Creativity and New Media

I created my first "avatar" in the Second Life, where it intimates the real-world scenes but empowers people- avatars superpower, like being able to fly, there. Creativity is the ability to turn the imaginative conception to reality. However, we know that it's impossible for humans to fly by their own natures, but in the Second Life, flying by "humans" themselves is possible. With this power, avatars can soar in the sky or stand up at the top of the mountain effortlessly and overlook the views that people can never see if they and the views are on the same horizontal level. Another ability is diving under the sea and even for quite a long time. For people that cannot swim or are not able to move and swim this ability brings them such a fresh experience. This virtual world makes every avatar omnipotent and those abilities meet people's desires of what they cannot achieve in their real lives.
Creativity is characterized by the ability to perceive the world in new ways. Creativity in the Second Life opens a new world for avatars, but at the same time, it also brings the real users a new view toward the world!

HW Creativity

For example, according to the article "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?", Barnes states that YouTube users post mashup videos that are created by combining the song "Crank That" of Soulja Boy with animated movies, cartoons, or TV shows. Even though the companies whose patents involved are deeply dissatisfied and plan to sue those users, songs like that are extremely popular among people, and "Nickelodeon [claimed] the humorous videos as fair use of its copyrighted content."
From this case, we know that New media like cartoons, movies, TV shows, and the intermediaries (such as YouTube) that spread them provide people an open-source space. Therefore, new mashup videos could emerge and entertain people. Before mashup videos entered people's lives, nobody knew that the video could be in this novel form. Of course, from my personal experience, I have watched some other humorous short mashup videoes that consist of different snippets of different TV series, and all of them edited together in a specific order make sense and funny! Another experience of me could be that in my first English class at Baruch College, my ENG professor let all of us create a selfie video but combining snippets from other people or famous interviews.

Reference:

1. 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

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

According to the article "After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?", Mehta interviewed a virtual world designer, Jacki Morie that stated the different ways virtual worlds can offer to people: education, delivery services, telehealthcare, social connectivity, and businesses, etc.

The advantages of these virtual worlds are: it provides disability people with an ideal community where it meets those people's wish of being able to be flexible with their bodies and doing things that they always expect to do, like riding a horse, swimming underneath the sea,  dancing with other people, and being one's own boss to take care others. It also improves or cures interpersonal skills for people who have a social anxiety disorder, and after entering the Second Life to build their confidence they become outgoing and will to interact with others in their real lives. Virtual worlds help worldwide e-commerce developing and expanding so that consumers that are in all over the world could experience various foods or services in different countries, etc.

The disadvantages of it are: The usage of VR in education is not mature enough, and many professors who get used to the traditional teaching style have difficulties in adapting it. Earle reveals it in the article "The Virtual World Moves into the Classroom". In this article, despite the cheaper expenses on VR compared with the real field trips expenses, students will lose the opportunities of the real feeling experiences. A behavioral neuroscience professor declares that "students remember what they've encountered in the virtual world... but the whole thing is about applications. It's not about having experiences".

I remember the video "A Second Life on Second Life"'s scenes. In one of them, the narrator stated that the virtual world is literally established from the real needs and wishes of different people. The creative social places and activities in the virtual world are from the real world. Reversely, the virtual world may facilitate those needs and wishes to be realized in the real world. Creativity is about coming up with an idea that has not existed yet but will be realized in the future. For example, currently, the virtual world can only let people visualize those activities on the computer. In the future, I believe it can let people truly experienced through their bodies' feelings.

References:

1. After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get A Reboot. April 30, 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/ 

2. The virtual world moves into the classroom Posted by Joe Earle | Sep 14, 2018 https://www.reporternewspapers.net/2018/09/14/the-virtual-world-moves-into-the-classroom/

Blog about Twitter

In my view, a Twitter discussion is appropriate when we discuss a problem that is not complex because Twitter has 280 characters limitation, which limits explanations behind a problem. Thus, our words have to be concise and precise. However, I believe Twitter is the most efficient tool to address an issue and call on everyone (not limited to our friends) to consider the specific issues, but again due to the word limit, solutions might be superficial and insufficient.
On Blackboard discussion, there is no word limit, and we can explain some topics in detail. What's more, we can go through our classmates' posts and receive (only) our professors' and classmates' comments.
In-class discussion is the most effective way of solving issues because problems can be addressed immediately and be solved in the present. However, due to the time limit, the in-class discussion often cannot be fully conducted and expanded because it really takes time in thinking about it. Thus, that's why professors usually require students to read relative materials and prepare for it. In-class discussion facilitates the real interactions between ourself and our classmates.

Social networking sites

In this blog, I'm going to compare 4 social networking sites. They are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WeChat.
On Facebook, firstly it impresses me with its basic information part because it contains the education and work experiences sections, which present Facebook is not only an entertainment platform but also a site where it shows people's real lives. Then it's its friends' recommendation. I feel this setting as a double-edged sword because it can help people expand their social circles, but meanwhile, it might hurt certain people and leak their privacies.

On Twitter, initially, I thought it is only a tool using to post short messages online, but when I deeply browse it, there're photos, videos, and advertisements posts that make Twitter vivid and amazing. On Twitter, people can follow many politicians (like Obama, Trump, etc.), stars (like Rihanna, Ariana, and Taylor, etc.), and companies or organizations (such as "Big Four" and Accenture, or NASA, etc).

On Instagram, I followed some web celebrities who usually post the most amazing photos (beauties, beautiful places, and delicious food), and they lead mainstreams and new trends. More and more users on Instagram are joining to follow them. What impresses me a lot is that such a trend helps me explore some fantastic places or food in NYC. Instagram is really "gucci"!!!

