The Next New Thing

One idea that I have that could be the next thing is how governments operates the internet. Generally, government push for laws that benefits companies instead of individuals. It seems like individuals has no protections or rights on the internet instead, all big companies has protections against almost anything. Plus big companies has the resources to combat lawsuits against individuals or has the resource to influence how the government operate. There should be a software or program that protect individuals, at least the ones who are most in danger.

Instead of making a new technology that helps out big companies, there should be a program or software system that protect the individuals. For instance, big major music labels or corporations has the protection of the law which is called DCMA. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 protects big companies from individual who are trying to share their productions without the companies permission or has no benefit if people share software, documents, or other intangible items. The only way they can detect is that they implement a software or program where they can track illegal music sharing or downloading.

The government should do the same thing for individuals. Like this article "Judge Throws Out Conviction in Cyberbullying Case" written by Rebecca Cathcart talks about how children who are prone to bullying, are always at risk behind the computer. Children are always at risk of getting threat messages from losers who can't do it in person. So governments should implement a program that can detect people who are bullying against other people. They can implement a program that can detect words that can offense people and see if they are cyberbullying against other people. Cyberbully-ers should have a fine or big consequences for doing it, such as people who illegally download music.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I'm going to honestly say, I haven't contribute anything to our class wiki yet. I will soon be contributing my part of wiki soon. One of the reasons on why I haven't contribute anything yet, it's because I want to see what my other classmates are contributing or doing. I'm waiting because I don't have any experience, or knowledge on what am I suppose to do for our class wiki. Our class wiki at the moment, looks great in the front page, but it's lacking a lot of information/content for the sub-topics.

What I will be adding to our class wiki, will be sub-topics that I already familiar with such as Business, Crowdfunding, Education, Techonlogy, and so forth. I'm going to concentrate on one topic first. It probably will be crowdfunding, since I'm very interested in crowdfunding myself for my future. Since I want to start up my own business, I want to be able to know where to ask for financial needs. Crowdfunding is a great way to start up a business without a lot of obligations if I was borrowing money from banks. I already know about Kickstarter, I actually supported few projects myself. In the future, I hope I will have an idea that I get to share to the whole Kickstarter community and be able to support my project. I will be contributing more information about Kickstarter, such as the uses, requirements, pros and cons, and so forth. I want to post information that are actually personal, not from a third person point of view.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the capability of sharing one document, program, or any other things from one computer to another computer over through the internet network. It is considered illegal to do this in the United States. It's because companies are losing money if they can't gain any money out of the peer to peer sharing. P2P is also known as Peer to Peer sharing where you get to share your things from your computer to another person in a different computer. There many P2P software programs, some big names ones were Kazaa, Napster, Megaupload, and many more. Though, throughout the years governments from different countries have sought to shut down all these P2P programs because the government don't have anything to gain from it. In the article "Peers Find Less Pressure Borrowing From Each Other" written by Wendy Kaufman, found legal ways to actually make money around the laws of the United States and other countries. Google, instead of directly making money off P2P programs, they are actually funding the program itself. They make money from interests instead of each time the software gets share. This P2P program is great for sharing money and earning money for investors. One great example of P2P program is Kazaa, it's a place where people upload their files onto Kazaa where everybody gets to download it if they search up for it. You can find mp3s, documents, movies, and so forth. Once it's download to your computer, that file also gets shared to everybody else so it leads to faster downloading from other users. It usually seeds out the file that you downloaded so other users can download it at greater speed.

Privacy & Confidentiality

As more and more new media technology are coming out to our generation, our privacy and confidentiality are getting less and less protected. Nowadays, people can check what are you doing 24/7 if they check your social media websites. If you put important information onto your computer, there's a chance that a hacker can grab all your information without you even knowing. Compared to the old days, the new media world is very dangerous concerning with privacy and confidentiality. Now, less and less people trust the government due to the exposed NSA government program. NSA can constantly hack into your private life without any consequences at all. So we are constantly getting monitored by the government or creepers/stalkers/hackers alike. It is harder now to avoid someone since they know where you are, compared to the past where you can just change directions. The whole point of this post is that with new media around, our information/private life is constantly being broadcast with or without your permission. So sometimes it's better if we live without new media technology concerning with privacy. 

Advice to Baruch College

If I was hired by Baruch college using new media technology to improve our school environment and system, I would implement few software system. I would try to implement a new system that's better than Blackboard where students can communicate among each other when they are not in class. This will lead to a better class participation and communication, unlike the current Blackboard where everybody have to check each other thread in other to give some feedback or comments. I will also implement a system where clubs and organizations can communicate with each other instead of just searching up their information and contact them. I would want them to be open as possible where they can network better and cosponsors more events together. Also, I want a system where the students can reach out to clubs and organizations if they aren't able to make it to their events, such as a discussion board for students and clubs.

Creativity and New Media

I didn't fully made this avatar myself. This is an avatar of myself, which actually made from an app called "Bitstrips" which recently became popular among young adults. First you have to choose your gender and such. I didn't actually start out from scratch. What this new media does is that your friends are able to help you make one yourself and tag your second life avatar as you. My friend actually made my avatar then I tweaked a little bit by changing the way my avatar dressed like. The face, hair, glasses, and other parts somewhat actually do resembles me. This app is actually fun because you can actually make a picture that includes your friend that you tagged in, and just write a short caption to the picture. It's actually a simple app or new media to use to create an avatar. Also, in some ways you do get to be creative with this app because you have find the right picture from the app and be creative with the caption so people think it's funny or catch their attention.

Creativity

New media has provided many new possibilities for ordinary people who don't have the talents or the necessary equipments to invent something. But with the new media that we have today, some of the restrictions are finally gone, for instance we are able to share our homemade videos to the world to see, without forcing a television network to show it to the mass amount of people.

With new media such as YouTube it gave new tools for ordinary people to be creative. The YouTube community or other online communities, has an "unspoken rule" where the one who are the most creative will have the most attention. So the online community will somewhat push people to be more creative, which leads to more creativity among the online community. People no longer has to make videos that has to fit into the norm where people just make normal boring videos.

One great example is an article from the New York Times "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?" written by Brooks Barnes, talks about how Disney and other big media corporations tolerates individuals but not other big companies who are their competitors. Individuals can make a normal boring video into something abstract, funny, and creative; thanks to the new media that we have today. One the main reasons I think big companies tolerates it because it actually provides some awareness or promoting their own company without doing anything beside letting individuals remixing or spoofing their productions.

Without all these new media, there wouldn't be as much creative as today compared if we only stick with the old medium. I think new media do provide some creativity to individuals, not because they were forced upon, it's actually because it's fun and you feel accomplished when your works gets noticed.