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.

Blog about Twitter

In my opinion, nothing can compare to an in class discussion. The point of an in class discussion is to have a face to face interaction in real time with your professor and or other students. Blackboard does not offer that. In order to interact through blackboard you have to log in search for the thread, etc. We live in a world where we access everything through our smartphones/Ipads, and blackboard does not have an app. It is very hard and annoying to log into blackboard from a phone. Twitter is the second best to the class discussion because most people can access it through their phones and see the tweets as they are being posted and answer right away.

Social Networking Sites

The overall point of social networking sites is to connect people from all over the world. Facebook is my personal favorite social networking site. You have the choice of making it very private, editing the settings so that only some people can see what you post or your pictures. It allows you to add your family members and it shows up on your wall how you are related to them. There are many different functions, yet you can still maintain your privacy. Twitter on the other hand is different. There is a limit on how much you can post in one tweet and anybody can follow you. I am not a fan of twitter. I don't see a reason as to why people need to post every single thing they do throughout the day online. Myspace is another social networking site. I think that now it is mostly for younger people. It has a lot to do with music so I think its cool because it bring people together based on their taste in music. And last but not least is Linkedin. Linkedin is a social networking site for professionals. People are able to put their job experience up there and sometimes find a job.

Social Networking

Social networking is a big part of most people's everyday lives. We live in a world where our lives revolve around Facebook, twitter, etc. It shows up on the news, in newspaper, magazines and other places. Although it sounds like these websites are places for friends to chitchat, it is not always the case. According to Social Networking Boosts Job Recruitment, social networking does exactly what the title states. Websites such as linked in are making it easier for people to find jobs and for job recruiters to find employees. There are many benefits to social networking especially in the business world. Chuck Hamilton shows the advantages in What's Next? Your Future in Social Networking. He says that it became much easier to interact with people all over the world, to create virtual worlds and to get feedback from customers. I agree with him because personally I have witnessed my brother in law have a business meeting over Skype while he is at home with somebody from China. This saved him weeks worth of time and money. Previously, he would have to fly to China to have the same meeting. However, I do believe there is a dark side to social networking. I think people get too involved in websites such as Facebook and Twitter and put too much of their personal information into it. Checking into every location you go throughout the day is an invitation for some random creep to start following you. People need to start being more careful with what they post on the social networking sites. I cannot even imagine how much more evolved this websites are going to become in the future. If people already practically don't need to leave their houses to communicate with their friends or business partners, then I am scared to see what the future has in store.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are both a way to communicate using new media. However, blogs and wikis are different. Blogs are a personal page where only the user is allowed to post what he or she wants to. It is a page where they are free to write whatever is on their mind. Wikis on the other hand are a collaboration of people and anybody can join and add things to the page.
Although blogs are used to speak your mind, this does not always lead to good things. The article in NY Times shows how vicious and destructive these blogs can be to people and sometimes they need to be stopped.
As stated before, wikis are more open to the public and people can join in and add things to the page. However, as the NY Times article states, some forms of wikis such as Diplomedia have some boundaries and not everyone can join in and write. They are capable of tracking down who wrote what and if they are part of the actual contributors.

This is honestly my first time using wiki so I am not sure what it has to offer so I do not know what new possible uses it should have.