CREATIVITY AND NEW MEDIA

                                        

            An example from me to show how new media fosters creativity is to using the Second Life system to create an avatar that represents me. I used the tool to choose an avatar that best represents of my personality and customize it skin, and hair colors. I even named it using my own name for me to better getting into second life.  In generally, I think I’m a person who looks immature, less confidence and very shy to interact with others. In the Second Life, I created an avatar that I wish to expect myself to be in the future. This avatar wears suit which represents charismatic and ambition. While I play this game, I realized it’s a helpful tool for me to be a better of myself through virtual reality.

Creativity

        New media often fosters creativity. In nowadays, new idea shares immediately through social medias and improves while it viewed by others. No matter the size of the companies, their objective is always to be sale products that customers like. How do companies find out what their customers want and what they want to changed? New media provides a platform for companies to outsourced new idea from customers. In the article “Twitter serves up ideas from its follower” by Miller mentioned Twitter come up with a strategy for Twitter users to create their own stuff. Twitter users will use the “Lists” and “Retweets” sign to response to the new service or product and Twitter will catches the new idea that customers might wish to see the changes. This strategy can be call as “Democratizing Innovation”, which Twitters outsourced the ideas from its users. Internet lets people to exchange their ideas easily and rapidly, and companies will receive new updates of innovation immediately to keep track of what customers like. Many companies provide software for their customers to create new things. Examples are Lego started “Design by Me” site for customers to create their own models, and Ford Motor invited students to come up with new features for the in-car system while they playing the car games. New media helps companies to interact with their customers and fosters customers to create new ideas that they like. 

Claire Cain, Miller. “Twitter serves up ideas from it followers.” New York Times. Oct 25 2009. Web. March 30 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1427732148-MHqlIpGXkYTp8mGOnbnq7Q

Virtual Worlds

        Virtual world provides a 3-D environmental world on internet, also called as "Second Life". There are many different ways these virtual worlds can be used, whether or not it has postive or negative affects to society are hard to determine. Virtual worlds can be used in education, according to the article "After Second Life, can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot" shows that more than half of the 200 million accounts are children between age 5-15, it provides a platform for kids to exercise imagination and create things. Virtual worlds can fit in to business, "At Hearing, Virtual and Real world Collides", business members can broadcast simitaneously on company's own virtual world, it is useful for conference and share ideas. Virtual worlds also can be create for psychology purpose, such as a way to heal soldier's mental stage and mindfulness-based stress reduction. In the article "In room 100, it's Sid and Nancy All over again", virtual world is not just about what's currently happen or future development, but also a way to emphasize and real view of the past. The negative side of the virtual world is that there's no rules in the Second life, so people whom join the virtual world might stuck in a unreal world, and becomes neglect to the real world. Virtual world creates a sense of "be alone together" might actually caused people to think they are isolate from real life. Since there's no rules in Vitrual worlds, anything could have happen and encourage users to foster creativity. I played "SIM" few agos, it's a Second life game that needs users to create a character and city. In my opinion, this game is not just about entertainment, but also to improve your creativity. You have to imagine what a city looks like and build the city out from your mind. I believe in the future of virtual worlds, more connection will be add to minimize the gap between real world and virtual world, and virtual worlds can be use to strengh one's ability or treat for psychology disorders like soldiers and pilots.


