Creativity & New Media

I created the avatar using www.voki.com. I have never done it before and i learned a lot from the tutorial page on voki.It was so much fun and I hope you will enjoy my photos from Spain as well :)

CReaTivity

   How many people can honestly admit that they do something creative? Many of us work, go to school, raise family and simply has not much spare time to do something creative. Fortunately, a website like youtube or google allows people to find what we need in a blink of an eye, and even for those individuals who don’t have time, it is an easy access to something for themselves. All they have to do is take a picture or a video of a funny situation that is happening in their lives with their cell phone camera and upload it to youtube. Creativity comes so much easier with the New Media technology that has developed nowadays.

    Twitter is another way to express our ideas. Claire Cain Miller in “Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers” writes: “Technology companies have been the most active in relying on others to innovate for them. This is in large part because the Internet lets people exchange ideas easily and rapidly with large groups, and computing tools let people design new products cheaply.” In other words, if not us, people, and our pitch into the network, New Media would not exist. It is our creativity, our new ideas and needs what allows the New Media to expand and design new creative technology. Miller in her article also writes: “You get a bunch of users interacting and it’s hard to predict what they’re going to do. We say, ‘Why are people using this and how could we make that better?” People also foster their creativity by writing on other people's blogs, and having intellectual conversations.They get inspired by others and develop their own unique ideas by that. New Media is very important in out lives and plays a significant role in forming our creativity.

MoDeLing ReaLiTy wiTh VirTuaL WoRLds

    Virtual World and social life is playing a very significant part in our lives. Some people put their lives on Facebook and update their status every hour or so. It’s hard for those people to distinguish the difference between the reality and virtual life. In the article “Social Influence and the Diffusion of User-Created Content”, the author states: “We identify and model social influence based on the change in adoption rate following the actions of one’s friends and find that the social network plays a significant role in the adoption of content.” He means that we as the society are influenced by virtual world and get manipulated by others. Later on the authors make a more detailed example to prove their point: “Social network information has successfully been used, for example, to predict whether a customer will sign up for a new calling plan once one of their phone contacts does the same [10]. The photos we view and the stories we “Digg”are often the ones we observed our friends consuming [13,14]. LiveJournal bloggers are more likely to join a group that many of their friends joined, especially if those friends belong to the same clique [2]. Blogs are likely to link to content that other blogs have linked to [27].” They are many advantages as well as disadvantages of that. First, in our busy lives sometimes we don’t have time to call or see our friends as often as we would like to, and by using social network, we can say “hi” and catch up with all of them in 5 minutes each day. It is also good for businesses to grow their networks and advertise through other “friends”. The bad thing is that we can get easily addicted and if that happens, that can be life consuming and energy taking experience.

          By using virtual worlds, we can enhance our creativity and get inspired. We can view galleries, shows, concerts, learn how to play guitar on the internet, etc. For those who are too busy to travel, we can visit any place in the world just by typing it in the “google” search engine. In Dave Itzkoff’s article: “I’ve Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life” he writes: “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.” We can create new ideas, and there are websites where we can plug in a photo of ourselves and imagine how we would look like for instance in different hair color or style. We can design our own shoes or play intellectual games online. There are so many interesting things to do online that it is very likely that in the future we will do almost everything online, without the necessity of leaving the house. Now, we can even make bank deposits over the phone with a snap of a picture. Society is merging into the direction where computers are playing such a significant role, that who knows if in ten years we will need human help anymore. I hope that won’t happen.

Blog about Twitter

I have never had a Twitter account before, because I never found it necessary, because I have Facebook. I do like it, but the words limit drives me crazy. 140 words is not even close to enough to what I want to Tweet about. For example; I wanted to write more about the article that I read and I couldn't. The good side of this however, is that it allowes people to express their feeling and complete the senetence in a short thought. Blackboard allowes us to view post more clearily and we can write longer essays, but on the other hand i Think Twitter can make an impact on the shy classmates who feel intimidated to ask a question on blackboard. There are also more feedbacks from others and the dicussion is free and more fun.

Social Networking Sites

Let's start from the most common name which is Facebook. This social network allows us to post pictures and comments, or even videos, links, events, etc. It allows people to be unites across the globe, wherever the internet access is available. Like for myslef, for instance, where the only way to communicate with my family in Poland is through the phone or Facebook. Comapring those two, phone cards are getting expensive and facebook is basically free, because there is a flat monthly cost in general. I can chat with my friends and family overseas as long and as many times as I want and view their updated pictures and events.

Twitter however, is slightly different from Facebook, because you cannot post a picture of an event, just a short up to 140 words sentence about what is happening in your life at the moment. There is a limited capacity on what you can post because of the words limit. If i'd want to post my favorite poem, i would have to break it into few parts.

