Favorite Reading - Video Response

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Class Thoughts

This class has brought to light many elements of our new technology-oriented media world that I had taken for granted or was used to seeing but never fully grasping. The explorations of blogs, social networking dynamics and the way new media worked kept my involvement in those activities interesting. I particularly liked reading about current events in technology as necessary for responding, as I already read articles online about technology trends, media, games and gadget developments. It was a natural fit of sorts for me to read about the next Facebook privacy concern or talk about the iPhone or what have you, so it was easy to write up responses to those articles without having it feel like an assignment. I did vote on the class poll for “work weeks” to begin on Monday morning and end on Sunday nights, simply so that the coursework fell in line for when weekend assignments for other classes were due. Besides, I am always working on homework on Sunday nights (typical college procrastination).

This class could see improvement if there were general discussion topics available on something like a forum, rather than just simply blog posts. The wiki entries were a nice change from the norm, but there are more “new media” mediums available online that this course could take advantage of. However, I am also glad that the video blogs were few and far between since that sort of static video interaction was not something I considered a strong suit. Overall, this communications course has helped me to better understand how the Internet has changed the way society communicates, and I would not mind taking a class similar to this one again in the future.

Most Interesting Concepts/Readings Discussion - Response

This course has brought forth many communication topics in new media to my attention, and I found the articles on identity and the development of online-only relationships to be the most interesting. Relationships developed online, like the one for the fictional girl suffering from leukemia, were relatable for me to read because of how much trust and truth we put into the statements people make online. It is far too easy to believe what’s read on the Internet if the source seems legitimate and genuine in their responses. Sarcasm and lies are sometimes the hardest things to read from people when you are not communicating with a physical presence, and in the case of Kaycee Swenson, a whole community of supports had formed around it. The establishment of understanding and personal disclosure for online-only partners in social networks and online games is another example covered in this class that I enjoyed reading, and it was because of the inherent levels of communication we create in these online worlds and communities that differ from our real-life counterparts.

The collective behavior article from this week, “Collective Behavior in YouTube” by Donna Chu (2009), also falls into this because of the public perception and opinion formed only through online recognition and communication. In general, the ideas behind self-presentation and identity were some of the more intriguing articles of this semester and it certainly gave me newfound thoughts about how I conduct myself online.

Adobe Had It Coming (New Media Websites) - Video Response

Issac, Mike. "Adobe Had It Coming: The Long, Slow Goodbye of Mobile Flash." Wired (2011): 11 Nov 2011. <http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/11/adobe-mobile-flash-dead/all/1>.

The World Wide Web - Response

The article “The World Wide Web” (1994) by Tim Berners-Lee et al. looked into the early days of the World Wide Web (or W3) that we use so easily today. A W3 client on your computer would be able to connect to servers and display text and images (792) using URIs (universal resource identifiers), HTTP and HTML to bring you the content and render it. In particular, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) was used for requests and responses for transferring document objects (794), and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) was the language that web pages and documents would be written under for universal producing and understanding (795).

Seeing that this article was written in 1994, the statement that “the Web does not yet meet its design goal as being a pool of knowledge that is easy to update as it is to read” (797) showed me how in today’s Web, there is so much information constantly being updated. It made me wonder if the “design goal” had finally been met with the era of social media, blogs and wikis, with millions of people posting and updating the Web with new stories and personal things to share. I tend to read through various blogs online with RSS (really simple syndication) feeds because of how they get constantly updated, and it is easier to read specific stories and blog posts this way. The article went through some of the foundations of what everything is built on for online content, and the design of the Web will continue to evolve as the Internet becomes more ubiquitous.

Virtual Death and a Real Dilemma - Response

The article “Virtual Death and a Real Dilemma: Identity, Trust, and Community in Cyberspace” (2005) by John W. Jordan discussed the online “betrayal” of fictional Kaycee Nicole Swenson’s battle with leukemia, which was documented, discussed and shared online with others before her non-existence was unveiled. The author looks into what it means as a community to respond to crises and how “the idea of ‘virtual community’ is reconceived and enacted by community members” (202). Deception is very easy online because of the nature of Internet communication itself, where being anonymous and creating any kind of persona can create an audience as it has for Kaycee.

I thought it was interesting to see such a huge amount of followers and support from a community that could not physically see the person they were supporting. Movements like these that grow online in the blogging community and elsewhere will always carry a little skepticism, and in the case of the Kaycee hoax as admitted by Debbie Swenson, community debates can continue even when the centerpiece surrounding it is no longer there (206). There is a level of distrust and suspicion in any online presence, but good communal elements come together for a positive effect when the intentions are seen as good and worthwhile. People that join campaigns started on places like Facebook for things like protests, fundraisers or advocating/awareness are under the impression that they are not being manipulated or deceived, and virtual communities stand behind a cause this way. One can only hope that it a particular situation, identity and trust can be understood so that people are not taken aback or misled, and it is always worthwhile to be careful on the Internet.