1. Mehta, Diane. “After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?” Forbes.com. Forbes, April 30 2013. Web. March 23 2015.
 http://www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/

2. Mike, Musgrove. "At Hearing, Virtual and Real World collides." The Washington Post, April 02 2008. Web. March 23 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/01/ST2008040103032.html

3. Saki, Knafo. "In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All over again." The New York Times. May 01 2009. Web. March 23 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/nyregion/thecity/03virt.html?_r=0

Blog About Twitter

          The BlackBoard Discussion is much longer and organize than Twitter discussion. Twitter has the limit of 140 characters per tweet which I believe it’s not enough for a complete discussion. When you made comments on other’s tweet, you can see what did you just commented on your own twitter page but doesn’t show which tweet you just commented. Twitter seems to provide a simple chatting to public so everyone can easily understand your tweet. The BlackBoard discussion is more sufficient to a group, it’s very organize, which all the comments by readers are under one post, so you can easily keep track of what’s going on. But the down side of the BlackBoard Discussion is that there are no immediately notifies like twitter, you have to click into the post to see the updates otherwise you wouldn’t know someone made comments. Twitter discussion is similar to in-class discussion, simply reply back and forth, but the difference is twitter is not a physically participate discussion, and most of the time you have to wait for the others to response to your tweet. Even though there are notifies, but if you missed too much of notifies, then you might experiencing trouble in participate in previous discussion.

Social Networking sites

         The four social networking sites I choose are Facebook, Twitter, Blog, and LinkedIn. You can add your profile and any information in these sites. However, the way their functions are different.

         In Facebook, you can post either long or short posts that can be shares to anyone. The comments from your friends or strangers can be seen by anyone you added as “friends”. Also, Facebook has the “Like” icon you can click to it, that Twitter, Blog and LinkedIn doesn’t have.

        This is my first time using Twitter, seems a little bit confused. For every post you made, there’s a limited of 140 characters per tweet, which I don’t think is enough for a complete discussion. When reply to other’s post, you can see your comment on your own page, however, it doesn’t shows which post that you had commented. It's very disorganize.

         Blog is more personal write up, I feel that every posts in blog were longer than in other three sites, because there are few chatting in blog. There aren’t a reminder of others that you just made a new post, or someone commented on your post, if you didn’t check your previous post, you wouldn’t know there are comments. However, the positive side about blog is that it’s very organize, all the comments are under one post.

        In the LinkedIn, the site provides a job search platform. There are very less chatting or totally different style of twitter, but job searchers can message the company through privacy message.

        From the four sites I choose, I’m more likely to use Facebook. It’s a good place to chat with friends and organize comments under a post, and if you don’t want to comment a post but still want the writer to know you read his/her post, you can simply click the “like” icon.

Social Networking

       Social networking technologies can be used corporately and personally. As you know, in today's world, social networking is not just limited to connecting with others. However, it also spread the influence for business commerce, recruiting, and more of others.

       As a college student, we often spend our time on searching for internship. LinkedIn, Monster, and lots of other recruiting websites provides job opportunity for us, we could have easily gets information for new updated position and the recruiters can hunt qualify candidates through these technologies. In the article, “social networking technology boosts job recruiting” by Frank Langfitt, he determined that LinkedIn has approximately 8 million professionals across the world, and more than 500 of the Fortune companies. LinkedIn provides a job platform for both job searchers and recruiters. Job searchers can setting up profiles, listing work history and specific skills in order for recruiters to get to know them better.

However, there’s also dark sides of social networking, “Antisocial networking” by Hilary stout, he mentioned new generations relies on online communication too much, they give and take of friendship through cellphone text and Facebook comments, which wasn’t real. Many of the researchers noted that online social networking caused children to diminished face-to-face meets up, they communicate with each other through texts and ignore of emotional expression, and that will cause problems for cyber-bullying and difficult for new generation to read social cues from facial expressions and body language.

       In my opinion, social networking can be both helpful and bad influence. I like to use social networking to search for job opportunity or learn about the updated news in order for me to keep track of what’s happening around the world. But, the bad influence also exists to my generation. My peers are relies on phone texting, Facebook, twitter to chat with friends, and sometimes I felt left out from no shown of emotions. It’s difficult to know what a personal actually means without facial expressions or we might have easily misinterpret of the meaning.

Cited:


Langfitt, Frank. "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting." 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523


Hilary, Stout. " Antisocial Networking"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/fashion/02BEST.html?_r=0