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/>