The Next New Thing

It is hard to come up with something new in terms on new media considering it is expanding rather quickly. However, an idea I have is to create a program for school purposes in which if children are sick, they can directly connect to the classroom through a webcam and still catch the lectures and lessons instead of missing the work. Everything in our lives now have cameras, our phones, iPads, computers etc, so it would be convenient to log and see what is going on in class if you can't make it to class. 

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is exchanging files on the internet. That includes somebody uploading files and somebody downloading files. File sharing allows sharing more than just music files, such as movies, documents, books, etc. In P2P sharing, users are able to connect to a network and search for shared files on other user's computers (peer-to-peer). If the files are too larges, they are broken down and then reassembled after they are downloaded. An example of P2P file sharing is BitTorrent.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality are a big issue in the world today, especially with the use of new media. Everything is now being posted online. People have to be careful what they post on their Facebooks and Twitter accounts because now their future colleges, employers and others will be able to see what they posted in the past. Therefore, too much personal information should not be posted on these websites. People also have to be careful using credit cards through their smartphones. It is possible for other to hack it, get their information and have their identity stolen. Overall, less personal information needs to be posted through new media.

Advice to Baruch College

Baruch College is in desperate need of getting a better source of communication. It is impossible to reach somebody in bursars, registrar, etc. Therefore, I believe that Baruch should start using new media to have better contact with their students. By using social networking websites such as Facebook or Twitter, Baruch would have a better and faster way of reaching their students. Most students interact with each other on these websites already, so why not implement a way where they can reach the faculty?

Creativity and New Media

American Idol

This is a YouTube video of my friends and I back in high school pretending we are trying out for American Idol at Madame Tussauds wax museum. I apologize for the terrible voices, we really thought were were better than we actually were.

Creativity

New media definitely fosters creativity. The New York Times magazine is proof. Youtube users created "mash-ups" of Disney and Nickelodeon characters dancing to Soulja Boy's "Crank That". Mash-ups are bits and pieces of cartoons and TV shows put together to flow as a full cartoon. In this case the characters were snipped and put together to make it seem as if they are dancing to the song. This is great proof of new media expanding creativity. However, people have to be careful when doing these mash-ups because they can get into legal trouble. Nickelodeon found the mash-ups humorous and enjoyed them, where as Disney saw this as stealing.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

There are many pros and cons to the use of virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are used to bring together corporations, educational institutions, and in general people from all over the world without actually having to bring them together physically. It is an online world where people create avatars to represent themselves and go to these meetings, etc. This is very helpful because people don't have to take off and fly to the other side of the world to have a meeting. Virtual worlds are also useful in recreating things that no longer exist, such as Hotel Chelsea. Michael Brown created virtual Chelsea exactly the way it was when he stayed there and people loved it so much that they joined the virtual world. Another amazing virtual world is Naughty Auties. This site was created by David Savill who suffers from Asperger's syndrome. In this virtual tour people with autism and their families create avatars and come together to work on social skills without having to face people in real world. They are also capable to help each other out and find out more information about the condition.
These virtual worlds foster creativity because people can live lives that they only imagined in their heads. They make their avatar be whoever they want it to be and do things that they always wanted to do but never had a chance to do, such as travel the world. However, people need to be careful while living in this virtual world because some of them allow people to buy things within the world with real money and if you get sucked into this you may spend much more than expected. I honestly cannot imagine how they will be used in the future considering they are already being used in meetings, to help others, etc.