Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

A virtual world can be anything anyone can imagine. If you can imagine it then it is possible to model a virtual world base on your imagery. As of today’s virtual world, the biggest difference between it and reality is that in virtual world you can only visualize the scenery while in reality you will be able to use your sense to feel and observe the scenery. According to the article “I’ve Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life” written by Dave Itzkoff, he mention “one can wander its streets with abandon without the risk of getting hit by the MUD Coffee truck,” this is definitely a pro to the virtual world because you are doing what you want and seeing what you want to see and at the same time you are not endangering your life in anyway. In reality you can be walking down the street minding your own business and a fallen object can just hurt you. At the same time it is also a con of the virtual world. Due to the fact that you are not sensing your surrounding you can only visualize what is going on.
As I had stated before, if you can imagine it then it is possible to create a virtual world base on your imagery. The possibility of virtual world is endless. You can bring back extinct species, imaginary characters, anything you can think of because virtual world is an idea of someone or some group that had put it into life. According the the article “Chelsea—In Room 100, a Second Life for Sid and Nancy” bought someone’s dream into life. In my opinion the future virtual world will expand to sales. I will use Macys.com for example, imagine creating a virtual world just like the Macy’s department store. You get to virtually select the clothes, the furniture, jewelry and others then you can make a purchase and it will be shipped to your home? Won’t that be better than just looking at Macys.com?

Social Networking

Social networking is a very good place to share some news and stories with friends and classmates. People have a lot of interactions through Facebook, Twitter, Blog and many different types of networking site. I am a facebooker. I realized that there are many different companies and organizations have their own facebook account, such as clothing companies, TV shows, and even colleges. They are using facebook as an advertisement tool for their companies and organizations. We can see the most updated promotions and news about them. As Jeff Young said in Wired Campus, "Many colleges have recently set up official pages on Facebook. I think schools would be very smart to just incorporate in there because it doesn't cost them anything". Not only to colleges, to many other companies is wise to have a facebook account then advertise for free.  Social networking makes people's life easier. People can share their news and thoughts through social networking site. At the same time, we can read others post when we are free to do so. Isn't it sound very convenient? When we are following some of our favorite companies and organizations, we can get our first-hand information from our networking site. As a user, we save our time to do any research about our interested companies. On the other hand, those companies also save a lot of money in advertisement. However, these social networking sites also become targets to those companies to  make more money.  How? These companies get users' information from social networking sites, like your address, e-mail and phone number, so they can sent their post cards or spams e-mail to our contact location. The users seem like losing privacy through networking site. One important thing is that most of the social networking site's information seems to be our real information, because it for connection with our friends and classmates. But if we lose our privacy that way, how many people are still want to share their personal related to any social networking site? According to Fred Vogelstein, there are a lot of facebook "users see the site as sanctified space, a place to engage in intimate conversations with friends—not to be laser-beamed by weirdly personal advertising" in Wired Magazine. If the users are not interesting in those advertising, then they become garbage to us.  This is a real issue that the social networking users need to focus on. Otherwise, social networking (new media) is going to replace letters and phone calls (old media) soon.

Check out social networking sites

There are many different kinds of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster and Sina. I have accounts with all these networking sites. I use Facebook the most because a lot of my friends are using it. According to the name of Facebook, it makes me think of seeing different people's face through this site. The users can upload pictures, update status, inbox messages, live chats and create events on Facebook. People also can tag their friends in the pictures and status. By doing so, their friends will receive notification from the people who tag them and leave comments over there. There are also many online games you can play with friends on Facebook and they are fun. The layout of facebook is very clear and easy to use. It does not require a background or page setup, everything is instant. Therefore, Facebook  is perfect for those lazy people like me. I did not use Myspace and Friendster for a long time because my friends stopped using them. Myspace is like a diary book to me. People can share their news and stories on their own web page. I think Myspace is very similar to Blogger. The users can create a new post and let others leave comments on there. Also, people can design how the page looks like. Friendster is a place for people to share pictures and recent activities. The users can design the layouts and button colors according to their own preference. Since not many of my friends use it, I did not use it any more. Occasionally,  I still receive E-mail from Friendster and reminding me some of my friends birthday are coming soon which makes me appreciated. Sina is a relatively  new networking site in China. Since China can not use Facebook due to some publishing problems, Sina becomes very popular. It might be new to you guys, so I would like to share my Sina blog with you here. It categorizes by friends, fans and blogs. When you are friends with someone, you will see their newest updates on your homepage. If you are fans of someone like a super star, you can see his/her most recent activities on your site. You also can write your diary on your blog and share some pictures with your diary entry or link them to others' Sina site. I use Sina to keep in touch with my friends in China. I like Sina because it is like a combination of Facebook, Friendster and Myspace.