Cable Is Holding TV at Bay (New Media Websites) - Response

I read an article off of the New York Times website, titled “Cable Is Holding Web TV at Bay, Earnings Show", written by Brian Stelter. Watching TV over the Internet is becoming more and more important to the television industry, and the wealth of television content available online is growing by the month at places like Amazon Instant Video, Blockbuster On Demand and Hulu Plus, as well as on set-top boxes like Apple TV and Roku. However, despite this growth and attractiveness to new technology and the flexibility of being able to watch what you want when you want with limited or no commercials, the vast majority of consumers out there are still tying themselves down to a cable or satellite subscription package with many channels, robust pricing and multi-year contracts. The article finds that people are using sites like Netflix as supplements to cable and not replacements, and it will still take some time for these online services to mature enough (as well as for broadband Internet to be more accessible and affordable) before people completely turn away from Comcast and DirectTV en masse. The choice quote from this article was what helped me understand how the cable and satellite industry was feeling: “’When Netflix loses 800,000 subscribers, …the fear of cord-cutting goes away a little.’” Certainly, in my view, companies like Time Warner, AT&T U-Verse and Dish Network can still stay optimistic that people will come to them for television rather than the Internet for tradition’s and convenience’s sake.

Stelter, Brian. "Cable Is Holding Web TV at Bay, Earnings Show." The New York TImes (2011): 30 Oct 2011. < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/business/media/cable-tv-holding-web-rivals-at-bay-earnings-show.html>.

Blogging: Self Preservation and Privacy - Response

The article “Blogging: Self Preservation and Privacy” (2008) by Karen McCullagh looked into the reasons behind blogging and the privacy issues it uncovers. Blogs, by being a successive series of posts that can be commented and shared upon, are public by nature. The article classified privacy as a cluster with informational, accessibility and expressive angles to what an individual does (5), and the study conducted found that bloggers not only held a value with their audience and the interaction blogs provide, but that privacy controls and shapes how content is posted and presented to that audience (17). Personal information, hobbies, passwords, filters, etc. all create levels of privacy between the blogger and the readers.

For these blog posts in particular, I tend to stay general with my personal experiences and like to keep some level of anonymity, while still being thorough with my discussion about a given article or news story. Being that this is an online college course, I keep my tone and method of writing a bit more professional and less casual than a personal blog might entail. I used to keep a personal blog active several years ago, and the posts there tended to be more random than anything else. I would keep some consistent things across the board, like what my current indulgences in music, movies, shows and games were, as well as consistently rambling about school-related dilemmas. Even then, however, personal details stayed general, and I made sure not to name names or disclose private problems that the public at large need not know.

The End of Books - Response

The article “The End of Books” (1992) by Robert Coover explored what hypertext and hyperfiction provided that regular print text didn’t: establishing new narratives with branches and multiple paths between sets of text. Structure and improvisation become important as “the creative imagination often becomes more occupied with linkage, routing and mapping than with statement or style” (707). It is this hypertext markup that made up how most of the Web content was first introduced to the mainstream, meaning that you can move from one link to the next at any given time, and there is an organizational pattern there that cannot be found in traditional print. In this view, it can certainly be seen that the end of books is near, but I think it’s still too soon to make that conclusion.

While the advocates of online mediums would say that this organizational power is the only valid method in which information should be communicated, I would still not want to see regular hard-copy books and texts go away so easily. As convenient, organized and never-ending as the Internet is for virtually anything imaginable, the solidity of books, newspapers and magazines is still something I trust and find value in. Most mediums are starting to move that way; in addition to books and music, magazines, movies and games are also moving away from physical media. However, for me, I consider that the traditional narrative flow and lack of text fragments (as the article likes to coin these characteristics) is still worthy as printed text on paper. Physically holding a story or report in your hand carries centuries-worth of significance to the medium, and reading things on a tablet or mobile device is still in its early stages today. The trend started with hypertext when this article was written, but until the technology barrier is further broken down for more demographics and with better accessibility and costs, physical printing of texts will still be around and still be worthy of reading.

Google Offers Expands (New Media Websites) - Video Response

Locke, Laura. "Google Offers expands: New cities, deal partners" CNET News (2011): 28 Oct 2011. <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20126179-93/google-offers-expands-new-cities-deal-partners/>.

Navigating Technomedia - Response

The article “Navigating Technomedia” (2007) by Sam Han described the onset of technomedia (media technologies) as three-fold: mechanical, electric, and broadcast. The mechanical aspect involved the print, photography, and film advancements that Marshall McLuhan named “typographic man” and positioned each of those mediums as the “storage of human experiences” (8), while the electric aspect described the telegraph, cinema and human-computer interactions up to the latter half of the 1900s. The broadcast era consisted of radio and television, and the evolving of technomedia meant understanding what its implications were.

