Monday, September 21, 2009

Old vs. New Media

A most distinctive way to establish the difference between old media from new media would be to see if the new portrayal is through a technological advancement. A few examples would be:
Instead of a book, we have the amazon's Kindle. This item is a new advancement in reading a book. As an activity so simple as reading a book, we managed to utilize new technology to advance the activity.
Another would be the New York Times. Instead of waiting for the current news in tomorrow's paper, they have news feeds that are sent directly to your blackberry or to a cell phone keeping their subscribers up to date.

Project Description

For my project is will be researching Online Social Networking: Keeping the Personal Private. I will be focusing on how private our information should be kept that we post on social networking pages. I would like to deeper research, who should get access to view our personal pages. Should employers have access to our personal information (more than necessary), should government officials have access without any permission or cause, and should the general population have access to our personal information?

What is New Media?

What kinds of technologies are part of the new media? How important is the Internet to the new media? Why and how are the new media replacing and / or enhancing the old media?

New media, to me, is a new way of conveying messages using new technological tools. Such tools are web cams and software that allow us to use these new gadgets. According to Clive Thompson, who wrote "Clive Thompson on How YouTube Changes the Way We Think," he states that "whenever we get our hands on a new medium we tend to use it like older ones." he feels that the only ones who are using new media correctly are such "weirdos" that post strange and muted videos on YouTube. He states that using a web cam to have an emotional wallpaper on your screen is not using new media.
I disagree with him. I think that the way we are using these new mediums with old techniques is the perfect way to use new media. Yes, new media is enhancing the way we communicate using methods we haven't used before, but the fact that we are able to communicate like we used to, through a simpler and easier medium, to me defines new media.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Welcome to My Blog

Hello all! Welcome to my new blog.