Next New

New media is rapidly advancing. For the next new thing, I would like to see a holograms come out of smartphones. Instead of scrolling through the words of an email, I would like to have a visual hologram read my emails to me, similar to a personal assistant, maybe a hologram of Siri. Another example of this being used would be when you're watching the news, a hologram of the anchorman or weatherman would show up, telling you the forecast. I've seen holograms used for the audience to relive a Tupac concert. Maybe stuff like that can be developed in our smartphones in the near future.

Wiki So Far

I have yet to contribute to our class wiki however, I have done some research and brainstorming on what I would like to add on. The main topic I would like to add to our wiki is information about sports betting websites and online sports bookies who take bets on agreed upon odds. Most of these sites are illegal and aim to guarantee a profit by achieving a 'balanced book' with point spreads and adjusted odds. Many of these sites give you a line of credit so you don't pay your losses or receive your winnings until the end of the week. Often times, users get carried away because they don't feel like they've actually lost their money and usually tend to chase after their losses throughout the week. I plan to explore this topic more thoroughly in order to contribute towards the class wiki.

P2P

File sharing is the distribution of digital media, which may include documents, music, video, and images. The problem with file sharing is that these digital media are usually distributed illegally. People usually share the files without permission, thus infringing the copyright act. Another form of file sharing is P2P file sharing, or peer to peer file sharing. This is the distribution of digital media through peer to peer network technology. Some examples of P2P file sharing are Google Drive, BitTorrent, and The Pirate Bay. On Google Drive, people can upload files and choose to allow specific people to have access to these files. According to "The BitTorrent Effect," BitTorrent is "one of the most successful peer-to-peer programs ever." This program allows users to quickly upload and download a lot of data and huge files in torrents. Once the user downloads the torrent file, it connects the user to others who has the file.

"The BitTorrent Effect" by Clive Thompson, Wired, January 2005. 
 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/bittorrent.html

Privacy & Confidentiality

As new media continues to grow in an increasingly fast rate, more and more personal information is being uploaded to the Internet. Because of this, privacy and confidentiality play a huge role in new media. Almost all online activities are password protected, providing security to sensitive and unique consumer information. Many online sites such as Facebook allow you to customize the level of security for your account. For example, you can choose who can and can't see what you post and limit the amount of information an application can access. People must be careful of what they upload because people can take this personal information and use it immorally. You need to be cautious of whether or not these sites are secure when filling out forms asking for social security or other important personal information. They must be aware that identity thefts and fraud exist even with privacy and confidentiality.

Advice

If I was hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the college, I would suggest using educational videos more often during class sessions. As people continue to grow attached to new media, incorporating new media into their education process would only aid them in understanding better. With videos, if they're interesting and capturing enough, students may learn better because these videos can each leave a lasting memorable lesson. For example, Prince EA's video "Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?" left a lasting memory about social networks for many who watched it. Another suggestion I would make is requiring professors to utilize and update blackboard after every class for those students who unfortunately had to miss class for whatever reason. This will prevent students from falling behind, promoting educational success.

Creativity and New Media

The beginning stages of creating my MyPLAYER

My finished product in action

Here is an example of how new media fosters creativity. In this virtual world of NBA 2K15, I was able to create a whole new identity using the features provided in MyPLAYER. It allowed me to customize and make a unique character just for me to use in my very own story line, giving a glimpse of what it's like to make it in the NBA. There are many options to customize such as hairstyle, accessories, height, weight, eyes, shoes, tattoos, voice, etc. With this new identity, I'm able to communicate and play against others in this virtual world. On top of that, seeing other people's characters along with actual real life NBA players sometimes also gives me ideas on how to make changes to my character, fostering creativity within the virtual world.

Creativity

New media fosters creativity by allowing new possibilities and materials to work with. As new media continues to advance, it only opens up room for more creativity. With the help of new media users, creativity will continue to prosper because these users are constantly being given new features to play with. Even within companies, a lot of ideas they stick with originate from consumers. For example, in "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers", they explain how the hashtag phenomenon came from an early twitter user. Twitter took the opportunity and built on this idea by adding a hyperlink feature to these hashtags in order to group tweets within the same topic altogether. Interests coming from both consumers and producers in new media are what fosters creativity.

"Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, New York Times, October 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html