I find that media technologies do provide an implied wealth of information and communication resources, and the article’s conclusion had me also understanding that technomedia enables people to generate and act upon ideas. What makes older generations tell the currently younger generations that it’s a “lucky time to be living in” is the encapsulation of all of the new ways of message exchange—mostly powered by the Internet—that has given users of technology more power and self-sufficiency than ever before. The other article of this week, “Personal Dynamic Media,” showcased the Dynabook personal interactive device, and I think this technomedia article brings the essence of that idea full-circle. Technomedia “challenges thought” (18), and I could not easily think of another way of describing it. I sometimes find myself taking all of the gadgets and gizmos in our lives for granted, and all this interconnectivity and networking for seamless, virtually never-ending experiences of entertainment, productivity, organization, what have you, always has me wanting to see what comes next.

Personal Dynamic Media - Response

The article “Personal Dynamic Media” (1977) by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg explored the use of the Dynabook notebook device and its role in human’s interaction with media. The notion was presented that “every message is, in one sense or another, a simulation of some idea” (393), and that the computer could convey active communication of an idea if done properly. I was amused by this quote: “If the ‘medium is the message,’ then the message of low-bandwidth timesharing is ‘blah’” (394). Certainly, the medium needed evolving, and the different iterations and uses of Dynabook that the article went over was great to see in the educational space during those years. Different actions built upon the Smalltalk programming language like painting, musical creation, animation and SHAZAM simulation all showcased how media interaction worked to bring ideas to fruition.

This was an insightful reading for me because of my engineering academic background, and the descriptions of these different applications is like reading a precursor to what would become the modern personal computer of today as talked about in the introduction. Even then, we in these current times are moving to a post-PC lifestyle, as much of these creation activities are moving onto a smartphone or tablet that is always portable and has a much wider feature set than the interim Dynabook. As devices continue to evolve into the ideal end-all “Dynabook”-like solution, we are sure to see unheard-of levels of creativity that the medium allows for.

Chime.in: Do we need another social network (Media Websites) - Response

I read through the article “Chime.in: Do we need another social network?” from CNET News (cited below), which described a new social networking site called Chime.in that focuses on subjects rather than people for what gets shared around. Interesting topics of discussion are populated with “Chimes,” or extended messages, posted about these subjects that then turn into communities connected around the content. With the social networking arena as filled as it is with the mammoth Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn for employment networking and the relatively new Google+ service, Chime.in wants to separate itself by being a destination for talking with people about the same common interests as you, with the content itself being the center of attention.

Frankly, as promising and interesting as Chime.in looks (you can visit it at http://chime.in/ yourself to see), I can agree with the article author that people’s free time is valuable and only so much of it can be spent on social media. Google+ has had its troubles gaining ground and page views, while Facebook and Twitter continue their dominance in connecting people together and delivering updates. Avid users of the Internet have their sources for news and subjects, whether it’d be to “just Google it” or to visit specific message boards or forums to engage in discussion over specific topics like sports, music, cars, travel, technology, games, or whatever the case may be. Chime.in is a nice deviation from what’s out there, but whether it remains a niche site or gains traction against other social media remains to be seen.

McCracken, Harry. "Chime.in: Do we need another social network?" CNET News (2011): 18 Oct 2011. <http://news.cnet.com/8301-33200_3-20121754-290/chime.in-do-we-need-another-social-network/>.

From Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation - Response

The article “From Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation” (1976) by Joseph Weizenbaum discussed the events surrounding the author’s computer program named Eliza that analyzed language and carried tailored conversation with its user. He used the example of Eliza playing the role of a doctor to show how widespread and well-known his program had become, and subsequently, how blown out of proportion his creation became. He cited three events (370): that psychiatrists believing that his doctor-program would work as an automatic form of psychotherapy despite a computer not having real-life experiences to connect with the patient, that conversations with the computer would be taken as privately as with humans, and that the Eliza program served as a key solution to human language understanding by a computer.

Weizenbaum saw the importance of context in understanding human language, but he was shocked by the reaction that the Eliza program garnered, and it showed him new perspectives on his technology that gave him reason to compare computers and society to dilemmas in life. He believed that computers should have limits to what they are capable of, while others share the notion that computers should be able to do everything a human does, including process human-like thoughts. I can see artificial intelligence advancing enough with accessibility products and recent introductions like Siri on Apple’s iPhone 4S that computers, no matter in what form, will eventually be capable of matching a human’s level of thought for everything from productivity to emotional connections. I find the technology field to be a really fast-changing and innovative industry, and engineering holds the kind of finds like Weizenbaum’s program—where small, seemingly minor applications or services become morphed into a large-scale, potentially groundbreaking endeavor (or precursor to discussions and future technology advancements) that moves the link between computer and man forward.

Second Life - Response

The article “Knee-High Boots and Six-Pack Abs: Autoethnographic Reflections on Gender and Technology in Second Life” (2009) by Delia Dumitrica and Georgia Gaden spoke about the role gender plays in the alternative environment presented by the online game Second Life. The game is centered around your virtual presence and the unlimited creative ideas available to you in the online world of the game, “implying a universe of possibilities in terms of identity constructions and social interactions” (6). The question arose of whether or not an avatar can be a strong “presentation of gender” (7) and the idea of autoethnography was presented, which hadn’t been touched on in the previous Second Life article on avatars from a few weeks ago in this class.

