Next New Media

Ever since the movie The Surrogate, I've always thought that the movie will become real life. Basically in the movie, everyone has a robot. Everyone in the world controls their own avatar/robot through a pod, very very similar to the movie Avatar. You have total control over how you look. You can look like Brad Pitt in the morning and become Angelina Jolie by night. They can feel, smell, see, touch, and taste everything the robot does. You're basically living your life through a robot. Living your life this way, you will not face the physical harm of everyday life. For example if you get hit by a car, only your robot is damaged. The actual person is safe and sound in their pods. Although this might sound scary, I can see this being a realistic feature of everyday life in the future.

Privacy and Confidentiality

With our technologies getting more and more advanced, we should be feeling safer and safer right? However, we're not. It's almost the opposite. The internet is probably new media's biggest component and with it's existence, there is literally no privacy anymore. Nowadays we do everything on the computer. We can pay our bills, shop, even make phone calls. There are traces of our lives on these computers and anyone can access them.

Social networking is also an invention that forces us to give up our privacy. Friends, family, organizations, and even strangers can find information about anyone through social networking sites such as Facebook. Other websites like Twitter allows people to update their exact location or activity. Why in the world would people want to do that? It's almost as if having no privacy or confidentiality is normal now.

We have to understand that the internet is a powerful force. It's easy to upload information but we need to know that it's even easier for a GREAT number of people to view that information. There is no doubt that privacy and confidentiality is a right we have to give up when we are on the internet. We just have to be more cautious.

My Presentation Summary

I am proud to say that my presentation is about 98% done. I just got to go over a couple of things and really try to perfect it. As I posted up earlier, my topic for my project is New Media and Teens. Here is a summary of my project.

Within the last five years, media exposure for teens has increased dramatically. Between the years of 2004-2005 the increases were as followed: music audio: +47mins, TV: + 38mins, computers: +27mins, video games + 24 mins.

Not only did media consumption increased, media ownership increased as well. Ownership of laptops increased from 12%-29%. Cell Phones increased from 39%-66%. Ipods/mp3 increased from 18%-76%. This really aids the increase of media consumption because with these mobile devices, new media can be accessed anywhere teens are. Another reason why media exposure increased is because of the increasing number of internet access at home.

We all know that video sites such as Youtube and social networking sites such as Facebook are major contributors to new media. Video sites and social networking has become the top 2 activities on the computers by teens.

So with all the availablilty of interent and other sources of media, how does it affect teens educationally? Well, from information given by the Keiser Family Foundation, we see that people who spend more time on computers are more likely to recieve poor grades. 47% of heavy users of media claim that they recieve poor grades at school. (C's or lower) 31% of moderate users claim they recieve grades while only 23% report recieveing poor grades. Although it's easy to see that there is a correlation between time spent and poor grades, researchers have yet to find out why this is so.

Concerning teens social behaivor, 55% of teens say they use social networking sites. Most girls say they use it to keep in touch with friends while boys say that they use it to meet new people and flirt. Also, heavy users of media are more likely to be sad or depressed, get into trouble, and have conflicts with their own family.

Advice

If I was hired by baruch college, there are a number of things I would suggest to make this school better.

1. Get rid of Blackboard
2. Have all math, accounting, finance teachers post up videos of sample problem solving.
3. Send out personal texts when a professor cancels a class. Not everyone checks their email on time.
4. Have more hybrid classes. An alternative to class attendence is good for emergencies.
5. Have a link on the Baruch website for students to sell or buy used books.
6. Have programs for Scientific or Financial calulators available for students to download into their laptops.
7. Everything we need to do at the registrar should be done online. The lines are crazy.
8. There should be a waiting list for classes that are full.

Our class wiki- so far

When we first started on our class wiki, I was REALLY intimidated. I mean I had NO clue what to do and all the codes and stuff looked very very complicated. But as usual, Professor Friedman had a great way of teaching us how to use the wiki. All we got to do is just COPY AND PASTE. Professor Friedman is right. We really don't need to know the codes or formulas for certain functions. Everything we need to do has been done already. We just have to copy the code and paste it and then adjust it to your liking.

Ever since we started working on our wiki, I've contributed to a number of things. One thing I contributed to was the New media in sports page. I'm a big basketball fan and I watch basketball often. Every now and then, I see news on players being fined because of a comment they made on twitter. Therefore, I added some information on this subject. I also added some videos on the Fun Link. I'm a huge fan of "The Office". And to the credit of Professor Friedman, I realized that there are a lot of video clips that are funny and relevant to new media. I'm really proud of that work so please check it out.