Creativity and New Media

I decided to create an avatar second life. The reason why is I had no idea of the existence of these avatars, before this class. It has been a very exciting assignment. Although, it may not be the coolest avatar, It was a challenge to me.

Creativity

Creativity is the constant way of creating and experimenting new things. New Media has created a revolution in many aspects of people’s lives. It is presenting life in a different way, making people to have the necessity of adapting to these changes. Therefore, people are pushed to develop a new mentality-creativity- to go along with the constant changing world. New Media and creativity have a tight connection because people use creativity to reinforce New Media. Plain and simple, It means creating new way of doing things, like the article 1+1+1=1 by Sasha Frere-Jones refers to the revolution in music. Computers have allowed d.j. and other musicians to create new ways of mixing music or putting notes together to have a better sound. Effects in music, like this, were not possible before the digital technology and new media revolution came into the picture. 

Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds have become popular within the online community.  They show a virtual 3D format reality to users, giving them the feeling of visiting or doing a specific activity, or place, without even moving away from their computers. Depending on theme, every website has their features and attractions, people enjoy the environment but they have to pay real money to get virtual money and spend.  It is amazing that the virtual world is being used in many different ways and fields.  It is used for educational, professional, or entertainment purposes among others.

These websites give the online community a diversity of activities and situations for entertainment. People can hang out at a bar without actually going to a real one, according to “I’ve Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life” by Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times. The article presents a website called Virtual Lower East Side (vles.com) that shows a recreation of the lower east side of Manhattan. Also, virtual worlds are used for educational purposes, as reported by Stephanie Simon in “Avatar II: The Hospital”. Hospitals, medical schools, and health foundations are using this website that is a recreation of a hospital emergency room. This website is designed to train nurses on taking quicker decisions under pressure. The professional field is touched by virtual worlds as well. Big companies, like IBM, are using virtual training rooms to get all their employees together, without paying for travel expenses in accordance to “IBM's Virtual World for its Employees: IBM Learning Programs Get a 'Second Life'” by Ed Frauenheim Workforce Management

Virtual Worlds are being used more and more, but what are the pros and cons? As I mentioned above, there are many positive ways of using this virtual reality. They can give the online community diverse virtual environments with more accessible entertainment options, companies can save in expenses, nurses can train in an emergency room simulation etc. But the fact that these virtual worlds are used may bring lack of social interpersonal activities, and less employment opportunities in the market, overall. Social interpersonal activities are very important for society development. If people interact with their computers only, the future of society may be affected. Besides, with people not going to an actual place to hang out, schools not using trainers to educate students, companies not having the necessity of bringing people together for training may be a sufficient cause to reducing staff.

There is no doubt that Virtual Worlds foster creativity. It is completely revolutionary the way of accessing to a virtual reality that a decade ago, it was seen only in science fiction movies. I think, the Virtual Worlds are going to be highly used in the future, and also, there will be at least one virtual reality for every single activity that we currently do.

Twitter

Twitter shares tweets from users. Postings are short-160 characters- and it makes a little confusing to respond to the postings of other users, if these responses are not right after the tweet is posted. Discussions in Twitter are very different from discussions held in Blackboard or in class. Blackboard allows students to expand their discussions as much as they want; it is easy to follow these discussions even if they were posted days ago. On the other hand, in class is a more interactive discussion type. There is nothing like discussion in person, in my opinion. In person, there are more opportunities for feedbacks, opinions, thoughts that can make the discussion deeper and more knowledgeable.  

Social Networking Sites

There are many social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Google+ among others.  The mentioned four websites have as purpose to make connection between people. In my opinion, Facebook, MySpace, and Google+ have a very similar structure. They allow users to write postings, postings can be long. Users can post pictures, or create albums, as many as they want. Google+ offers the option to use Hangouts that allow users to chat with their friends face-to-face, while Facebook is only text chat. Also Facebook, MySpace, and Google+ have the option to connect with friends only –privacy feature- which is very important.

Contrary to Facebook, Google+ and Twitter make possible for users to find others that are interested on different topics. Although, Twitter shares tweets from users that cannot be longer than 160 characters, reducing the size of their postings, and it allows only one picture for the profiles. Twitter offers a quick sharing of ideas. Twitter and Google+ might expand the communication to people with our same interests but different from our group of friends.

In conclusion, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Google+ offer their users to experience a social connection with others, opening their opportunities, improving their experience, and increasing their knowledge. With different features and applications, each of these websites has contributed to the social networking revolution. 

Social Networking

Social Networking sites are used in different fields, corporations, schools, social, and medical fields among others. These websites contribute to Society; they make quality connections between people, expanding opportunities for everyone.  Businesses are benefiting from using these websites as a marketing tool.  It is cheaper because businesses can promote their services or products, without cost. For example, anyone can open an account in Facebook to post any information they want. Social Networking for Human Resources recruiters as well, using it as a tool to find candidates for employment, according to “Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting” by Frank Langfitt.  Recruiters will locate new prospects according to their social networking accounts and what is posted as background. .

Although social networking sites are positively used in several fields, there is a “dark side” of using them.  The loss of privacy and lack of personal interaction, in my opinion, are the largest problems that their users are exposed to. People’s privacy is invaded, they share pictures, inform what they do, where they go, who, when, etc. The lives of these individuals become public. Regardless the profile is private or not- if my friend comments on my status, my friend’s friends will see that posting.  The information posted on these sites may be used for other purposes by strangers, such as harassing, bullying, or stalking others. People must protect their privacy at all times. A recent study has shown that young people is taking care of their privacy in these websites, as Marc Parry says in “Who cares about Facebook privacy? Students do”. Mr. Parry reports that specifically students are more careful when they deal with their privacy in Facebook. This is good because everyone must be watching what they post and knowing who will read the postings.

The lack of personal interaction is increasing among social networking users. People tend to reduce their conversations to quick messages and Smiles are reduced to a colon and parenthesis. As a result, we have kids that do not go out after school to play some sport, no longer phone call conversations with friends. Everything is reduced to just few lines and happy faces between each other. The question is- is this no personal interaction between people good for society?  Good or not, this is what is happening more and more every day according to “Antisocial Networking? By Hillary Sttout- The New York Times.

Nowadays, everyone uses social networking sites in one way or another. These sites have gone through an evolution; they are used not only to socialize but to expand businesses horizons, or learning groups, etc. This evolution made people’ habits to be changing along with technology advance, I think, in the future these websites will become the only way how people will look for jobs, schools, friend, housing, and everything else.