MODELING REALITY WITH VIRTUAL WORLDS

Virtual worlds are considered as a representation of the reality but simpler. It involves creativity, time and space for the most part. People get involve in their "second lives" while being part of different communities, living in different places, meeting other people, and doing other things which sometimes they can't do in real life. Virtual worlds can be used to simulate situations that some people are afraid or won't dare to try. The benefits involved with this technology are that it can help people overcome their fear for social interaction and it could help them to become more open to new situations and experiencing new things on their "second life" which might eventually lead them to try them on real life after experiencing them on a virtual world. I support the points discussed on our asssigned reading and think that it would be great if it was proven that virtual worlds can help people with autism and that these techonologies serve as something good to society such as giving people with autism the opportunity to communicate and socially interact in these way. I actually think that this would be a good therapy for them. iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction by Nicole Saidi, CNN, March 28, 2008. available from: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html#cnnSTCText, “Autism, more precisely the autism spectrum, is a range of brain disorders that can cause difficulties in social interaction, communication and behavior…. Bignell, known in-world as Milton Broome, said Second Life is an uncharted but promising area for new applied psychological research. Virtual reality can be used to simulate new environments for people on the autistic spectrum, he said. "For people with autism, we've found it's a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives," Bignell said. "For people who have social, emotional, communicational problems ... we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life."

SOCIAL NETWORKING

To most of us, social networking refers to a way to keep in touch with old friends and sometimes even make new ones. Social networking sites make it for us to search for the people who we want to contact or meet. There’s different uses for it such as friendship, romance, specific and shared interests such as arts and music, etc. However, others think that it also brings consequences to society. According to our assigned reading, Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum by Stephen J. Dubner. NYT Feb 15, 2008 http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/is-myspace-good-for-society-a-freakonomics-quorum/?emc=eta1 "Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years, what with the worldwide march of Facebook and headline-ready stories about Web-assisted suicides. Also, if we go back to another reading, I can quote “William Reader, professor of psychology at Sheffield Hallam University and social networking site researcher: some doom-mongers have suggested that social networking technologies will eventually lead to a society in which we no longer engage in face-to-face contact with people. I don’t see it. Face-to-face contact is, I believe, very important for the formation of intimate relationships (and most of us crave those).”
In my opinion, social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter,etc has a positive effect on society only if they are used properly and carefully. I believe that people shouldn’t meet people over the internet since we never know who’s behind the computer, and we would be taking a dangerous risk of having a “relationship” with a person who might not be good and in the long run it might bring problems. Personally, I only use these sites to keep in touch with old friends and maybe sometimes meet people who already know my friends rather than dealing with complete strangers. Finally, another “dark side” of social networking could be that it could bring sexual harassment and risk to lose our jobs due to inappropriate comments made on posted pictures or simply on a “Wall”. Therefore, we should all be careful about what is being said/posted on our profiles.

MY NEW MEDIA CLASS - SO FAR

According to one of our assigned readings, Friedman, Linda Weiser and Friedman, Hershey H.,The New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework(April 2008). pages 1-9. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1116771, “The so-called new media technologies - often referred to as Web 2.0 - encompass a wide variety of web-related communication technologies, such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds and other social media forms… Then we examine and review five critical characteristics of the new media technolgies - the Five C's: communication, collaboration, community, creativity, and convergence.” Web 2.0 technology is part of new media. Web 2.0 is also referred to as "modern internet applications" (second generation web applications).
As discussed on one of my first blog posts, An example would be Flicker, which is a site that allows you to upload and share pictures with the people you want so they can view and print them as well. Google maps and social bookmarking sites are also a clear example of Web 2.0 and New Media. The difference between old media and new media can be seen by looking back at newspapers and replacing them with e-magazines, watching tv series over the internet, blog posting instead of emailing, media sharing, instant messengers, and even reading online versions of books. Furthermore, collaboration and convergence are two of the key characteristics of New Media. Furthermore, mashups, p2p media sharing, blogs, wikis, voip are also examples of new media forms.

BLOGS vs. WIKIS

According to our assigned readings, Celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media by Melissa Gerry, published 3/31/2006. available from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/pop_print.shtml?content_type=article&content_type_id=26280 , “Through blogs, people are able to write about topics that interest them and comment freely on what is going on in their lives and in the world around them. In the world of celebrity and entertainment, some blogs have found a niche and have become quite successful in discussing celebrity news, sharing photographs, and other topics in entertainment.” As we learned in class, blogs are websites organized by a collection of blog posts from different users(bloggers), blogs share news and receive feedback and comments from other users who read those posts. Under blogs, we can find links to other blogs, other blog posts, other articles. For this reason, blogs represent an opportunity for high audience. However, they have limited collaboration since only the blog owners can edit and add information to their blog posts, therefore, blogs are better to control information that is spread over the internet.
Meanwhile, according to another of our assigned readings, assigned readings, Wikipedia on Wikis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki, “A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content (excluding blocked users), using a simplified markup language.[1][2] Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.[2] Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and knowledge management systems. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work."[3]” Wikis represent collaboration and freedom of speech. Everyone has access to every wiki and collaborate with each wiki or even create another wiki that can link to an existing one. Basically, everyone in the community can edit and add more information. However, wikis might lead to inaccuracy due to the lack of control when spreading, editing and adding information.
I believe that convergence is important in today’s networked world since it involves change and most of the time improvement in all aspects, specially on technology, just like watching TV on your computer and being able to record tv shows and movies. Day after day, people are using different forms of media at the same time, like receiving emails on blackberries, and the creation and use of mash-ups is growing.

CHECKING OUT SOME SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Visited Hi5, Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, and Twitter.

The first social networking site I joined was Hi5. I consider it to be a very user friendly site that allows you to upload pictures and music, join groups based on your specific interests and regions, add applications and games to your profile, and many other features. After a while, I stop using it and cancelled my account when I moved to U.S. Of course, everyone had a Myspace account so I got one too. Myspace "A place for friends", as it appears to be in the beggining was fun to use and had the same characteristics as hi5, but it also gives you an option to add your own blog and a gadget to add your mood of the day, and also add videos. It was all very good till I started receiving a lot of spam messages and weird friend requests through it. So, I moved on and opened a Facebook account, perhaps the most famous one nowadays. Facebook, by far, from my point of view is probably the best one. It offers the same features as the previous ones but its basic idea is to allow people to get in touch with "old" school friends that you probably don't get to see as much. People join to specific networks according to the corresponding school they attended to and request an official email from the school network they are trying to join. I believe that this makes it safer since that way we all avoid getting creepy friend request from people we've never even heard of. -That is, for the ones who just use this social networking site to keep in touch with old friends.
Furthermore, I just joined Friendster, which I'm trying to explore. And by far, I see that it has the same characteristics as the sites I already mentioned such as creating your profile, uploading pictures, joining groups, and starting a blog. However I just noticed that you could also join discussions of different topics.
Finally, I will also have a word on Twitter, which can also be considered a social networking site. However, its specific purpose is letting everyone from your community know "what you are doing", so its a way of knowing what your friends are up to most of the time simply by reading their status' updates, while they read yours as well.