Autoethnography, though cited as controversial in the article for meaningful research, sounds like a strong way of investigating something for me because of how you combine individual interpretations of experiences with (in this case) Second Life together with the shared interpretations of others in the same virtual space, and the unknown setting of such a vast online world meant that the female writers of the article “always be[came] targets of harassment in places that lack formal and protected gender equality policies” (10).

Looks are a big deal in Second Life, and the experimentation and fantasy element of the online world meant that the level of sexual objectification and enhanced physical norms of avatars prevalent in the game is commonplace. Avatar creation includes gender standardization, and the game even lets you shop for new body parts or perform odd or explicit “pose-balls” (15) which animate your avatar. The visual interface fuels the economy of Second Life (18) and it is controlled by technical prowess and ability to manipulate the constructs presented by the game to your liking, meaning that you put as much time as you desire into it and make it as visually exaggerated as you wish, for better or worse compared to real life.

Amazon unveils Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire tablet (Media Websites) - Response

I read through the article “Amazon unveils Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire tablet” from CNET News (cited below), which gave the overview of Amazon’s press conference from September 28, 2011. The online retailer announce several e-book readers in its popular Kindle line-up, including the Kindle Fire tablet, which many have compared to Apple’s iPad. The price of the Fire—$199—is what really got people’s motors running, and I thought the same thing when I heard the price point. Amazon’s strength is in its ability to provide compelling content, and the staggering amount of media that it offers through its online marketplace, video-on-demand, MP3 music download service and Kindle e-bookstore (just to name a few) can really come to par with Apple’s offerings. In this age of instant gratification and high standards for media consumption, the Kindle Fire is Amazon’s gateway into the mainstream tablet business, and I’m eager to see how it will compete with the iPad and Apple sans Steve Jobs.

Reardon, Marguerite. "Amazon unveils Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire tablet." CNET News (2011): 28 Sep 2011. <http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20112800-266/amazon-unveils-kindle-touch-and-kindle-fire-tablet/>.

The Technology and the Society - Response

The article “The Technology and the Society” (1972) by Raymond Williams is a few decades old, right around the time that ushered in the new era of television, but he took a very philosophical approach to analyzing what the invention would bring us as a society. There were a lot of “cause and effect” relations touched on, and I resonated most with the idea that it brought social change with its power as a medium for news, social communication and reflections of reality and day-to-day living. I didn’t enjoy reading phrases like “technological determinism” (294), but the history leading up to televisions was talked about in-depth. The author made distinctions between the technology and the uses for that technology, focusing the former as one of intention and emphasis and the latter as one of mobility and social transformation (296). Control over the medium was also a big issue for government and the press, and it expanded into telegraphy before television started becoming a consumer product in the 1920s.

Certainly, television in its day changed how people communicated forever and how things were catered for the “masses” (298), and I used to have many times in my childhood that involved gathering around the television set for a movie, entertainment, news, etc. A lot of my own leisurely entertainment centers around the television, mainly with video games and certain drama or comedy series that I like. I still watch local news, however, and it was interesting to read at the end about the struggles of offering what’s happening in the world without a charge to its viewers. The model was new and there was an inherent production investment needed to bring it up to par in quality and conveyance of content with film and radio. I expect most local television to remain free like how it is over-the-air right now, and not so much like the production- and distribution-limited monopolies that exist with cable and satellite. The trend is again changing with the Internet, and I expect new change to come about in the same way that it did when television was first introduced into the mainstream.

Just Like Me Only Better - Response

The article “Just Like Me Only Better” (2008) by Suely Fragoso and Nisia Rosario explored Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) like Second Life in order to find out how avatars of oneself tended to exhibit certain realistic and exaggerated characteristics. Second Life has a vibrant community of users, and reading this informed me of how “connected” people get into this role-playing game. The extensiveness of the avatar customization tied into the scope of the subjects they were representing, and there was an international breadth of representation for cultures, images and social status. The online world of Second Life bustles with copies of real life elements of physical and social standing, and “the similarity between the bodies of the user and the avatar” (5) can invoke real emotions for virtual actions.

I discovered just how in-depth the online community is, and while I know some definite World of Warcraft players, the sweeping diversity among the different groups of aggregate sites, fan pages, forums and blogs (9) reminded me of how wide-reaching it is. The results, though, planted me back into a more stereotypical setting since there were majorities in the avatar selections for men and women that conformed to “a contemporary Caucasian pattern of beauty that is ever present in Western media” (11), and that was disappointing.

I haven’t played Second Life, but I would’ve expected crazy avatars, physics-defying events or games and lots of non-realism in such an environment. However, when so much of it is based on real life, including how communities are run and how people behave under those avatars, I guess we conform to what we know and are comfortable with in that online world. Is the article titled this way because of the beauty standards being ideal and informative, albeit exaggerated? Representing yourself with realistic but “perfected” body parts in an online environment that behaves idealizing real-life is one sure way of finding social relations with a “better” self.

Will Top Sites Dig Changes To Facebook’s Like Button? (Media Websites) - Video Response

Cohen, David. "Will Top Sites Dig Changes To Facebook’s Like Button?" All Facebook (2011): 23 Sep 2011. <http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-like-plugins-2011-09>.