On WeChat, it is the simplest and the most convenient social media because it's designed to let people have efficient communication and posts sharing. The most impressing thing on WeChat is only when your friends are your mutual friends, some of your friends can see the messages or likes of other friends. In addition, WeChat as the basic daily communication application is necessary for Chinese because it is not simply a social media but also a payment tool functioning as your bank card. By scanning your QR code on your WeChat, you can make transactions. WeChat makes cashless society come true.

Blog Social networking

Nowadays, social networking has become a necessary part of people's lives. It brings quite abundant benefits to people in various aspects of people's lives. People surfing on social networking can enjoy interactions with others who have the same interests, post their own opinions toward either a funny or significant event, record their daily lives and share them with their friends, and last but not least seek for jobs via the professional career social networking website, such as LinkedIn, etc.  Linkedin as an online platform not only dedicates to job seeking and hunting but also creates a community where thousands of companies can post business recruitments and activities, and job seekers can share their achievements. As Langfitt states in the article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" that Linkedin is efficient for HRs to explore job seekers' Rolodexes so as to scout job candidates by using just half an hour, and Linkedin is an amazing modern tool to develop a relationship. What's the exciting thing is that by using Linkedin people can set their privacy of choosing either to be open or not be open to the external connections.


There is a "dark side" on social networking when it comes to privacy settings. Even though there are privacy protection claims on almost every social networking technology, there is no absolute guarantee that people's privacy won't be leaked. In the article "Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private" Greenfiled declares that the privacy setting on Facebook is confusing because even if you click on 'share to friends only' for a post, some of the others that you don't know can still see it on their own Facebook. In Randi Zuckerberg's case, people find out that one bug on Facebook is its privacy setting. Since people have their friends but their friends' friends can still be notified by the Facebook system, privacy setting doesn't make privacy private.  Social networking's privacy leakage really makes me feel worried about all my owns. Linkedin so far hasn't had such an issue, but what if it will be used as an espionage tool among businesses in the future. Thus, social networking as a huge privacy warehouse, it should take responsibility of protecting everyone's privacy and make this commitment solid.



Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private,” The Atlantic Wire, Greenfield, R. December 26, 2012, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/12/facebook-privacy-so-confusing-even-zuckerberg-family-photo-isnt-private/60313/


Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting by Frank Langfitt, NPR, March 16, 2008. available from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf

Blog V.S. Wiki

As two main emerging Internet personal knowledge management workplaces and communities, each of them facilitate the dissemination of knowledge, opinions, and topics. They have similarities in terms of their functions of presenting freedom, equality, and sharing of information. However, Blog and Wiki have its specialties to distinguish itself from another. For Blogs, it embodies personalities and personal knowledge, and it's sharing of personal opinions on a specific topic. The audiences of a Blog can leave comments to participate in it or criticize with their own ideas.  Godwin- Jones clarifies in "Blogs and Wikis" that Blogs are easy to be linked or cross-linked in order to create an expansive online opinion community. Jones also claims that there is no need for Wen authoring on Blogs, and students can easily navigate on it. Thus, "[Blogs] offer a great deal of flexibility and the potential for creativity in the construction of the site..." (Jones 13). For Wikis, it usually has a strict common topic, and all the participants or contributors need to integrate and collaborate with each other. Information provided on Wiki attributes to the group's works because as long as you want to participate in building a Wiki website, you can contribute your part of it.

How can Blogs be used for Collaboration? Here is an example. "Blogs can provide great inspiration and resources for students' writing" (Johnson 176). In Johnson's article "Teaching with authors' blogs", he alleges that during the writing process, authors' ideas and their readers' opinions can interact and against each other to create a collaborative environment for revisions. Thus, blogs offer a double- direction interactive channel. One more Blogs' collaboration is that even though the readers and the author are far from each other, both parties can communicate via blogging in real-time (Johnson 177).

Is there a new use for a Wiki that has not been done? The answer is Yes of course. What I think about the new use for Wiki is its private information storage. No one else knows us better than we do. It can be used for our own growth journal since we touched online Technology in our childhood, and it should contain an option whether we are willing to make it public or not.
(Since Wiki requires the coding knowledge and ability, it's cool for people to learn it.)

References:
Godwin-Jones, Robert. "Blogs and wikis: Environments for online collaboration." Language learning & technology 7.2 (2003): 12-16.

Johnson, Denise. "Teaching with authors' blogs: Connections, collaboration, creativity." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54.3 (2010): 172-180.

Analysis of Whether Social Networking is Better or Worse than the Real Thing

      I choose to do my project on the Analysis of Whether Social Networking is Better or Worse than the Real Thing. I want to analyze both respects of social networking in order to give myself and my audiences an objective view of it. Nowadays, social networking has become a necessary and essential part of most people's lives. Social networking sustains relationship bonds with family and friends; it also helps develop relationships with people that have the same interests as us; it expands our social circles, meanwhile, it shortens the distance between the world and us. However, as more and more people get used to social networking's convenience and efficiency, more and more problems will appear. For instance, more and more people are muddled by fake news; more and more rumors are disseminated because of lack of inspection; fewer and fewer people like to interact with others in their real lives, etc. Frankly speaking, we cannot deny what and how social networking brings us a wonderful and easy life, neither can we ignore its negative influences on people. I would like to make comparisons between social networking's positive and negative sides on people's lifestyles, personalities, and potential consequences to others while they are enjoying social networking. This is a brief summary of my project's general content. I'll explain further about each subtopic related to this analysis.