In an earlier blog where I talked about Facebook, I also talked about how you have literally no privacy the moment you post something on the internet. The moment someone decides to upload something to the internet, it is immortalized forever. Until someone brings down the entire world infrastructure of the world wide web, there will be nothing you can do to get that terrible drunk video of you off of Facebook, or YouTube, or Vimeo, Buzzvideo, World Star, etc. That’s the risk of the internet. You post something, you’re giving what you posted a chance to spread like wildfire. This could happen from your friends seeing it and sharing it with their friends, or it could be that your information became compromised from someone hacking or phishing you.
There are even more worst case scenarios. Today, a security firm named Kryptowire discovered that many Chinese Android phones, such as the Nexus 6P by Huawei and any ZTE products, have a backdoor virus pre-installed on the phones. The article can be read here. All user information is sent back to a Chinese server and there is little you can do to stop it. This goes beyond what posts you make on Facebook or what you upload on Twitter. All your information is sent somewhere else for someone to peruse over before you even decide to upload it somewhere public. In this day and age of new media, where technology takes over our lives, there are exploits everywhere which basically destroys our privacy.
Something that many CS majors, including myself, joke about is how CUNYFirst is a joke of a system and they wish they could improve it. Until recently, I wasn’t aware that CUNYFirst was a system that not only CUNY used, but many other private institutions used too. I watched my girlfriend use Syracuse University’s system to sign up for classes and it was identical to the CUNYFirst system we use to sign up for classes as well. So instead of just writing my own replacement for CUNYFirst, since I’ve realized the system is probably a standard that the government set, I think the best way to improve the system is to gather groups of students from all over the country to fight against this system. The idea is extremely far fetched and probably unrealistic. But maybe both students and professors who are sick of this system could join together and fight against this at a nation wide scale. This could be done through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. We could start an angry hashtag that lets us vent about the system through tweets, or start a Facebook group that could grow at an unbelievable rate.
New media makes it easier for everybody to foster their own creativity. We live in a day and age where our smartphones can take full HD pictures and videos, and there is a lot of free software that allows people to edit their pictures or videos. It doesn’t take a lot of knowledge to create your own video. Easily accessibility to software and the use of it is demonstrated in Isaac Bell’s Creators, Audiences, and New Media: Creativity in an Interactive Environment, where there is a section that “describes the story of Kim, a 6th-grade student who tells a personal narrative not just through text, but through images, voice-overs, and titles to explain the story of her family’s move to the United States from China, and the problems they faced. What is most notable about this anecdote is the creativity Kim exercised in making it: ‘Kim created practically every element of this digital story. She took most of the photographs and scanned in older ones, created artwork, mapped and storyboarded the story, wrote the script, narrated the story, and created titles and credits. She even produced the soundtrack, using music composition software geared toward nonmusicians'”. Kim is a sixth grader that used computer software that is available to almost everyone today. You can create almost anything you want if you spend the time to mess around with software or look up tutorials. Everybody with a computer can learn how to use creative software and create whatever they want, as long as they spend time on it and have the desire to learn.
Virtual worlds can be used to simulate almost anything. It really all depends on the scope of the creator. What will the virtual world that you are going to build be used for? Who is it meant for? You can create anything you want. In Mehta’s After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?, Jacki Morie, a telehealth care virtual reality world designer, designed a world where soldiers, who serve our country and go into battle, can psychologically heal themselves in a virtual world depicting a peaceful setting of the place where they do battle. Morie had a specific demographic to target, and this gave her the motivation to create a virtual world just for soldiers.
Outside of extremely specific demographics that can help people, companies can use virtual reality to make money off their users. Companies that run these games can generate revenue from having premium-looking content that can only be accessed by the exchange of real currency for virtual currency. In Ferla’s No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You, these simulations of real life, where you have avatars that are basically the user’s perfect vision of a human being, “typically draw members ages 25 to 50”. Adults who are working from day to day, probably have no time, money, or dedication to make themselves who they really want to be. So they project these desires onto a virtual online avatar. And to perfect these avatars, companies can present content that basically requires the exchange of real money in order to access it. It’s a money grabber and it attracts a lot of people since they can have their perfect vision of themselves in just a few dollars.
Another example of virtual reality being used to create literally anything is depicted in a short film named Shelter, where a father creates a space capsule for his daughter to live in while the Earth collides with another planet, which basically ends the world. I highly recommend everybody who scrolls through my blog to view it:
As long as you have the programming skills, graphic design skills, and proper software that can potentially cost thousands of dollars(Photoshop, Autodesk 3DMax, Maya, etc), you can create any virtual world you want. This is the current giant wall that blocks off the creators from the participants of virtual worlds. You need skills in programming, or graphic design, or 3d modelling. Sure, you can take free code, free textures, and free 3d models and sew together a rag tag virtual world. But that wouldn’t be exactly what you desire. To create exactly what you want, and not settle for something less, you need skills in particular fields. Or you can spend money to hire people with this knowledge.
