentially a specialized form of file sharing achieved through P2P networking technology and software. Files are shared directly between the systems on the network. Each computer on the P2P Network assume a multi-role of both server and client.

Examples of P2P File Sharing:

Napster and Pirate Bay are two well known examples of P2P programs. Pirate Bay is a P2P site where people can upload, and download copies of copyrighted materials such as music, movies, programs, and etc. In recent years, courts and authorities have been cracking down on sites like Pirate Bay that perpetuate piracy and the distribution of illegal copies files, "on Friday, a judge in Stockholm is expected to rule on whether four people connected with a popular file-sharing service, the Pirate Bay, are guilty of criminal violations of copyright law. If so, they could face as much as two years in prison" (PFANNER). This article was written in 2009, but the battle against P2P continues to rage on. Pirate Bay has been shut down multiple times, but it incessantly revives itself each time.

Works Cited

Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?" by ERIC PFANNER, The New York Times, April 13, 2009, p. B4. Web. June 18, 2019

  

Privacy

As great as New Media is, it has one downside: Loss of privacy. New Media allows for an expedited high-volume flow of information, but an individual cannot always filter out what kind of information gets published on the internet. I once saw a statement that perfectly summed up privacy on the internet: Everything is remembered, everything is forgotten. Although social media sites allow users to control their privacy settings, there is still a possibility of the user's information leaking out to others. Some companies engage in buying and selling of consumer data. Everything that you keyed in to create your profile such as name, birthday, phone number, address, and etc. all belong to the company. If you take a look at Facebook's policy, everything you post and all the information you give them belong to Facebook. There is an incentive for social media sites to forgo their confidentiality oaths, and to disregard their users' privacy in that selling consumer data is a lucrative business. Privacy is an illusion in New Media, but what's great is that an individual does not have to fear the loss of privacy: Individuals do not have to partake in social media. People who lived before the time of computers, lived fine without things like Facebook. Post things at your own risk. We are the architects of our actions after all.

Creativity and New Media

Snapchat is a mobile app that allows users to send ephemeral images. The user can take photos of anything and set a timer on the photo of when it will expire. Snapchat has filters, drawing capabilities, and captions which you can add to the photo. Once the user is satisfied with the photo, they can either send the photo to friend(s) or post it to their storyboard. The appeal of the app is that once a photo's timer is up...the photo is deleted and is gone forever.

Creativity

Creativity is greatly amplified thanks to New Media technologies of today. Widespread digitization permits for easy accessibility of works by individuals all over the globe, and allows for aggressive distribution of media. This means that almost everyone can access media, and push their own creations. It is easy to get inspired by the works of others especially now that we are constantly being bombarded by multitudes of works of artists through New Media. Mashups are well known products of New Media Technologies. Jeremy Brown, a DJ, used New Media Technologies to his advantage to create a new musical piece--a “Mashup”, “using digital software, Brown isolated instrumental elements of “Debra,” a song by Beck from his 1999 album “Midnite Vultures...Brown found that an a-cappella of “Frontin’,” a collaboration between the rapper Jay-Z and the producer Pharrell Williams, was approximately in the same key as “Debra...Brown exploited this commonality, and used his software to put the two singers exactly in tune...after several months of work, he completed the track, called it “Frontin’ on Debra” (Frere-Jones 1). New Media Technologies allowed Brown to have access of many musical works that he can pull off of the internet. With these ingredients at hand, Brown used his own creativity to produce a new song or “Mashup” of the songs he was inspired from.

Works Cited

The New Math of Mashups from The New Yorker Magazine 2005. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/10/050110crmu_music. Web. June 18, 2016.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds can be utilized in many useful ways. One example is to simulate a high volume hospital filled with sick patients to train nurses, “Dozens of hospitals, medical schools and health foundations have staked out space in the online community Second Life, where participants can build their own virtual clinics and stage just about any training drill they can imagine” (Simon 1). Nurses are put through many emergencies situations in virtual reality. Nurses have to assess the scenarios, and figure out the best way to solve issues. With the help of virtual reality, nurses can better prepare themselves for future real life situations in that programs like Second Life simulate hospitals rooms and sick patients rather well. The advantage of virtual reality simulations is that it is relatively cheaper than traditional simulations which involve creating fake physical studios and hiring expensive actors. Furthermore, virtual reality does not interrupt with a hospital’s regular business (Simon 1). Because everything is digital, virtual hospitals do not take up physical space.

Virtual worlds have downsides as well. The experience can be so immersive that people rather live in their fake virtual worlds as opposed to living their real life, “Despite knowing that its real-life inspiration exists right outside my door, I have spent the last few months making such visits to the Virtual Lower East Side (vles.com), a three-dimensional, Internet-based social network fastidiously modeled on a small but influential swath of Manhattan real estate” (Itzkoff 1). It is similar to being addicted to video games. High dosages of Virtual reality is detrimental in that it consumes an incredible amount of the person’s time. Instead of bettering themselves in real life, some people would rather waste their time on Second Life living their fake lives.

Virtual Reality fosters creativity in that the sky’s the limit for creators. Virtual worlds can be about anything a person thinks of. It can be used to solve real life problems faced by business and institutes around the globe. I think Virtual Worlds will be utilized by large corporations to help further their businesses in the future. A cool way Virtual worlds have started to hit the masses is through products like Samsung’s Gear VR. People have started to play around with the technology to give cool immersive experiences for the wearer. If you go on YouTube, there are VR options for some videos where you can watch the video in 360. When you wear virtual reality goggles, if you physically turn your head to any direction your viewing perspective will change: A 360 Degree Virtual Experience.

Works Cited

"Avatar II: The Hospital" by Stephanie Simon, The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2010. Web. June 18, 2016.

"I've Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life" by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, January 6, 2008. Web. June 18, 2016.

Social Networking Sites

I visited four of the most well known social networking sites which include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Facebook is the king of all social networking sites at the moment. It has the largest number of users. It is an amalgam of news-feeds, photo albums, statuses, walls, and real time chats. It is very easy to see why it has so many users. Finding friends is simple with the help of friends suggestion bars and mutual friends. Facebook in a way exhibits the theory of six degrees of separation quite nicely.

Twitter is reminiscent of blogs. I can see why they call Twitter a micro-blogging site. Tweets remind me of short public declarations. Keeping the posts to a maximum of 140 characters has an appeal to it. It keeps everything sweet and short. Moreover, hashtags are fun in that they allow for creativity in the titles that you can come up with.

Instagram is awesome in that the contents are mostly photos. I think having images as the main focus of a social networking site is a phenomenal idea. Most people are visual and would rather see images as opposed to reading lengthy posts. In retrospect, Facebook acquiring Instagram for a ludicrous, staggering amount of $1 billion was a shrewd move on Facebook’s part. Instagram is the vanguard of all social networks when it comes to growth.

YouTube has been my favorite social networking site since 2006. I surf YouTube every day. I am amazed at how far YouTube has come. There are so much more content now compared to its early days. YouTube is a conglomerate of communities, networks, and niches across the spectrum. YouTube was the first social network to create virality and internet celebrities. Case in point: Justin Bieber. Most old media companies have started to converge on YouTube. Major TV networks and popular shows on TV have their own dedicated YouTube Channels. These TV networks have established themselves pretty well in recent years, and have garnered millions of subscribers to their channels.

All things run on a cycle. Myspace was the juggernaut of social networks back when I was in middle school. It will be interesting to see how Facebook and other sites develop in the upcoming years.