Blogs vs. Wikis

In our New Media course, everyone has a blog and a wiki. The layout and design of the blogs are base on our own preference. When we visit each others' blogs, we can see different looks and feel on the pages. There is only one editor for the blog - yourself. We can share personal news, feelings and many different things on our blogs. People also can leave comments about your post after reading it. In "How can we measure the influence of blogosphere?" by  Kathy E. Gill, she mentions people blogging as Journalism. It is not like newspaper or magazine, but as the words of James W. Carey, "It can be practiced 'virtually anywhere and under almost any circumstances... To make experience memorable so it won’t be lost and forgotten is the task of journalism'".Writing a blog is like writing a diary. Nobody can controls what you want to write on your blog. Visitors can join to your blog as followers and have interaction with you like leaving messages or posting comments. Blogs can provide the latest posts, comments and opinions to the readers and writers. Therefore, this is the best way to make friends inside or outside of your network. On the other hand, wiki is different. Although both blogs and wikis are sharing information to the public, but all users in wikis can be editors and the page is no longer personal. Besides editing the page, wiki users also can create a new page while other users can add or delete things. Many companies would like to use wiki as an collaboration tool. According to Wikipedia, " A study of corporate wiki users found that they could be divided into 'synthesizers' and 'adders' of content. Synthesizers' frequency of contribution was affected more by their impact on other wiki users, while adders' contribution frequency was affected more by being able to accomplish their immediate work". A company's managers and stakeholders can make changes easily through wiki. It is a common used tool for project planning and management. If there is a option to leave feedback like blogs, people will enjoy it more because they can still have their opinions on wiki even though it might not be acceptable. As we can see, people can get information from blogs and wikis, but they are just playing different roles as visitors (blogs) and editors (wikis).

E-books vs. Books

Average College students spend hundreds of dollars for books every semester. In order to save money on textbooks, some students choose to buy used books while others choose to get the online version which is known as e-books. Students can save up to 30% buying an e-book than a regular text book. There are also some students who share their e-book with their classmates and friends for a low cost or even for free. File sharing is very easy and convenient, it became a common practice. File sharing will benefit the consumers but it will harm the producers. When the publishers are consistently losing profits, they will eventually go out of business and there won't be any text book nor e-book left. In another word, sharing e-books might benefit consumers in the short run but in the long run it will harm both the consumer and the producer.

Describe New Media

There are many examples that can be classify as new media. E-book, e-mail, digital camera, 3G network cell phone, Voice Over IP, and the blogs are all examples of new medias. All these new medias have direct and indirect relationship with a computer or Internet. There isn't a correct definition for new media, because as technology changes new media updates itself. According to the lecture notes from Prof. Alder in "What is New Media?", there are 5C's unique characteristics about new media (communication, collaboration, community, creativity and convergence). A new media might not have all of these characteristics, but it must contain more than two. Many companies started to do business online, also known as e-commerce. This way, the company can have more interaction with their customers through comments and reviews of their products. According to the business journal of McKinsey & Company's "8 Business Technology Trend to Watch", many companies are using consumers as innovators to their company. After the company review consumers' opinion, they can immediately make some changes if needed. Many companies prefer advertisement online through websites instead of newspapers, magazines or TV (old media). Having advertisement over the Internet is more cost efficient because everything is virtual. As people are going "green", they do not favor the "old media" because most of the time “old media” deals with a physical object. Like books, newspaper, and even music, you would need to have a compact disc in order to play it. Most of the time “old media” is an object. The advantage of the "old media" is that you can bring it to anywhere you want but it also can be a disadvantage. For example, you have an important document for the morning meeting. For some reasons, you forgot to bring it or it was stolen from someone, then you might get in trouble the next day because you didn’t have it during the meeting. Now, the "new media" comes into play. If you have a copy of the file in your e-mail or you saved it somewhere on the web, you still present the document during the meeting.

Something about me.

Hi, everyone.
My name is Yun Fei Huang. You can call me Faye. This is my first blog in blogger, but I think it is similar to Facebook and Xanga that I have. We can share news, information and our own feelings here. Hope we can have some fun through Blogger.
I am a transfer student from BMCC. I joined the Transfer Student Organization (TSO) last year and I have so much fun. I am an Accounting major and minor in Information Technology and Social Responsibility.
Media makes our life much easier. Computer is one of the important media tool. We almost need to use computer technology everywhere. Let's learn something new from this course.