My Space used to be number one social network before Facebook came along. What I liked about it was that I could assign a song to my profile, so when someone entered it, they could automatically hear the song. I thought that was a brilliant idea, that Facebook is lacking at the moment. Maybe they don't want to be a copycat :) On My Space users can design their profile space and customize it in the way they like.

Skype is a website where you can actually talk live with another person across the world. It is not as popular as Facebook but its popularity is growing tremendously and I believe someday people won't use calling cards anymore, but skype with  people and enjoy seeing one onother. Skype was an outstanding idea because it is like being "there" with your friends or family at that moment. Not only chatting or hearing their voice, but to be able to see and smile to them. That is priceless.

Social Networking

      Many serious companies use technology in order to promote their business. There are many benefits to that.

       First, it is a much cheaper way of advertising because Facebook ot Twitter is free. Facebook has miliions of users and if each "Friend" would "like" the business page and post it on their page, it would quickly spread throughout the society. This is exactly what happened to Facebook company in the beginning. First only local people knew about it, then more colleges and eventually it hit millions of users.

      Second reason for using technologies in businesses is because the company can improve their services/ production by reading the comments. We learn from criticism, so reading all the comments would definitely help the CEO to understand better what needs to be improved. Chuck Hamilton in "What's Next? Your Future in Social Networking" article writes:

    "Companies are using social networking today to connect with affinity groups. If you're in insurance, for example, you want to know what your customers are worried about. What do they need in the way of insurance services? Today you can reach out to that community and discuss those issues."     

    The biggest benefit to the society is that Technology also helps to find a job. Nowadays almost everything is online so the place to look for a job is the company's website. It is not limited, like in the local newspaper, but anyone from all over the US can apply.

      On the other hand, there could be a "dark side" to using technology irresponsibly. If too much information is posted, it can be used by the competition. They can use the ideas or the most creative comments and implement them for their own benefit. If the secutity system is not sufficient enough, they private data can be hacked. From the consumer point of view, technology can have a side effect on those who post way too much personal info than needed. The posts sometimes might be misunderstood and cause a lot of troubles, even losing the job. As Marc Parry reports in his article: "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do" : "Most facebook users modified their privacy settings at least once in 2009 and that "engagement with privacy settings increased significantly" between 2009 and 2010."

      Technology progresses all the time, and there are constantly new products on the market. Who knows if in the future the technology will spread so much that we won't have to go out of our house to have a job interview, because everything will be through skype. Social networking will be widely spread and people will be able to do almost everything online. We're almost there already.

BLOG VS. WIKI

       Wiki and Blog are similar to each other, however there are few significant differences. In order to present it in an understandable way, we have to look into details of each, moreover look at the diffrence between them. At first it may be complicated but it really is not.

       Nowadays, anyone can start a blog and start a discussion about almost anything they wish to talk about. It can be a recent political issue, a new transit fare raise, some new technology invention, or simply a chat about what we like to eat the most during a superbowl. The topics are unlimited. A significant difference is that in Blog, nobody can edit what the blog owner has written. It has been a reason of discussion and criticism because if the person claims something that is incorrect and it is being read by many followers, it cannot be changed by anyone. Blog posts can be made each day, and viewed by anyone who knows about it.
        Michael Wilson in "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid " quotes a woman who found out about drugs problem in her neighborhood from the Blog:
"Katherine Khatari, 47, who owns a coffee shop in Bay Ridge, said she learned of the complaints about the houses on the blog. "You check and see what’s going on in the neighborhood," she said “People don’t like to fight alone. There’s strength in numbers, you know? There’s more of us than them.""

     Bloggers create their own blogospheres by posting comments and replying. The more followers it has, the more interesting it might be. Many people feel unnoticed in this world, but blog allows us to explore our feeling and/or thoughts for others to see. Wiki is a sort of a database that is made in the simplest way possible to access even for someone who doesn't have much computer skills. Wiki can be used largely in the business coroprations as well. As written by Ezra Goodnoe in "How to Use Wikis for Business":
"Wikis can centralize all types of corporate data, such as spreadsheets, Word documents, PowerPoint slides, PDFs — anything that can be displayed in a browser. They can also embed standard communications media such as e-mail and IM. Heavy-duty PHP-based wikis can directly interface with company databases to bring in audio and picture files. A wiki's functionality is limited only by the programming skills of the person who implements it."

       Convergence is very important in todays world because it unites people. It is allowing collaboration and by contributing to people's blogs we keep our mind active. We learn from Wikis and continuosly search for new ideas and want to learn new things.