Creativity and New Media

Summer 2016- My Cruise to Alaska!

Hello, that's me right there. 🙂 Maybe you're wondering why I'm wearing a hat when the video is titled "Summer 2016". Well, I took a cruise to Alaska back in August of last year. It docked from Seattle, but unfortunately my flight going there was cancelled (by American Airlines) and my family initially missed the first day of the cruise, where the ship leaves the dock. So, we had to take a flight to Alaska, with a layover in Seattle, to catch the cruise at it's first port in Ketchikan. A big misconception is that Alaska is an icy place with a lot of snow, but it's actually really beautiful. It was rainy and cold the entire duration of the trip, but I definitely did not see any town covered in ice! We did see some glaciers, however, and if I had to opportunity to go back, I wouldn't have to think twice!

My trip to Alaska inspired me to create a montage of clips to save as a memory. I saw a lot of my other friends creating and posting their vacation videos on social media, which inspired me to do the same. Uploading my video on YouTube or any other platform allows for people to view my trip and share the experience I had while I was traveling. It also allows for people to comment and provide feedback on what they saw.

--> Feel free to watch my journey by clicking the caption or here! 😁

Creativity

New media sparks one's creative mind and inspires people to express themselves. It also invites others to share their opinions about other people's creativity or ideas. Feedback like so can either be positive or negative, depending on how the person feels towards something. With the Internet nowadays, it's hard to avoid negative feedback. However, good feedback and suggestions can help people improve on themselves and grow to be something better.

In the New York Times article, Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers, Miller talks about how Twitter listens to their users' opinions and feedback about the platform to see what the company can improve on. Twitter allows for user feedback because they want to cater to what users like since they're the ones using the platform. This act is like YouTube and how YouTube creators asks their viewers to leave video suggestions down below on what the viewers themselves would like to watch. An idea brought up by a Twitter user was the use of hashtags. At first tech people were skeptical about it because they felt that only "nerds" would understand the reference, but soon other companies caught on to the ease of hashtags that allow one to be able to search similar past posts. Another suggestion by a Twitter user was Lists. This would allow one to be able to accumulate all the tweets of other users.

Ideas suggested by users can help improve the platform and make everyone happy at the same time. Who knew user feedback could be so powerful? (Hint: Twitter!)

Source:
1) Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds help foster creativity in a way such that users are able to create an ideal world and life all through simulated environments on the computer. One pro is that it makes reality simpler and education and can also mimic activities people wouldn't be able to do with ease, such as surgical procedures or astronaut training. However, virtual reality may backfire such that time lags and one may come to lack awareness of the real world. With the use of virtual worlds, it's very easy to get lost in the computer simulation activity.

In the New York Times article. "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You," Ferla explains how users of "Second Life" use real money in exchange for the virtual currency in order to purchase things in the game for one's avatar to wear. One pro listed was that in the virtual world, clothes always fit and they don't wear. The avatar would never have to throw away their clothes because it's become worn or too small to wear, as opposed to the real world, where one would end up having to do so for those reasons, becoming costly. The article mentioned that over 150,000 items were created by users in the game, which depicts creativity. Users would build 3-D objects to sell in the virtual marketplace. Through "Second Life," users are able to live vicariously through their avatars and live as lavishly as they want. "It's the newest manifestation of how people live vicariously: if I can't afford a Bentley, my avatar can."

As a pro, in CNN's article, "Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life," Tutton explains how virtual worlds save travel time when avatars want to meet up with one another to collaborate on a project, which is beneficial because it makes for an engaging environment. However, if one would want to know how to operate a brick-and-motar place, then virtual worlds wouldn't be the place for demonstration. Besides, there are other ways to collaborate on projects such as Dropbox or Google Drive. A con the article states is that virtual teams fail to imitate the company's work culture, especially "water cooler" conversations where in the real world, workers would gather around it to share additional thoughts and ideas that might not have been shared at a previous meeting. This interaction creates bonds and relationships, where one may not be able to achieve in virtual worlds and suffer isolation.

Virtual worlds have already come into existence in today's society, especially with virtual reality electronics. Perhaps, they'll further share the virtual world by bringing virtual reality into everyday classrooms to foster a creative and innovative way of learning. I definitely think technology would only move up from here. It's exciting to see what the future has in store for us!

Sources:
1) No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You
2) Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life

Blog About Twitter

Each discussion invokes a different feel. Whether it's the sharing of ideas or information, the way discussions are developed and carried out are all different. Twitter discussions are limited. Users are only able to create a tweet of up to 140 characters. This limits the user's creativity range as well and makes them keep their ideas short and simple. The limit may make the user's tweets appear casual as well since it's a more personal platform.

Unlike Twitter, BlackBoard discussions don't have a character limit. One is able to express their ideas in as many characters as they want. However, BlackBoard discussions are more formal since it's classroom-based and is shared with people of your class as well as the professor. This has its advantages, however. Discussions on BlackBoard foster more education-based responses and collaborations between groups.

Although both of these forms of communications have their pros, the one disadvantage they both have is that the face-to-face interaction is missing. In-class discussions allow people to show emotion while they're speaking. This creates more depth to what the speaker is saying and is easier to empathize with them. In-class discussions are usually also casual as well. Comments by other people in the class may also lead to tangents as well as create a stronger personal bond between everyone.

Social Networking Sites

Society practically lives on social media nowadays. It's the main form of communication between one another, unfortunately. People look at their phones more than the environment around them and they interact with others via social media instead of actually talking to someone one on one. I can't tell if it's fascinating or scary, but one thing's for sure- social media and social networking sites are taking over!

