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.