It should come as no surprise to any of us just how popular and revolutionary (Arab Spring anyone?) social networking has become. It informs many social aspects of our lives and since we are naturally social creatures this inevitability was only waiting for the technology to catch up to our natural inclinations — which it has, and here we are. Social networking can be used by corporations to advertise to current and potential customers, advance a public relations agenda (like BP did after their disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010), track customer feedback, and attract, recruit, and vet potential partners and employees. As Maureen Crawford-Hentz, a recruiter in the Frank Langfitt NPR.org article titled "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting," states [s]ocial networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever."
Oil covered ducks on account of BP oil spill.
On a more personal note, many of us in this class know how social networking can be used for entertainment, collaboration, critique, self-aggrandizement, and staying connected to people that we love/like/dislike/pine for (you should really stop looking at their <insert social networking site here> page now, it's over! Lol).
The benefits of social networking to society are immense. As I mentioned above, its use to get people organized to (hopefully at least) change things for the better, to create new jobs, to educate, and to connect people are unprecedented. Another aspect of social media's benefit that most able bodied people don't think about is described by Roger Ebert, with the help of his wife Chaz, at the 2011 TED talks tilted "Roger Ebert: Remaking my Voice:" he states "writing on the internet has become a lifesaver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected [by my thyroid and salivary gland cancer] and on the web my real voice finds expression. I have also met many other disabled people who communicate this way."
Like with most things in life, where there is light there is also dark. When thinking of the "dark side" to social media I am reminded of the rash of young and impressionable pre-teens and teens committing suicide over cyber bullying. Also, the New York Times article by Hilary Stout titled "Antisocial Networking" notes how our social networking culture may be eroding youngsters' "face-to-face communication with friends" and the negative psycho-social effects this might have on them in the future.
I feel that in the future all things are possible so it is difficult for me to form a concrete opinion but for the sake of argument: with the making and marketing of on-skin virtual reality enhancements like Google Glass and a predecessor worn by a Canadian professor named Steve Mann who has had his version surgically attached to his skull, I see cyborgs happening in the future, lol. More precisely, people will be using hardware that is surgically attached to them in order to facilitate brain to brain social networking, much like the Borg in Star Trek.
Just a couple a' Borg. I'm sure we'll be livelier and more diverse!
Blog vs. Wiki
Blogs and wikis are similar in that they both allow for the dissemination of information to a broad audience but they are different in that a blog is usually authored by one person while a wiki is editable and composed by more than one author.
Convergence, the joining of old and new media, in today's networked world is essential because we are at the nexus of new media and old media. Vestiges of old media, like physical newspapers and magazines are still with us because they have been standards of the written word for centuries but now with new media like ebooks and Web 2.0 we can have both the physical and online versions of a magazine, for instance -- old and new have converged.
Blogs can be used for collaboration. A blogger writes something in a post and others see it (maybe the blog is on someone else's blogroll or RSS feed) and respond to the post. The conversation on the blog could facilitate the blogger and readers getting together to collaborate further.
For example, in the NY Times article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid," we see how a neighborhood in Brooklyn has used blogs as an updated new media version of a neighborhood watch. These neighborhood watches have led to arrests and a stronger feeling of community among the more productive inhabitants of Bay Ridge.
This article highlighting mass participatory journalism links to a broader phenomenon of the influence of the blogoshpere. Kathy E. Gill states in her article "How Can We Measure the Influence of Blogospheres?" that since "blogs have exploded on the Web's landscape [...] bloggers are influencing the world outside of the blogosphere, as measured by audience reach, media adoption and political necessity."
The Pirate Bay: An Exploration of Both Sides of the P2P Coin.
The topic I chose is
person to person file sharing focusing on events surrounding the popular
and self described "galaxy's most resilient bit torrent site" The Pirate
Bay (thepiratebay.sx). Possible cons
I am thinking about
including are the breaking of copyright infringement laws, the
destruction of long established industries due to illegal activity, loss of revenues that governments could have collected from those industries, the grooming of
younger generations to accept a culture of piracy. Possible pros include the encouragement of the Five C's: communication, community, creativity, collaboration, and
convergence; also, the subversion
of the status quo could be heralding a new way of thinking about
property and ownership that will perhaps lead to a more communal sharing
of human ideas and art. To help me explore these ideas and opinions I will be relying on the 2013 documentary TPB: AFK (The Pirate Bay: Away from the Keyboard), interviews, both academic and news papers, and any other relevant sources.
