Creativity and New Media

This weekend I've been on a Children's Halloween Parade on Coney Island. And I made a power point presentation about it. I used pictures, video and music.
HALLOWEEN

Creativity

New media and technology stimulated creativity. Social media users using different techniques to deliver their information. It could be text, video, music, presentation. Not long time ago the only source of information were newspapers and books. As Jane B Singer said in her Article “User-generated visibility: Secondary gatekeeping in shared media space”: “traditionally, journalists decide what content to publish based on a generalized conception of a relatively undifferentiated mass audience. The journalist serves as gatekeeper for this mass audience, selecting a subset of items to make visible; the role has newly intensified public feedback loops today but otherwise has changed little over the years”. Ordinary readers didn’t have a choice what to read, they read what was in newspaper. Today we have a choice what to read and where to read it. Therefore, if you want social media users to read your article or post you must be creative.

We remember how the first blog came up. It was something new. Everybody could write what is important to them.  But today we have another very popular type of blog – video blog. A lot of people creating their own blogs and a lot of people watching video blogs. To have a popular video blog you must be creative.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds became very popular in a last couple years. They can be used for different purposes. To my opinion the most useful one is to use them in education. For example, Stephanie Simon in her article “Avatar II: The Hospital” talks about “online simulation designed to help nurses make quick, sure decisions in emergencies”. The positive side of it is that nurses can practice in a virtual world, so they will make no mistakes during emergency in a real world. This particular program doesn’t contain only preprogrammed code, it is also controlled by instructors, so they can “throw a wrench into the system” at any time. Which is also good because you never know what can happened in next minute in real life.

The other main purpose of virtual worlds is just to play in it as it is a game. You can build houses, you can have a car, you can talk to the other players. All attributes of a real life, but you have them on the screen of your laptop. I don’t think it is very useful. I would say this kind of games moving us away from real social life. Dave Itzkoff described this situation in his article “I’ve been in that club, just not in a real life”. He descried his experience going to the club online: “Despite knowing that its real-life inspiration exists right outside my door, I have spent the last few months making such visits to the Virtual Lower East Side”.  Also, he is saying that he met a girl and she said: “You’ve experienced it as if it were real life, because in fact, it is real”. Personally, I don’t agree. Nothing can substitute life conversation.

My opinion virtual worlds should be used for educational purposes only. It gives positive experience in certain fields: military, aviation, medicine, emergency situations, business training. All the other uses is just a waste of time.

Social networking sites

There are a lot of social networking websites. I can’t say that I use any of them a lot, due to various reasons. Usually I use Facebook, YouTube, Tweeter, LinkedIn. I don’t use any of them daily, but I’m familiar with all of them.

I think Facebook is the most universal social media. You can do anything you want there: share your pictures, video with you friends, talk to them, comment on their posts. It is very useful especially when your friends or relatives far away from you. Tweeter is very different. I would say tweeter is a social media on the go. You can’t post ling posts like in Facebook, but you can share pictures. But these pictures can see anyone. So, if you want to limit access to you posts and pictures you better use Facebook.

YouTube is good for watching video. There are a lot of good videos to watch, a lot of educational videos. For example, last week I watched couple Linear Algebra lectures, because I missed a class, and I don’t have time to visit my professor during office hours. And I’m back on a track, these videos were very helpful.

LinkedIn is good for professional networking. If you want to find a job, or you want to make come new professional connections, or you want to keep in touch people you used to work before. You make your profile, include you resume, cover letter and employee can contact you if you fit the certain position.

Any of these social media contain tons of useless information. Sometimes it’s hard to find what you need. But if you know what you are looking for and you know how to use it will work for your benefit.

Blog about Twitter

Today we have many ways to communicate with each other: other the phone, via email, very rear regular (snail) mail, and very often via social media. Depending of the purposes of communication any of these ways is good. If you want to say something to unlimited number of people just tweet it. Basically, anyone can read your tweet. If you want to find some information tweeter is also good. Blackboard is good to use when you have a conversation with your classmates. You can post a thread containing more than just 140 characters, which is a limit for a tweet in tweeter. So, you can have a good discussion and you can write all your thoughts without limitation. Both ways require internet connection. And when you are not sure if you are right or wrong you can search it in the internet. During in-class conversation you use your knowledge. It is very easy to be smart when you have open google in the next tab, but it is totally different when you have a life conversation. Also, some people can’t talk in front of many people for various reasons, and they prefer discussion online. Because online you can be anybody. But during in-class discussion we are not only sharing out thoughts we can see emotions of each other, which is very important in communication.

BLOG SOCIAL NETWORKING

     "Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years" said Stephen J. Dubner in his article "Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum". We use social networks for millions of reasons: to chat with friends, to make new friends, to find a job, to share professional or personal experience, to gain some valuable information or just to entertain ourselves.

     Social networking sites such as Facebook started as a tool of communication between individuals, but today most of profit and non-profit companies have their page on Facebook. And any post on a Facebook from one company by another made by an individual means he represents that company, so technically speaking it's a post from one group of people to another. Also government actively uses social networking for communication with citizens and with the whole world. Our president also uses tweeter to express himself to the whole world. And I agree with  Stephen J. Dubner that the benefits provided by social network sites such as Facebook have made us better off as a society and as individuals, and that, as they continue to be adopted by more diverse populations, we will see an increase in their utility.

     But social networking also has as dark sides. I think that the major problem is that social networking becomes equal to virtual reality. Slowly it leads us to limit our communication in person to communication online. Hilary Stout wrote in her article "Antisocial Networking?" that half of American teenagers  send 50 or more text messages a day and that one third send more than 100 a day. Two thirds of the texters said they were more likely to use their cellphones to text friends than to call them. Fifty-four percent said they text their friends once a day, but only 33 percent said they talk to their friends face-to-face on a daily basis. Which means that today only third of future generation prefer to meet in person with friends. My opinion it is absolutely wrong and sad. May be technology changes the meaning of word friend. Is it just another profile on a Facebook? Or it is a person who you want to see and with who you want to spent your time. I believe that if you don't want to spent your time with friends, may be they just not your friends. I'm not taking in considerations when your friends are thousands miles away from you.

     Nevertheless you can successfully use social media for awareness of your cause, fundraising, community growth, engagement, and more. Just use it wisely.

BLOG: Blog v Wiki

BLOG V WIKI

     Blogs and Wiki became very popular among new media techniques. A lot of people use them today. There are a lot of similarities between them. Both of them is a source of information. But the way this information is delivered and quality of this information are different. Usually blogs created by a single person or by a group of people and it is always limited number of editors who can add posts. Wiki's content can be added or modified almost by anyone who has sufficient knowledge in the topic that he or she want to modify or add.
     Also they can coexist together and may be help each other. What I mean by that. Oded Nov said in his article "What motivates wikipedians? that "Wikipedia is a prominent example of a collaborative
user-generated content outlet based on the open source model, and a promising model for knowledge
sharing" While Kathy E. Gill said in her article "How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere? that "Bloggers write about topics that matter to them" - means blog is a source of opinion.
     But for example it is very hard to express personal opinion in actuarial science. Because you either have the theorem with a strong proof, or you don't. Your personal opinion doesn't matter. Also there are a lot of theorems on Wiki that had been already proven. But let's say you came up with a new theorem, and you are on your way to prove it, but you might need some second opinion. Here your blog come into play. You can share your thoughts in your blog, and probably you will get a good comments. Then you will prove your theorem and get a Nobel prize (unless someone else will do it before you, while reading your blog) and then you can post it on Wiki. It might sound like an absolutely crazy thing, but never the less it one of the possible ways how wiki and blog can coexist and help each other.