Next New

During this pandemic there has been a great surge in baking among households. My house included and yes we did bake banana bread! If you haven't I would definitely recommend you try making it with walnuts inside. Many people have begun to bake from scratch and so it got me thinking that it would be pretty cool if there was a social media site for beginner bakers and cooks. It would behave similar to both Instagram and a blog. Users would upload their final products and post the corresponding recipes. This will allow other users to comment and discuss the recipe with either suggestions or admiration. Maybe the user can post about failing to bake or cook a recipe and reach out for help on ways they could have improved. It would be a judgment free zone for people who are just looking to learn this skill. Users will able to find basic videos on how to properly cut certain items such as onions or how to decorate a cake. It can also serve as a business opportunity for a few because people may find their food delicious and are willing to pay for it. I'm not sure what name I would give it. HomeCook? Any suggestions?

WiKi So Far

At the moment I have not added any new content to any of the pages. I will be looking into researching more information about social networking to add to the page. I think more information about the effects of social networking sites on mental health is needed. I have heavily edited the layout of the Social Networking site. The layout did not follow the proper layouts deemed necessary for the project. There was no introduction before we reached the contents page. I looked at the Youtube example as a reference. The Social Networking wiki page was very hard to follow because all the headings weren’t paired accordingly. There was a lot of repetition of heading titles and of unnecessary information that did not pertain to social networking. I sorted the contents of the page so it would flow better and feel natural because the other format was all over the place. It gave me anxiety to look at it which is why I worked on it until it was properly organized. I deleted repeated images and formatted the size and positions of some images because they weren’t adequately positioned in the site. I did my best to reduce the amount of fourth headers. Instead I bolded and added a line underneath the title as a divider. Another wiki page I am interested on working on is education and maybe news. I have a better idea of what I’ll do for the education site but I need to research more about what to add to news if I decide to do it as well.

P2P

Did you illegally download music from sites such as LimeWire when everyone was doing it instead of buying CDs? I sure did! I was about thirteen years old and I had no idea that what I was doing was known as peer to peer sharing(P2P). It differs slightly from file sharing. File sharing is when a file is shared from computer to computer through the internet. Example of fire sharing sites are Dropbox, Google Drive, and One Drive. Peer to peer sharing works similarly as file sharing. It is the sharing of digital media over the internet. Digital media can range from music to books. Peer to peer sharing is easy because it is done through peer to peer networking technology. Besides LimeWire, another example of this technology is uTorrent and Frostwire. Eventually, peer to peer sharing became outdated. According to the article “Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?”, downloading digital media is getting replaced by streaming it instead. Content is getting streamed at a faster rate than downloading it.

Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?" by ERIC PFANNER, The New York Times, April 13, 2009, p. B4. Available athttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/internet/13iht-piracy13.html

Privacy

New media and issues of privacy and confidentiality are always brought up together. They go hand and hand for all the wrong reasons. New media has made it impossible for one’s information to be private and confidential. The new media users themselves unknowingly expose themselves too much over the web. They end up putting out a lot of delicate information that can make it easier for anyone to track them down and follow their every movement. The information found on the web is an easy way to find a perfect victim for identity fraud. The new media sites are also selling their user information to other companies. They can do so because of the terms and conditions that the users agree to when they sign up. Once the user signs up he or she has given up their right to privacy. Privacy on these sites are not guaranteed. Confidentiality depends on how good the new media’s cyber security is when it comes to hacking.

Advice

Baruch College can benefit a lot from introducing new media more into classrooms. It is a fun way for students to conduct discussions on platforms that they are very familiar with. The newer generations can easily adjust to these changes. A few examples of new media that can be used for class discussions are Twitter and blogs. These tools will be especially helpful in an English course. Students can express their opinions and interpretations of a text onto a blog for the class to see and comment on. It is a more comfortable setting for students to truly express themselves.

I believe Baruch College can also use new media to better communicate with its students and provide them with that sense of community that colleges wish for their students. Baruch College is a commuter school making it difficult to get their students to feel they are part of a close community. They should advertise more of their social media pages because they can be very useful to follow for current news involving the university.

Creativity

New media fosters creativity among those who wouldn’t otherwise participate. Today it is easier to be creative because of the new media available to them. As a result, people are creating new things that are entertaining for others. One example of this is the rise of mashup videos on Youtube. Youtube users are using animated cartoons as visuals and pairing them with an audio that makes it funny. According to the article “Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?”, Disney is allowing edited videos of their animated cartoons with rap audio despite the animation being an infringement of their copyright because wholesale piracy is a bigger issue. Disney’s toleration of mashup videos allows room for creativity for users to continue making videos as long as it doesn’t interfere with Disney’s revenue. A Nickelodeon spokesperson doesn’t see the harm in mashup videos, he even applauds the clean edits. The way I see it, mashup videos can lead to a few to pursue a career in animation. Thus, new media's ability to foster creativity is beneficial for our entertainment.

Work Cited:

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

Creativity and New Media

I chose to play The Sims for this assignment. It was quite interesting, especially given that we are recommended to stay home due to the pandemic going on, so it felt like a little escape. The first thing I had to do was to create my avatar. It became challenging for me to do so because the clothes options were horrendous, but I managed. Next, I was taken to my house. I had to fix and decorate the interior of the house with the little options I was given. I had never played games such as Sims or Second Life before, so it was a surprise to me that I had to do a lot of things to play it. I was given work as a barista at a local coffee shop where I had to work shifts. The Sims makes it mandatory that you work, decorate your house, and interact with other Sims because these assignments are assigned to you as “Quests” that you must complete in order to receive more rewards and cash and to level up. I thought it was funny that one of the quests was for my Sim to rest because I wouldn’t think a digital character would need to. My favorite part about the game was decorating my house. Although I don’t plan on playing the game consistently, I know a friend who does. She has shown me her house and it is huge. She even expanded it! If one truly is dedicated to playing Sims, they can be very creative in decorating their house.