The Next New Thing

Suggesting a new type of "new media" that does not currently exist is difficult for me particularly because I'm no Ray Kurzweil. I feel like everything has been done already.
 
Regardless, I would make a site where people could play a game that is actually a simulation of certain aspects of society and whose purpose is to let regular people attempt to solve pressing social issues. For instance, someone could play a simulation where they come up with a way to provide drinkable water at lowest cost to people in areas where it is difficult to get clean water. Or a simulation where people come up with cost effective, both financially and ecologically, ways to get rid of garbage.

The game itself would look cartoonish and would have fun sounds and cute little characters including an assistant who informs the user of certain crisises that the user's actions have caused and that need to be fixed. The game would be enthralling enough that players would just think they are playing a really fun game but informative enough that the data collected is realistic and useful. The best performing players' simulations can then be used by governments or municipalities to solve actual problems.
 

Privacy & Confidentiality

Considering the openness of new media it is no surprise that issues of privacy and confidentiality would appear. New media sites allow for a plethora of information to be shared with potentially anyone if the user is not informed about the various privacy features available to him/her. Some information about a person that can be gleamed from their new media connections include their name, address, telephone number, education level, where they go/went to school, their appearance, likes/dislikes, relationship status, where they are at a given moment, their friends and family members, the places they have been to recently, what they do in their free time, what they do for work, what social causes they support, their political views, and the list can go on and on.
 
Inherent to this information being readily available is the possibility of it being used against the poster. A stalker could use this information to keep tabs on or, in the worst case scenario, kill their victim using the information they post. Sexual predators could lure young naive victims through new media sites.

The onus on who is responsible for privacy and confidentiality are two-fold. The administrators of new media sites should offer resources that protect the users and the users should make sure they know how to protect their information from people they do not wish to have it.

Privacy and confidentiality (should) go hand-in-hand with new media in order to protect the users.

                                                 Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" 

P2P

The above acronym stands for peer-to-peer which is a form of file sharing protocol.

1. File sharing is when a file from one computer is copied and shared with another computer. This can happen through protocols such as client-server and/or peer-to-peer. With client-server a client requests information from the server and the server supplies the file requested. It is centralized and depends on the functioning of the server in order for the transfer of the file to be successful. If the server fails then no one will get the requested files until the server is back online. A server can fail if too many people are requesting information from it at the same time.

2. Peer-to-peer file-sharing is not centralized (though it can be, as was the case for Napster) and the computers of peers (those who have pieces or all of a particular file already on their computers), form a network with many nodes through which a download of the complete file can be derived.
 
3. An example of a peer-to-peer protocol is BitTorrent. BitTorrent was created by Bram Cohen in 2004 and is used by the resilient bittorrenting site The Pirate Bay. BitTorrent facilitates the downloading of files using file swarming which allows for pieces of a file that have been downloaded to simultaneously be uploaded by other users who also want the same file. The more users are downloading a file, the faster it downloads. As long as someone is allowing others to "leech," take, from them (the givers are called "seeders", takers are called leechers) the file will download. If one seeder's computer goes down, or if they no longer what to seed a file, as long as other people are seeding that file others can upload it. So peer-to-peer does not rely on a single server but the amount of people seeding. Generally the three types of P2P structures are pure peer-to-peer, centralized peer-to-peer, and hybrid peer-to-peer.  

The popularity of The Pirate Bay and peer-to-peer file sharing "is estimated to account for as much as half of all Internet traffic" according to Eric Pfanner in his New York Times article titled "Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?" The ease at which files can be transferred using this protocol makes it the most efficient and fast way to swap files.