Blog: Next New

When I think of a new type of new media, Virtual Reality quickly comes into my mind. I think VR or AR (augmented reality) will become popular in the future and we will see a wide application of VR in our daily life. One example would the use if VR in online shopping. I watched a video made by Alibaba a year ago. It shows that customers were able to purchase an Alibaba virtual reality headset and it can virtually transporting them to international retail outlets. This new experience enables customers to shop with convenience while they are sitting in their house. Also, with the application of VR and other online payment systems, it makes the whole shopping experience much quicker. In addition, artists can also use VR in their art exhibition. It provides some advantages such as no more long journey to home, no waiting in line and won’t be affected by bad weathers. Also, we can make the whole experience more convenient with the use of social media or other live time communication tools. People can enjoy the show or exhibition at home and have more connection with different people at the same time. I believe that this will become much more attractive and doable when we have a more mature VR technology.

Blog: Wiki So Far

In the past few weeks, I started to look up different pages that are already created on the Baruch Wiki. I wrote down all the topics that I am interested in or I know something about it. I found some interesting topics such as gaming, new media use in automotive and privacy. I plan on adding more details on those topics with the information that I have and things that I have learned from the news. One thing I find fascinating is that although there is already lots of information filled in on the page for different topics, you can always find something to add on. It is because our digital society is growing rapidly and we have so much new technology coming out every day. Also, we are adding useful information to the database, so that others can view and learn from it. I am going to add those pieces of information and try to edit others’ work if possible in no time since there are only a few weeks left for this project. 

Blog: P2P

The term of file sharing basically means that we share our resources with others. It is very common that we share files such as music, e-books, and movies with our friends. Because of the technology of P2P file sharing, file sharing become much easier. Peer to peer (P2P) file sharing requires only users’ computer to share and receive files since both computers are connected via a P2P network. Users can share files with the P2P network and other users can search and download files from the network. According to the article, Peers Find Less Pressure Borrowing From Each Other, Google is teaming up with Lending Club and they are trying to promote money lender and borrowing services with P2P file sharing technology. They are able to provide a lower interest and a more direct loan process between lenders and borrowers. In my opinion, it is a good thing for both ends since it makes the process more transparent and quicker. As a result, more funds flowing around businesses and it can help businesses and economy to grow healthily.

 P2P sharing technology is giving us a lot of benefits. However, there are ethical concerns about P2P file sharing since we don’t know if the distributor owns the files that he is sharing. It is illegal to share copyrighted content without permission and downloading those contents can cause harm to the right of the original content creator.

Sources:

Peers Find Less Pressure Borrowing From Each Other May 10, 2013 http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/05/10/182651552/peers-find-less-pressure-borrowing-from-each-other

Blog: Privacy

The issue of privacy is nothing new in our society. We often hear news about personal information leak and it causes tremendous harm to the daily users. Privacy used to means just our right to own our physical space or property. However, informational privacy becomes a concern in this growing digital society. People give out their information on the internet every day and they ignore the fact that their information can be used somewhere else by some other people. They do it without the users’ consent and it is totally unacceptable. Some might argue that they got their consent through the term of service. However, I am pretty sure that people didn’t really want to agree with those terms if they had a choice. It might be okay to let the company that is providing service to use the information, but it is definitely not okay to sell it to a third party company and let people make a profit out of it. Trading users’ information can be dangerous, especially there could be a possible security breach and transferring information and hackers can take an advantage of it.
    Moreover, the issue of confidentiality is also a big problem in our society. People can spread false information or hate speech on the internet without getting caught if they really want to hide their identity.  Confidentiality can definitely help to protect people from potential harms including psychological harm such as embarrassment or distress. However, this also raises the problem of cyber-bullying which people, especially teenagers, can do harms to others without caring the consequences because they think that the others are not going to find out who they are and their real life won’t get affected anyways even if they are doing negative things on the internet.

Overall, I think there should a balance between privacy and confidentiality. It won’t do us any good if we either get too much of privacy or too much or confidentiality

Blog: Advice

New media allows us to communicate with others easily. If I hired by Baruch College to Baruch use new media to improve the College, I would create an official blog for the school. I would invite people from different clubs to post pictures and videos about their meeting during club hours. People can know that our school is full of interesting clubs and people and it can also motivate people to interact with their peers during club hours. Also, I think it is good to have a  twitter account run by the student government because then they can post emergency news on Twitter such as school canceled due to bad weather or other interesting conference or meeting hosted by the school. I think it would be more attractive compared to just sending email to students. Lastly, I would definitely create an official page on Reddit because I notice that people are more comfortable to ask their peers through social media when they encounter problems about school. For example, I see a lot of people asking for thoughts on a specific class or professor or having questions about credits and financial aid on Facebook. A lot of time people are willing to help, however, they just don’t have the right platform to let them ask their question and express their opinion. I think social media can surely connect people together and help the foster the academic community.