The Next New Thing

As people begin to depend on platforms such as Facebook Message and text messaging to communicate, I find it difficult to convey emotions through solely words. When speaking to someone in person, the receiver is often listening to the words and interpreting body language and emotions. However, virtual communication through messaging doesn't have the capabilities to include such nonverbal language. Many times, I would depend on emoticons to express different emotions. Yet, these emotions would depend on the receiver to convey. Also, it is often inappropriate to incorporate such symbols in a professional email. Therefore, the next new media could be a platform that would permit people to convey emotions without the use of emoticons. It would have a sensor for senders to express emotions, and a sensor for receiver to accurately interpret these emotions.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

While I have not contributed to the wiki page yet, I plan to update the Privacy page by including current events that affect Facebook users' privacy. I will be placing more emphasis on how Europeans are handling the invasion of user privacy and lawsuits that are currently in motion. My term paper was based on the invasion of privacy through Facebook. I believe research conducted for my paper will help me improve the content on the Wiki page. Next, I plan on expanding the Social Networking page. Recently, Instagram has considered updating their platform to personalize each users' homepage. This could have a drastic impact on advertisers who depend on users inability to control the content they see. I plan on doing more research regarding these two updates to social networking sites and privacy before I update the wikipage.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is when individuals distribute media content through the Internet. Some things that people share are pictures, videos, documents, E-books. P2P file sharing is the use of peer-to-peer platforms to distribute this content. Users are able to search the platform, where media is centralized, for content they want. P2P allows owners to upload content but save on bandwidth costs and introduce content to a large audience. In the article, "Content producers should take advantage of P2P, not fear it," P2P exposes content to millions of users on a daily basis for free. Examples of P2P platforms are BitTorrent, Napster and the Pirate Bay.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality have become increasingly problematic when related to new media. New media platforms such as Facebook, virtual video games, blogs, etc all request for personal information about the user. As more people use these platforms, more people reveal personal information about themselves. Users are no longer as wary of their privacy or confidentiality issues. Over time, people may believe that it is common for these new media platforms to obtain personal information from the users. However, users don't realize that their information is being sold to advertising agencies and used for data mining. As a result, personal information may be easily searched by anyone on the Internet. Perhaps we are too accustomed to sharing our personal information on new media sites.

Advice to Baruch College

Baruch College is a commuter school that is very different from the typical "college experience" and "campus life." Because of this, many students may not have school pride. Our campus is very different from other schools in that students are not actively promoting their school sports teams or wearing clothing with their universities' names. New media would be a way to remedy that. Nowadays, many college students are constantly on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Vine, etc. In order to promote school pride, one could create engaging events on the various social media platforms. Because college students are already on these platforms, it would not be difficult to convince them to view the content about Baruch and share it. Sharing of information through new media is also a very effective method to spread an idea, or in this case, school pride.

Creativity and New Media

For this assignment, I chose to create an avatar via SecondLife. To begin, I created an an avatar from pre-selected styles. From there, I edited each feature of the avatar to portray the clothing I would wear in real life. This new media platform allows me to personalize an avatar that represents my style. From the screenshots below, one is able to add to the avatar by visiting the online shop. Through this platform, one is able to create a portrayal of oneself, or perhaps create an avatar that one would wish to become. The highly personalization feature allows users to explore their creative minds. 

Creativity

New media develop as platforms that help people express themselves. Oftentimes, they also spark the user's sense of creativity. For example, when Twitter was introduced to the public, it served as a communication tool that limits users to 140 characters. However, as the article, "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" depicts the new media scene, users are creating new ways to communicate beyond the original intent of the founders. Because of how unconventional new media is, users are given the opportunity and space to explore each platform's options. Creators are then able to curate these ideas and incorporate popular ones into their platform design. This strategy also helps Twitter set itself aside from its competitors, like Facebook. However, because people will naturally use Twitter in a way that is not supported by Facebook, it will be able to tailor its outline to accomodate the requests that its competitors can't answer. Many forms of new media are based off of the creativity and willingness of users to expand its potential beyond creators' plans.