The Next New Thing

A type of "new media" that I would suggest is a forum in which students in each class are able to interact with each other and post questions and suggestions to each other. The forum would consist of subjects such as accounting, finance, marketing, management, CIS, etc. Each one of these subjects would further break down into levels of each class like finance 3000, finance 3610, finance 3710, etc. And they would further break down into more sections based on which professor is teaching their class. By having this, students and instructors are able to interact informally and get help and advice from each other. Furthermore, students and instructors would be able to get feedback from their assignments and see which assignments are too easy, too difficult, or too confusing.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

For the class wiki, I have began researching into file sharing applications and torrents such as BitTorrent, the history, the legal issues of the file sharing applications and websites as well as the megaupload.com, which was shut down a couple years ago because of the legality of its services. Furthermore, I have been looking into certain online games such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive to experience the gameplay and obtain a first hand experience in the game so that I can write more about it based on experience and research. I am also looking into World of Warcraft because of its multiple expansions and friends that have played that game. There are many topics that I can look into and hopefully find interest in from World of Warcraft.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the process in which files such as movies, television series, programs and information is exchanged between people. Often, the files shared are purchased or obtained illegally and then redistributed to other people, usually through the use of the internet. An example of this is P2P. P2P refers to the process of file sharing through sites and programs. The P2P stands for peer to peer meaning that peers share files with each other. An example of P2P is torrenting. Torrenting is the use of a program where peers are on a digital network and take turns downloading programs. While downloading programs, they are known as leechers. When they finish downloading, they become seeders, generally, the more seeders, the faster leechers are able to download. Because torrenting is free, it causes a huge problem for big companies because of the growing problem known as piracy. Piracy is the illegal redistribution of goods. In the New York Times article "Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios", the article talks about how the growing issue of piracy, P2P, file sharing and Torrenting has costed the businesses producing movies a lot of money. Sales for movies and DVD sales have dropped a lot and the 2008 Batman movie "The Dark Knight" was a perfect example of the growing issue of piracy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05piracy.html?_r=0

Privacy & Confidentiality

When new media was still in it's infant ages, the internet was not used to the capacity that it is used to today. Before new media and the internet, interactions were simple. Interactions consisted of phone calls and face the face interactions. Everything was personal and there was very little that could be concealed. Today with new media, we have the internet where anything that is posted online becomes public. By posting photos and information on to social networking platforms such as Facebook, information becomes public. Furthermore, new media provides anonymity and privacy as well. While things that you share online become publicly accessible information, when interacting with others online while using false information or playing multiplayer games, your identity is usually kept a secret and you maintain your privacy from the other users.

Advice

Some suggestions I would make to Baruch College to improve it using new media would have to begin with the integration of blackboard, the school's wifi and the Baruch email. As of right now, it is quite tedious to have to sign in to the schools wifi every couple of minutes, or every time you move around school. Furthermore it is tedious that we have to log in to blackboard accounts and our Baruch email separately. It would be much more efficient if our devices were saved on to the school's wifi and we would not have to constantly log in. It would be much more useful to integrate blackboard and access to our email into our wifi accounts so that it would be more accessible and accessing our information would not be as difficult.

CREATIVITY

New Media fosters creativity in many ways because the access of information on the web that users access and are exposed to can trigger many thoughts in a their head. This can create ideas that they can act on such as the Brook Barnes' article on the New York Times "Disney Tolerates A Rap Parody Of Its Critters. But Why?" In this article Barnes talks about how the hit "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" video by Soulja Boy had a parody created that mimicked the music video using Disney's Winnie The Pooh characters. The question being why Disney would allow their characters to be used in a parody that is related to inappropriate topics, not suitable to their audience. This is an example of how an new media fosters creativity. A beloved child's cartoon was used to create a parody of a completely unrelated topic, which happened to be Soulja Boy's music video. The use of new media and the convenience of the web allowed a user to link the two with ease and create a completely new idea.

1. Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why? The New York Times, September 24, 2007; available athttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html

Creativity and New Media

Using South  Park's avatar creating site, I created an avatar to most closely resemble myself. Using video sharing sites and texting and talking to others, I was able to come across this site and make one for myself. Using this site I was able to create an avatar of myself where I was able to customize my face, my hair, my skin tone, my clothing as well as my accessories. Using this I am able to get a glimpse of how a character based on me would look in the South Park series. The link to this site is http://southpark.cc.com/avatar. Another example I will show below is another avatar I created for fun.