Creativity and New Media

        Even though I am not talented in art and design, new media technologies like mobile applications help me in some creations. For this blog, I created an avatar by using an app called Bitmoji as there are many Avatar styles I can choose and it is easy to be used. Here are the photos of me and my avatar.

Creativity

         New media has brought best out of people's creative skills. According to the CNN's article 1+1+1=1 by Frere-Jones, the new digital media has led people like Vidler, Kerr, and Brown to create hit music mash ups. Their creativity persuade people to love and embrace different types of music. Obviously, the accessibility of new digital is not only for the musicians but also for everyone, who wants to be creative and who are creative. Technologies like mobile applications and software foster people to be more creative and skillful.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

          I learned about some purposes of the Virtual reality for the first time, when I was a student ambassador for a Technology launch in Pennsylvania. Moreover, there was a survey about 3D virutal glass in my Business class so that all the people in the class were able to try on that eyewear, which functions as a display device. I was able to see many different projected environment like space, desert, and etc., and felt like I was actually there. Virtual worlds can be used in many different ways and can be beneficial for many purposes. Like Knafo describes in the article "In room 100, It's Side and Nancy All over Again", 3D virtual world called Second Life was able to recreate the famous Chelsea Hotel with old photographs even though the hotel was renovated in recent years. Also, Tutton mentions about the creating a tool that allows virtual meetings and effective collaboration in businesses (CNN).

         The pros would be VR's ability to break down the boundaries imposed on us. People now can explore more about the things that they were not able to see or learn before with the help of virtual worlds. It is not just on science movies like before. The cons would be the security issues for the people and society as everyone can see or learn things that they were able to see before. Future world would rely on technology even more than today. With advanced virtual worlds, I think there will not be any barriers and boundaries for the differences. 

Social New Working Site

         I have been using Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat for many purposes. Facebook has been the main source for recent news and connecting with family and friends. Facebook is the best medium for connecting people from friends from different countries. It allows to post not only pictures and videos but also posts about personal feelings so that people can share about their opinions and feelings easily on Facebook.
          For me, I usually use Youtube for accessing MTV, talk shows, and any other types of videos. For example, if you are learning how to play guitar, you can just find a video easily on Youtube. Basically, I can just find the videos that I want to watch and leave a comment if I want to share about my opinion on the video. I would say Instagram is neat and enjoyable even for a break while working. It does not have a long opinionated passage posts like on Facebook. Moreover, people often post their professional like photos, which are really cool and you can see fashion trends when you go through the posts on Instagram.
         I started using Snapchat when I came to the U.S. as many of American friends use it. What impressive about Snapchat is that people just post a temporary story on it and share it to their friends. They use to share every enjoyable or fun moment of their time to each friend.

Blog Social Networking

            Social networking technologies have been used for building social networks and relations with others as they help in finding people in similar interests and backgrounds. Moreover, people access to information and news on social media in today's society. As Langfitt mentions professional job recruiters have started looking for job candidates by using social networking sites such as LinkedIn (NPR). Using social networking has been a norm for people's daily lives in many different perspectives.

            Obviously, there are many benefits of these technologies to society as they are easy to access and use for everyone. People keep in touch with each other by simply opening up the laptops or smartphones even if they are across different time zones. Businesses connect with their customers to promote their products and services by using social media and they are heavily rely on these technologies to operate their businesses. Most importantly, social networking is enjoyable for everyone as they can conveniently access posts about events, news, and so on. From my personal experience, I heavily rely on social networking sites to learn about recent events, news, and to keep in touch with my family and friends. 

           There also negative effects of social networking technologies due to their openness and ease of use. People can easily access a person's information, pictures, and videos on many networking sites especially on Facebook. According to Greenfield, even if a person posts his/her photos on Facebook to show it to close friends but all the mutual friends of those close friends can access to that photo (the Atlantic). Therefore, one of the downsides of using social networking is that even a stranger can see your information. To fix this, I believe social media will focuses on developing security system and privacy, and emphasizing personal information for the users. 

Blog vs Wiki

          Wiki is a website that provides general information and it allows multiple users and authors to create and edit. It also allows users to modify the content as they want. On the other hand, Blog is a personal website where people create personal blogs like diary-type commentary. Bloggers focus on writing about what matters to them and the topics are varied based on their preferences(Gill). Therefore, people can share their opinions on their log while wiki shares some facts, knowledge, and other information based on a topic by multiple wiki users. Both Wiki and Blog have been significantly adopted and used by many people due to powerful information sharing systems. The convergence of these media websites encourage people and businesses from different backgrounds to come together and learn about each other.
           According to Barbaro, corporate blogs are the new operating system for Wal-Mart. Corporate blogs shows the preferences and lives of the consumers as people actively provide their views about products on Blogs. Customers' participations on Blogs give Wal-Mart enormous Revenue (New York Times). Even though Blog allows limited collaboration, it can be used for collaboration in many ways such as guest posting. Another way to collaborate on Blog would be commenting and replying on the post. Blog is one of the major media platforms people can communicate with others. According to James Dao, social media like Blogs are making soldiers, and their superiors to break down the barriers between them because they can post their daily lives and opinions on their blogs. However, using personal and collaborative blogging can also be a bad thing for hierarchical military (The New York Times). A new use for a wiki could be using as a classroom tool, where people can share about their opinions and decide whether they accept the opinions of others or not.

The Influence of Technology on Communication

       
New Technologies and Communication 

          As technology has made remarkably profound effects on communication, I am curious about how technology has affected communication. Therefore, I am going to discuss about technology's influence on communication in this project paper. As the topic is broad, I will focus on discussing about the impact of new communication technologies on social, business, economics, and educational perspectives. I will compare and contrast both positive and negative effects of technology on communication in each field with supporting evidences from reliable sources.

Some sources that I found interesting for the paper are:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/unify/2013/12/10/how-technology-has-changed-workplace-communication/#799cb56b670b
http://college.usatoday.com/2012/10/11/opinion-why-social-media-is-destroying-our-social-skills/