Community Media - Response

The article “Community Media: A Global Introduction” by Ellie Rennie presented an angle to self-expression as a result of community media, empowering the individual and community to be more creative and reflective of civil rather than political society. There was discussion about the intricacies of identity across economy, lifestyles and social factors, and I could see how today’s modern social media would ideally fit into the community media idea. Instead of the idea of one-versus-many or the individual versus the conglomerate, the viral and communal gathering of conversation affects individuality and relationships (189), and the thought that democracy is involved really makes one’s opinions in a social space feel important.

I thought that the issue of political correctness and the media’s central role in portraying politics was true. A lot of media showcases with politicians and government entities involve scandal, rhetoric and negligence, and it’s discouraging to see those with the political power be so unable to come to compromises for improving the well being of our country. People are frustrated at the lack of a voice to government, and I side with the fact that “feelings of political efficacy are at an all-time low” (191).

When I hear stories on the news about another political battle with the budget or a Congressional divide on how to handle the economy, health care or the many other issues affecting the United States, it really does place more responsibility on the civil society groups (as the article calls it) to carry the idea of democracy forward. The article defines different kinds of democracy like representative democracy as involving the politics we see today, but the conclusion at the end was clear to me: that new media technologies are enabling us to have a voice in ways never before seen, and that’s part of what makes social media exciting for me to be involved in. In my view, the crafting and freedom of self-presentation today has the capability to change the way the world works, and time will tell how effective the collective efforts of citizens like you and me will be.

Uses and Gratifications - Response

The article “Explaining Why Young Adults Use MySpace and Facebook Through Uses and Gratifications Theory” (2008) by Mark Urista, et al. explored why young adults use social networking sites (SNS) so heavily for all sorts of information. It was interesting for me to read early on in this article that MySpace and Facebook were both popular, since the last couple of years has seen Facebook really dominate the social networking space while the MySpace name and site were sold off by its owners.

The different features of SNS like Facebook were explored for its attractiveness, and I discovered that “the need for personal identity, escape, and self-presentation” (219) were some of the needs of people that social media addressed, and the mixture of entertainment value, social status and information sourcing were all reasons that I joined Facebook. Socializing with others is definitely a strong factor that drives Facebook adoption, and the convenience of finding so much pooled information in one place keeps me coming back to the service. “SNS satisfy a variety of needs in one central location, thus making it a popular destination for many Internet users” (219), and their study showed that people used SNS to spread news to friends quickly and bring attention to events in one’s life.

It was nice to find that the study—done at a central university in California—correlated with my own uses of social networking, as I use Facebook to check up on what my friends are doing and to easily communicate a subject or something important to a particular person for others to see and contribute to. It was also welcoming to see that many people like me use Facebook to investigate into someone new and “examine the profile of a person in whom they are interested to form an opinion about that person” (223). Many conversations with new people end with finding and/or ‘friend’-ing them on Facebook, and it’s a fast and easy way to get to know somebody without going too far in a personal conversation with them.

Accessibility and privacy is a topic that comes up in every social networking study, as well as the “noticeable distinction between online friends and ‘real’ world friends” (227), and the discussion here was thorough. The freedom of SNS to access information about friends is both the strength and weakness of a place like Facebook, and continued use will keep social networking as popular and encompassing for social interaction.

Media Websites Article (Facebook Unveils Smart Lists to Categorize Friends) - Response

I read an article from the Yahoo! News website (cited below) titled “Facebook unveils Smart Lists to categorize friends” (2011) by Don Resinger. The engineers at Facebook have kept putting out new features, and with the introduction of competition from the Google+ social networking site and its use of “circles” to categorize friends, Facebook is now adapting to this idea in a much larger scale. While Facebook “lists” of sorted friends have existed for a long time, they haven’t been heavily used because all of the sorting has to be manually done by yourself, and Smart Lists are supposed to take a lot of the tediousness of it.

The social networking space continues to grow, and it’s good to see some worthy competition to Facebook. I know that I need to sort my own Facebook friends to protect what information can be seen by who, but I haven’t done it because of how much work it takes to sort through the hundreds of people into the appropriate lists for work, school, etc.

Google+ saw huge growth when it launched, and Facebook has had to respond in order to stay relevant when Google+ took over all of the technology headlines (as well as people’s Gmail inboxes). People behind Facebook have had to implement new changes like their improved messaging and chat, and elements like Smart Lists will help keep people returning to the site rather than defecting to other networking choices.

Resinger, Don. "Facebook unveils Smart Lists to categorize friends." CNET News (2011): 13 Sep 2011. <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20105420-17/facebook-unveils-smart-lists-to-categorize-friends/>.

The Medium Is The Message - Response

The article “The Medium Is The Message” by Marshall McLuhan was a difficult one to interpret. McLuhan was presenting the idea that the medium that some kind of media or consumable content is presented on gives the real message instead of that content itself. Society takes its learning of a message by the medium that it encompasses, whether it is with photographs, newspapers, or today’s online sources.

