Next New

I never thought about what kind of new type of new media I would like to try or to see on a market. I’m not very familiar with current new media. But I think we already have a lot of stuff to entertain ourselves, may be sometimes too much. I think new media technology should seek other goals. For example, be more useful for people with disabilities. To help them to be more independent, to be employed, to be happy. For example, for visually impaired people could be created glasses or lenses or something else which replicated the reality and helps them navigate, and helps them to see the colors, to see the sun, to see the moon, to see other things which they not able to see. May be this technology somehow could be connected to the brains. I know that scientists working on it, but I think their progress much slower than for example Apple progress. And it is way more expensive than Apple watch. I’m sure it will happen at certain point of time, but the sooner the better.

Wiki so far

       I did not contribute a lot to Wiki so far. I just added a paragraph in a toys page. I added information about ancient Chinese toys, more specifically about kites. Also, I inserted a picture and I added a reference source. I’m continuing searching about other pages to which I can contribute. I was thinking to create a page about TED Talks, because I like to watch it and I think it has very interesting content, where different people talking about a lot of different things. But I still did not decide if I will be able to create a fully informative page about it.  If not, I will continue to add information to the other pages.

P2P

Sending or receiving different types of files over the internet or over local network is called file sharing. P2P file sharing is one of the ways to share files. P2P is a software program and it connects computers of different users who have that software. And when you need to find something, the program searches it among all computers in this network. It means that there is no central server where all information stored; instead information is distributed among users. There are a lot of software programs created for P2P file sharing, for example Bittorrent, eMule, LimeWire, Shareaza and Skype. Most of the times p2p is used for file sharing, but it is also can be used for backup, voice and video communication, instant messaging. Clive Thompson in his article “The bittorrent effect” said that Bittorrent lets users quickly upload and download enormous amounts of data, files that are hundreds or thousands of times bigger than a single mp3.  It is very useful and convenient to download anything you want very fast and at any time. Thompson also said: “The whole concept of must-see TV changes from being something you stop and watch every Thursday to something you gotta check out right now, dude. Just click here.” But p2p created a problem for music and film industry. More users prefer to download favorite TV show or movie instead of waiting till it comes up on television. Piracy problem became bigger with P2P.

Privacy

Couple decades ago internet privacy was not that big problem as today. We can go online anytime we want, and we visit a lot of websites during each day. There are millions of websites that asks us for our personal information. Everyone wants to be sure that this private information will stays private. Social media is the one of the ways when personal confidential information becomes public. All us know that it even became an issue for the founder of Facebook. One of the pictures that belongs to Randi Zuckerberg accidently became public. Of course, they were not happy about it. Everybody agrees that personal information must be protected.

This problem also relates to companies. Banks has huge clients’ database. Also, everyone heard about hackers’ attacks on banks, when a lot of personal information were stolen. Joe Nocera talks in his article “The Wild West of Privacy” about data brokers. They collect hundred different data point and create scores and profiles that they sell to anyone who wants to buy them. And next time when we give our personal information to anyone we want to be sure that it’s not going to be sold anywhere.  Even government is not hundred percent protected. Periodically we hear from the news that government information was stolen. I think today every internet user should carefully consider what information he wants to send via email or social media and which not.

Advice

There are many ways how new media can be used in college. It can improve communication between students, professors, academic advisement office, bursar office and so on. Also, I think new media is very useful for group projects. Not everyone has the possibility to meet with group in person. New media is one of the ways that allows group members to be flexible as possible. There are a lot of classes that requires group projects. Also, blackboard has a tool that allows to do and present team projects. But it is not very popular among students. Almost everyone prefers to use other new media and social media tools to cooperate and work on group project. I think improvements towards organization of group work are necessary. For example, companies use different internet based platforms to organize remote meetings let’s say between two or more branches. I think it will help a lot in a group learning process and completing the group projects.