Currently, virtual worlds are moving onto virtual reality. The HTC Vive is the closest thing to virtual reality that we have today. I personally have not tried it myself, due to the lack of money and opportunity. But creating virtual worlds in virtual reality is one of the biggest markets in the gaming industry at the moment. Sony recently released their virtual reality set for the PlayStation 4, and it’s been a really big hit for people all around the world. The only problem that people are facing at the moment, that is preventing almost everyone on the planet to jump into VR, is the cost. You need a monster of a PC to run anything virtual reality related. Although the costs have been almost halved lately by the new video cards(nVidia’s Pascal cards and AMD’s Polaris cards) that have been released, the cost of the actual virtual reality gear still stays sky high. You either need a beefy PC or PS4, which both cost hundreds of dollars, and then the HTC Vive or PS VR set, which are also in the hundreds. VR is just not accessible to everyone at the moment, but it has the potential to be in everyone’s household in the future.
Unlike Blackboard discussions and in class discussions. People on twitter are limited to 140 characters. 140 characters in the English language is nothing. It limits you to write concisely and express what you mean in just a few words. While people on forums such as Blackboard discussions or in real life can ramble on and on to get the point across. Sure there are those people who are able to be concise on a forum post or while talking in real life. But Twitter is a place where you’re just limited. You’re bound to the 140 character tweet, and there’s not much you can do about it. Be concise, share a picture, write what you really feel or mean. Or just use http://www.twitlonger.com.
As previously stated in my last blog post, I wrote about how Facebook is used by an older audience, including my parents, to help them engage with relatives and friends that they have not engaged with in a long time. For reasons such as being in another state, or country, or they have just fallen out of touch. Facebook is a platform where people share everything about their lives. It’s a picture book and/or journal for everyone to see.
Twitter is a platform where people can share what is happening at this very moment. It’s a platform where people spread information quick. This information can vary from one’s mundane activities at work, to breaking news about some celebrity. Something that sets this apart from Facebook is that information and trends are shared through hashtags. And you can quickly track responses of a tweet through its hashtag. Whether its spreading or being ignored.
MySpace is a site very similar to Facebook. The last time I’ve used it was back in middle school, before Facebook became the most popular social media site. It tried to give users a personal space where people can share their pictures and moments with others. It’s very similar to Facebook. I guess one reason it never took off was because Facebook just had a cleaner and easier way of going through your own posts and other people’s posts. People’s MySpace would have a disgusting theme for their page and it would generally be unreadable. Facebook brought along a standard for professional, consistent pages where people can read and share whatever they want.
A social media site that I have frequented for the past 5-6 years of my life daily is Reddit. We have had a presentation on this website before and it was a great way to introduce the workings of Reddit to many people. This site is filled with a plethora of users with different personalities, and with different things to share. I am confident enough to say that you have a 99% chance of finding a community that fits with your tiny, miniscule interest that you secretly have. This is the place to share your interests. From games, to DIYs(D0-it-yourself), to memes, to world news, to politics. This place is more of a information hub where people have discussions about specific topics instead of people posting about themselves. People engage with one another through interests. Facebook and Twitter, through the regular user, are mostly used to show everybody else what people themselves are doing. Sure, there are news articles, videos, and important information shared with Facebook and Twitter. Such as breaking news about terror attacks or a warning for people in the city. But that isn’t the main reason that people use Facebook or Twitter. Reddit is what it says it is, it’s the front page of the internet. It will keep you up to date about local, or world events.
Social media allows people from all over the world to connect with one another. It allows families from around the world to communicate with each other. I know personal experience that Facebook helps my parents connect with my relatives the way in Malaysia. It’s a great service for everyday people who to connect with others easily through the use of their personal computers or smartphones. For most users, using social media is a gateway for connections. Social media can also be used to promote one’s self. In Carr’s ‘How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power’, Obama used Facebook and Twitter to connect with millions of supporters. Social media helps millions of people together, regardless whether you friends or not. But what would happen if someone would post or share too much of their private life online? Here lies the risk of using social media. You are not only exposing yourself to your loved ones, but to everyone else who uses the internet. In Greenfield’s ‘Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn’t Private’, Randi Zuckerburg’s private photo of her celebrating with her family was accessed and exposed through Twitter. The photo was meant to be seen by only Zuckerburg’s friends, but a complete stranger was able to see it. Your privacy is almost non existent on the internet. Social media is a double edged sword, you can connect with the rest of the world, but you also give up what you post online to the rest of the world.
I will be researching the website MassDrop as a form of new media where users communicate and collaborate towards buying products that users vote for at prices that are cheaper than retail. MassDrop is a e-commerce website that gives its users the benefit of buying what they want at a cheaper price, since MassDrop contacts the manufacturers directly for the products that users vote for, instead of going through other retail stores or other e-commerce websites. I will be attempting to analyze the positive and negative effects that this website has on its own business, its users, the companies that supply the merchandise, and competing companies.
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