The example that stood out to me was the medium of motion picture, which he briefly but concisely talked about as having the message of “transition from lineal connections to configurations” (205). Movies brought storytelling from a mechanical, sequential process to a structured, creative one and allowed for more illustrative imagining in media, and I can see how the medium is the message when a movie’s elements come together and give reasoning for the medium and its characteristics. Had technology not advanced the way it did, the kind of spectacle we see in Hollywood films would not be a reality, and there would not be the kind of audiovisual immersion we have today.

He also uses history to bring his points across, citing Napoleon and Shakespeare when comparing mediums and determining which ones had a greater impact in delivering a message, and it had me thinking about how we consume media today. When you look at news, for example, I tend to place more trust in content through television for local and national news, but I trust online sources more for breaking and social news. It is the nature of a site like Twitter to have bleeding-edge commentary and updates about something, while the site’s interactivity amongst users lets that information flow in a rapid, social manner. The medium is responsible for that, and the content would not be what it is without the means provided by the medium to carry that content. As McLuhan put it, “the ‘content’ of any medium blinds us to the character of that medium” (203).

One story came up related to mediums that I was just reminded of, dealing with the medium of radio. Radio airplay is on the decline thanks to the mainstream success of the iPod and other personal, portable media players, as well as the smartphone marketplace. Children growing up today are exposed to different mediums than we were exposed to as children, and this was evident when I heard my friend’s little sister in the back of the car ask how the radio worked. She wanted to know why there a person talking, why the music playing was not in her control, and why the music had to stop for commercials. These are all aspects of the medium of radio, when all she had known was the workings of an iPod touch that lets you play and control any music you own, without advertisements or unwanted chatter. The structure of radio stations meant that an MC or DJ controlled the music you hear, advertisers plugged their products or services in order for the station to make money, and sound quality was dependent on the distance from broadcast towers. iPods and smartphones with sophisticated music players are second-nature to many of us now, but the change in technology that made it possible was what McLuhan was telling us not to forget about. The influence that music gives us is different when heard on the radio versus on a personal media player, because the mediums have changed, and as long as we have that medium as the message moving forward, technologies like our audio and communication devices will grow into something new with an even larger message.

Consequences of Online Social Networking - Response

The article “Antecedents and Consequences of Online Social Networking Behavior: The Case of Facebook” (2008) by Adam Acar brings up many interesting questions about the image, feedback and effect of people on social networking sites. The study was conducted in March 2006 at a college with about 450 students, and 94% of them said they had a profile on Facebook.com (71). I didn’t think that the number would be so high considering that this was done five years ago, and reading through the results had me believing that this could have been done anytime between then and now. Although social networking is bigger than ever before, the same elements that the study examined are still in question today—anxiety, self-esteem, body image and personal characteristics.

College students as the demographic have issues like these that are worth examining, and in particular, I had some doubt when I read the hypothesis that “People with lower self-esteem will spend less time online in social networking activities” (68). I believe that introverts looking to seek more perceivable social activity would use Facebook more often, including adding strangers to their online circle of limited communication. Indeed, the findings showed that “the higher the self-esteem, the lower the percentage of strangers” (78) and the hypothesis was rejected. Online social network size is determined by factors like self-esteem, and I tended to notice on the size of social groups on Facebook isn't very realistic to real-life social circles, thanks to the ease of use and the different demographics. Only for the extroverted can the Facebook number of friends really correlate well, so long as they continuously participate on the site.

This was a funny thing that I learned from the article: “poking” other Facebook users, which was something I did when I first signed up for the service years ago, had a gender difference that hadn’t crossed my mind until I thought about who used poking in my early days on Facebook. “Females indicated that they've been "poked" …significantly more than males…and have a higher percentage of strangers in their online networks” (77), and that held true when I first started using Facebook. Poking somebody meant that you had an interest—with feelings, for fun or otherwise—for the recipient, and many back-and-forth poking marathons took place to encourage you to get onto Facebook again and again. Nowadays, Facebook has so much information to give to you that “poking” is almost non-existent, nor should it still be a primary reason to visit the site.

Behavior like that still happens on a smaller scale, but a study with a much larger pool of people and a measuring of the same elements of anxiety levels and image in today’s much larger landscape would be interesting to compare this study to, and I figure that I would not see much difference given the continued usage of social networking within the same college demographic.

Media Websites Article (Facebook Doubles First-Half Revenue) - Response

I read an article from the Yahoo! News website (cited below) titled “Exclusive: Facebook double first-half revenue” (2011) by Alexei Oreskovic. The social networking site Facebook had revenue of $1.6 billion in the first half of this year, but that was not what I took from this story; it was some choice comments from the article about why the site made so much money and what value the site has that struck me.