Facebook is, without a doubt, the most popular social networking site operating today. With over 1.2 billion users, Facebook continues to grow. People use Facebook to interact with the world around them, literally. The site broadcasts news and trending topics to keep users up to date with current events.

Like Facebook, Twitter also leaves users in-the-know about trending topics. The site even customizes the trending topics by naming it "Trends for you". Both Facebook and Twitter allow people to leave hashtags on their posts so that others may look through the tag to read more about the topic. One thing that's differs between these two social media platforms is the length of the posts. Twitter only allows users to have posts 140 characters long, whereas people are able to post paragraphs of text on their Facebook posts. As far as privacy settings go, Facebook's privacy settings are more complex whereas Twitter's privacy settings are simply to have one's tweets public or private.

YouTube is a little different from Facebook and Twitter. Unlike posts or tweets to express one's self, people express their creativity and ideas through videos. One can subscribe to their favorite content creators and upload as many videos as they want, whenever they want. Creators are also able to use hashtags for their videos, so their content is together with similar content users may search. They can also create playlists to further narrow down and filter their video uploads to make the viewer's search easier.

Although Facebook and LinkedIn are both popular social networking sites that connect people, the main difference is that LinkedIn is more of a professional platform. The site is mainly used to connect with employers, recruiters, or companies in hopes that the user will find a job. The connections, interactions, and posts aren't as casual as Facebook since users like to keep it professional on the site. As far as job hunting goes, I'd say that LinkedIn is the most helpful of the four social networking sites discussed, to look for a job. LinkedIn exercises privacy in means that users are able to make themselves anonymous when looking through the profiles of others as well as decide on how much of their profile they'd like to make public.

Blog Social Networking

Ah, social networking- where everyone is friends with everyone, despite where they live. Whether they've known the person they added for years or they're a mutual friend you've never met, the entire world is connected through social media. There are upsides and downsides to social networking. In NPR's article, "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting," Langfitt explains how the professional networking site, LinkedIn, has become a huge help in the process of recruiting as well as for users to find a job. Users are able to market themselves and list their background and previous job experiences when job hunting. LinkedIn also allows users to simply look up the professional contacts people have connected with to find someone of their interest to reach out to, as opposed to manually calling or emailing people for someone else's contact information. Privacy can also be adjusted by the user, like any other social networking site. For example, one is able to decide how much of their profile they'd like for the public or their network to view.

There are many downsides to social networking and privacy plays a significant role. In The Atlantic's article "Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private," Greenfield explains the extent of a simple post on social media and the scare it may cause. In the article, Zuckerberg's sister posts a photo to Facebook that depicts the family's holiday. However, the photo was leaked to Twitter due to the host of the post being a mutual friend to Zuckerberg's sister, giving her the ability to view a photo since her friend was tagged in it. In this situation, Zuckerberg's sister was uncomfortable about the leaked photo and eventually asked the host of the tweet to delete it. To further add on to the downsides of social networking technologies, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about university campuses creating campus gossip sites to speak poorly about students on the campus. Examples include JuicyCampus, CollegeACB, and Peoples Dirt. A question was posed in the article stating if colleges are required to act. In my opinion, I do believe colleges should take action. Students gossiping about other students may hurt feelings and cause people to become depressed or suicidal. It's the school's responsibility to exercise respect, especially to students towards one another.

To conclude, there are positives and negatives to social networking. Social networking can help one extend their professional network and find a job and connect with other professionals, or it can detriment one's privacy and emotions that may lead to more serious consequences (the "dark side"). The evolution of these technologies would probably improve on its privacy boundaries and monitoring what's being posted to the internet. Anything can easily be accessed with the simple click of a button and for that, we must be cautious.

Sources:
1) Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting
2) Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private
3) They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus Gossip Web Sites

Blog v Wiki

The convergence of today's networked world is important because it brings communities together and creates a simpler way to communicate and connect with one another. There are many different kinds of blogs out on the web, whether it's for business purposes or for a personal hobby. Blogs are created to connect and relate with the public and other bloggers that have similar interests. Although there is limited collaboration, blogs are useful for collaboration in terms that bloggers are able to read, comment, and link other blogs as well. The blog's posts are like news stories and as new posts are created, the old ones are saved into the blog's archive. In Forbe's article "Yahoo's Next Problem: Tumblr Isn't Growing," Bercovici explains the diminished usage of Tumblr and the low percentage of active users, based on comScore's analytics. The company believes that the situation is like so, because of other related sites, such as Buzzfeed and Upworthy, sharing similar content and therefore deterring users from using Tumblr. I can understand the article on a personal note as I have used Tumblr before and I personally feel that Tumblr has become outdated. I feel that people nowadays prefer to be more aware with current events and what's going on in the world, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter do just that.

Wikis, on the other hand, is more of a collaborative effort between multiple editors. A new use for a wiki can possibly be to create class notes among classmates. This way, each classmate would be able to add onto or edit the information that's already been published. Contributions for wikis are of more than one person, creating easier communication and more flexibility. However, problems arise when practically anyone has the power to contribute, such as sharing false information. To solve this problem, "flagged revisions" came about where experienced volunteer Wikipedia editors monitor edited content before it's released to the public, as stated by Noam Cohen in the New York Times article, "Wikipedia Will Limit Changes on Articles About Living People." Until then, viewers will have access to an earlier version of the content. The article also mentions about the plateau Wikipedia hit as well due to the number of topics to uncover becoming less and the disinterest of new topics. As for articles on living individuals, Wikipedia plans to focus more on the flagged revisions for them because the information for these pieces are more prone to vandalism and dishonest information.

Sources:

1) Yahoo's Next Problem: Tumblr Isn't Growing

2) Wikipedia Will Limit Changes on Articles About Living People