The Next New Thing

What is the next new thing to come to new media. A very difficult election, having one of the least predictable worlds ever as can be seen by the recent presidential election. However, the next big thing is new media will be social and world shrinking. Each step of technology in some way either increased the social aspect of something or shrank the world. No I don't literally mean make earth smaller like an evil villain from a cartoon show (although that would be pretty cool). What I mean is that it made it matter less where you lived. One example is the internet itself. It doesn't matter where you live as long as you have internet connection you can connect to any website in world. That means somebody in the United States has the same opportunity to information as somebody in India or Portugal. Thus shrinking the world and making the world a more fair place.
The new media that will develop next will hopefully make the world smaller for minorities and woman. Although we have made great strides over the years, the world is still not flat for these groups of people. An example for a shrinking technology could be a website that helps find out if you are making as much as your male counter parts. This is an awkward question in the workplace and thus rarely gets asked an discussed. A woman can be making hundreds or even thousands of dollars less then what their male counterparts doing the same job and have no idea. With this website we will gather data from many different jobs and locations to make sure you are being paid a fair salary. This will force companies to pay equal for equal work or be put into a category of sexism or racism. With companies not wishing to have these labels they will pay equally and thus make the world more flat for everybody.

Our Class Wiki So Far

My main contribution to the class wiki so far is the addition of information of advertising. In the advertising category I discussed about Google Ad words and the advantages that the mega advertising system supplies. I went over how it is a keyword based industry and even went over an example of how this would work in the paint industry.
I just recently got access to the wiki so in the coming weeks I plan on adding several other paragraphs to pages.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is simply the ability to send one file from one computer to another. A computer isn't limited to a desktop but ranges to tablets and cell phones as well. P2P file sharing however is a different animal. PSP file sharing essentially connecting multiple computers into a single system. This allows seamless sharing of files between peers. At my summer internship we had P2P file sharing, this allowed me to create a powerpoint on one computer and my boss be able to access his computer with no issue. However file sharing is not without it's faults. File sharing is an opportunity for hackers to get into your system. With P2P file sharing this allows one break in the information chain to affect multiple systems.  According to the article from the New York Times "Digital Pirates Winning Battle with Studios" by Brian Stelter, these types of groups are affecting the income of studios. For example experts feel that the movie industry can be experiencing the same drop the music industry received after Napster started pirating their material.

Privacy

Privacy is a major issue that new media has reveled to us. New media allows us to connect with millions of people all at once and yet people are surprised that they lose some privacy. I mean were talking about things such as "Social Media" which lets you write anytime you cook a meal, go on vacation, state your political views (for good or for bad), family pictures, fun times at bars, 10 different ways to cook hotdogs and these are just to name a few. These are things you are sharing with anybody with an internet connection can see these things. In order to enjoy new media you need to be willing to sacrifice privacy, take this as that old saying that nothing in life is free. While you can sign up for free for facebook or twitter, you allow them to advertise product down your throat catered towards the last thing you may have Googled or allow them to sell your information you provide upon set up to the highest bidder.
To live in a more interconnected and modern world privacy is going to go down. The democrat and republican parties saw this first hand after we just went through one of the least popular elections in years. Both Hilary and Donald weren't able to keep their private lives private, so why do you think you will be able to.

Advice

         If I was hired by the college to infuse new media to create a better college environment, I would pursue and social media movement. Colleges in the United States are currently ran under bureaucratic nightmare and this causes much of the stress college students face now of days. Whether it's not signing a certain box on your FASFA or not knowing why your date to sign up for classes is different from your friends ( both statements I heard today while sitting in class) the bureaucratic structure causes students to become frustrated not only about Brooklyn College  but around the country.
         This is the problem and social media is the answer. I'm not saying to tweet about how "this school sucks" but rather tweet to a problem solving account dedicated to helping take down the structures that bureaucratic ways create. Creating a dedicated social help desk can create and environment of questions and answers which confusing college environment desperately needs. This can be taken to Facebook as well. We currently have several pages on Facebook the address questions to, however these pages are inconsistent on answering and could offer incorrect information. Incorrect information could cause major problems not only for the student that asked the question but for anybody in the group who read it and believed it .
       With these new systems in place the college can get back to educating rather then jus problem solving. Twitter and Facebook are going to be a major part of students lives while they are in college, targeting where students are will resolve the issues students face.

Creativity

Many people in the media industry feel that new media offers a door to more creative and meaningful advertisements then the old medias of the past. This can be seen by marketing companies no longer buying advertisement in bulk and posting advertisements wherever and whenever. It has led to the emergence of strategy based advertisement companies using less money to operative in more creative avenues that are more accessible to the companies desired target market.
Just one of the new media options to do this type of advertisement is through the use of social media such as Facebook or Twitter. These platforms have become virtually essential to everyday life and have even spilled over to old media forms in which during newscasts anchors will read tweets of viewers or celebrities. The advantage that social media offers is that it is a two way street of communication rather then the one way streets of the past. This means that companies can now communicate with its customers on all aspects of their product. Rather then telling them what they want they can be told by customers what to design. This offers more of a connection to the product by potential customers and thus will lead to bigger sales. According to Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times in her article "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" "Twitter struck an interesting balance of flexibility and malleability that allowed users to invent uses for it that weren't anticipated". This means that Twitter doesn't need to be something they aren't, they can be told by their fans what to be and mold to fit this desire. A smart company listens to its customers and through the use of social media this is easier then ever before.

Modeling Relatiy off of Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds 

Virtual worlds have become more and more used as the years go by. Virtual worlds can be used as a getaway from a life full of stress and replace it with one in which you can control most aspects. It has become so popular that has been made as a pop culture reference in many movies and television shows. One example of this is from the popular show the office when a character on the show named Dwight takes on a virtual world, however since Dwight thinks he is a perfect specimen he makes his character in the game known as "Second Life" the same as the first. He is the assistant to the regional manager of a paper supply company in Scranton Pennsylvania. The only change Dwight makes is that he ca now fly.

Not only are virtual worlds are popular they can actually have a positive affect on society. For example the extremely popular virtual world of Minecraft while in beta was actually made for children with autism. Other virtual worlds have since taken this approach . For example according to Nicole Saidi of CNN .com "Naughty Auties" was a virtual world made for people with mental disabilities to create a character in a 3D world and use this character to interact with other people who may have the same issues as them. This makes them feel connected with one another. As a person who has a cousin with a mental disability you know that this disability can make them feel alone in the world. This virtual world can give them more of a feeling of fitting in while also sharpening their creative and interactive skills. 

Virtual worlds can also be used in the education of children. The beginning years of the education system are some of the most important and some kids instantly try to reject this system. This is because they are either bored or uninterested in what is going on in the classroom. This is why introducing virtual worlds into the classroom could help steer these children that may go off in the wrong direction education wise back on the path of success. According to a research appear based on the advantages of virtual world classrooms, in the future 50% of learning can be done on the internet which offers not only a low cost but also could lead to more cognitive learning then traditional methods.

There is of course draw backs to virtual worlds. Kids and adults for that matter can be dragged into these worlds and in some cases become more important to them then their real life loves. However I think this can be stopped and the positives far out way the costs in this scenario.