“‘We really see Facebook as becoming like the operating system for delivering ads on the Internet,’ said Dave Williams, the CEO of Blinq Media, which runs ad campaigns for companies on Facebook.” Does that sound like what Facebook is to you? Perhaps, but for the vast majority of its users, advertisements are not what Facebook is about. However, according to industry players and capitalists, that is exactly what Facebook is. When you look at modern advertising today across television, radio and such, there are plugs to visit a company’s Facebook page for special offers, news, etc., and it’s easy to see that marketing and data collection of some form is in full force. Since Facebook users provide all the information themselves, it’s not surprising to see that same CEO say that “Facebook's social network, in which users endorse products and companies by ‘liking’ pages, provides a treasure trove of valuable data that other online services can't match.”

I don’t like the prospect of myself becoming social media fodder for companies, but with so many millions of users on Facebook, it’s impossible for me to avoid. At the end of the day, the site’s advertisers want to turn us into marketing tools, and as long as enough users are willing to part with their information to third parties by ‘liking’ a page and spreading around a company’s incentives to their friends, there will be a market like Dave Williams is describing. As long as that market potential exists, Facebook will surely keep on making the big bucks.

Oreskovic, Alexei. "Exclusive: Facebook doubles first-half revenue." Yahoo! News (2011): 8 Sep 2011. <http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-facebook-doubles-first-half-revenue-001922607.html>.

The Quality of Online Social Relationships - Response

In the article “The Quality of Online Social Relationships” (2000) by Jonathon N. Cummings et al., the relationship strength between two parties is examined in a financial institution and in a college environment using different communication methods (face-to-face, phone and e-mail). A lot of the conclusions made by the study seem obvious to me, but it goes to prove its focal point thoroughly enough—that e-mail or Internet (online) communication is never as personal as a real, person-to-person talk can be. Work and productivity is a different story, though, and I’m sure we’ve all see it go one way or the other when we are plugged into the Internet.

One point I wanted to highlight was about the closeness between people that can’t be reliably communicated by electronic, virtual means. Relationships of all kinds build upon the expressions and personalities that we see amongst one another in real-life situations, and as much as text-based messaging tries to capture it, the lack of a “human” aspect makes it secondary for getting close to somebody. It is quite clear by their study and through any of our own real-world experiences that communication with online Internet partners doesn’t hold the same closeness that real-life participation does. The occasional story breaks out that defies this—the couple that met through Facebook before deciding to meet in-person and take the next step forward, for example. Times will surely change, but as it stands, online communication facilitates real-world communication for me, and I’m sure it’s the case for many others. For work-related issues, however, e-mail has been used for decades, and it was not surprising to see that a financial firm had no problems getting work done over e-mail in addition to in-person or through phone conferences.

The other point I wanted to cover was about the frequency of communication that the study focused on. The more we talk to people, the more we get in touch with how they respond to us as well as how we respond to them. “frequency of communication predicted psychological closeness for offline relationships, but not for online ones” (12), and I can agree with that statement. I have made numerous acquaintances in different online message boards and instant messaging arenas, not to mention social networking sites, that I either have not met in real life or only had minimal ties with in real life. The frequency of communication with me and these “online partners” may have been strong in the beginning, but the lack of a close relationship with them lowered my frequency of communication. It’s always eventually turned to those that I have met and communicate with in real life that online communication helps out with.

The quality of online social relationships is not as strong as a social relationship in real life, but advances in how those online relationships form (through social networking, video chats, etc.) is sure to change that idea in the future. The lack of a physical presence between two parties hasn’t stopped productivity in a work environment, and it is only a matter of time before that lack of a real-life presence becomes much more common for establishing long-lasting relationships, away from a physical setting.

Man Computer Symbiosis - Response

The article “Man Computer Symbiosis” (1960) by J. C. R. Licklider explored the idea of man and machine to work more in tandem for formulating decisions and thinking in closer association with one another. Licklider states that “…men are flexible, capable of ‘programming themselves contingently’ on the basis of newly received information” (5), while computers are limited by their “pre-programming.” This approach to the current situation between man and machine is preventing the author’s idea of symbiosis from taking place, and I learned through the article that should symbiosis happen, the roles and men and the roles of computers would change to better accommodate one another.

If a computer cannot solve a problem for a given circumstance, man steps in, and vice versa. I think that this already takes place at a primal level today, since supercomputers are being used to work on highly complex, scientific calculations related to cancer research, etc. that man could not reasonably complete. The kind of cognitive thought used in decision-making is not handled well by a machine, so people take the role and make those choices on behalf of a computer system.

The sheer number of differences in language, reasoning and approach make symbiosis a tough proposition, but with recognition technology and artificial intelligence advancements, the feasibility of real-time communication and interaction between man and machine in this manner is sure to be in our lifetime. Obstacles like the “input and output equipment” methods and the memory constraints will be eliminated over time. I particularly found the “trie memory” idea (8) to seem like a simple-enough theory that would work in the future for symbiosis applications.

Media Websites Article (Half of America Is Using Social Networks) - Response

I read an article from the New York Times website (cited below) titled “Half of America Is Using Social Networks” (2011) by Somini Sangupta. A study by the Pew Research Center showed that 50 percent of Americans used a social network, and I was a bit surprised by this metric. I knew that social networking “sites are more popular among younger people” with a 83% participation rate, but to see that 65% of adults are using services like Facebook was interesting to me. What stood out the most for me was the comparison between the study now and a similar study done six years ago, where “only 5 percent of all adults said they used social sites.” That dramatic increase, along with the growth of the Internet in general, means that it has an impact on industries and companies. Other interested parties that see these trends in usages would then use it to their advantage for marketing, advertising or outreach purposes.

The response to social networking’s usefulness was not surprising to me, however. The study showed that “good” was the common word used to describe the social networking experience, with one in five subjects calling the services “boring” or “time-consuming,” showing that this new age of social interaction is not for everyone.

Sengupta, Somini. "Half of America Is Using Social Networks." New York Times (2011): 1 Sep 2011. <http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/half-of-america-is-using-social-networks/>

The Written Word: From Printing to the Internet - Response

In the article “The Written Word: From Printing to the Internet” (2006) by Michael Noll, the history of communication between persons is outlined as starting with the written word and evolving to instant delivery of messages through the Internet. Obstacles with transportation, encoding and printing of the written word over the years were overcome with newer and better technologies, and the article makes the point in its introduction that the written word allowed for preservation of human speech, whereas it “could only be saved through memorization and passed on through oral tradition” in the past (15).

Beginning with paintings and carvings on tablets and evolving into an alphabetic language, written messages grew into a printing press of newspapers and magazines to broadcast news and information to a global audience. The article also brought light to the personality and intimacy of the written letter, now seen as a “lost art because of the widespread use” of the Internet and electronic, instantaneous communication methods (19). The physical written letter was presented as a close substitute for face-to-face communication because of the time and effort it takes compared to the instant messaging and e-mail of today.

An issue that arose with printed material was the same issue that came about with any other tangible product—it had to be physically delivered and distributed, and various forms of a postal service existed since 1600 BC with the Egyptians (18). While physical delivery of goods continues to exist today, the process and necessity of it for certain products can be seen as the next major step to be streamlined and simplified, or perhaps “digitized” or virtualized entirely in the future. Music, video and other media is now delivered digitally and outgrows their physical disc mediums, and it is only a matter of time and technology before more products are sent instantly rather than physically.

Be Who You Want To Be - Response

In the article "Be Who You Want to Be" (2010) by Katie Ellis, the idea behind one’s social identity is explored as seen through Facebook, the online social networking platform. As a mild user of Facebook myself, it has been interesting to see how people willingly provide personal information in order to create a “true-to-life” identity for social connections. The implicitly anonymous factor of the Internet doesn’t hold true for Facebook, where its privacy issues and sometimes overreaching feature set seem to make headlines every few weeks. 

George Mead’s distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me’ in his interpretation of identity was one I could resonate with. In an arena like Facebook, people want to portray themselves under a particular light and perception. The information we provide for others to see—through photos, status updates and the like—create a social persona that relates us to others.

Tara Brabazon stating that the news feed in Facebook is “corroding our capacity to determine the important, relevant and significant” (40) is another point that I never considered when using the service. The overwhelming amount of largely uncategorized information coming from our social groups is numbing to the mind, and the movement to stay “offline” from Facebook and other social networking sites is a desirable one to disconnect myself from the bombardment of notifications.

Introduction Post

Hello out there! My name is Felix and I'm taking COMM 131P. My last communications course of any kind was COMM 20 (Public Speaking) many semesters ago, so it'll be interesting to me how this web-centric course will run its...course. Here goes:

I'm studying Computer Engineering here at San Jose State University, entering the fifth year of studies as a senior-senior but on track to graduate in Spring of 2012. I've also been working part-time for a year while I investigate into internship and career opportunities (but mostly wonder about life and where it'll take me). My school workload has always been pretty intensive, so I hope that the time I put into this course will be rewarding.

I did have an amateur blog in the past through Xanga (but who didn't?), then I broke off into a self-made blog of my own in Yahoo! GeoCities (remember that?) before eventually giving up on letting my thoughts out with digital write-ups. I'll be curious to see how the blog writing for this course will be fleshed out...

...but for the sake of introduction, I suppose I'll be brief:

I think technology and the world surrounding it is pretty cool and something I hope to get involved in through my major--industry, gadgets, mobile, etc. Video games are something I enjoy as an example of technology, although I haven't played as much as I did in the past. Music and media are a part of it, too, although I wish I had the talent and creative chops for media creation rather than just consumption.

I'm pretty used to being in front of a computer, but I grew up with Hot Wheels, the Simpsons, Pokemon, basketball...and several other things that eclipse my mind at the moment.

I don't consider myself a stickler for proper English, but many around me consider my grammar to be top-notch, which I refuse to agree with.

I'm sure there's more for me to say, but the pretense of "staying brief" with my introduction will end things here. Look forward to a future blog posting titled Introduction Post, Part II...possibly.

I'm on Facebook which I occasionally check, Twitter which I rarely check, AIM/Gtalk which I occasionally respond through, and Yahoo! Messenger which I have not used in many years but will intend to use again for this course based on communication preferences with the professor. There you have it!

-MikeyGoLucky