This class was very interesting, in part, because I am not very into all the technology and because this was not for my major. I admit I did not think there was so much to communication, but I find myself enlightened with all this new knowledge. Through the semester we read many articles of research done on internet and communication. I use the internet, but I never realize all the things that go on, even when I see them. I guess when you are open to them you notice them more. You can point out things that you maybe passed over in other occasions.

I think my favorite part of this class is researching first hand by analyzing other peoples profiles. Once you know what you are looking for and you examine it, it makes more sense. When had to examine the blog and the myspace profile. People put so much information out there that many people can see an judge you off. You have to be careful because anything that you share online could come back and haunt you.

What I took from this class is that technology as a whole is not all bad. There is a good side and a bad side to everything. Balance is key! We have to remember to keep a balance with our offline relationships and our online. If we have one we cant neglect the other. Also, occasional brakes from technology are very refreshing. We have revolutionized communication. There are new languages and new forms of communicating. People are still communicating, they are not isolating themselves, they are just changing the location and form of communication.

http://www.screencast.com/t/gCQoQSwh

*note- you will need Adobe Flash on your device to view my presentation.

My apologies for the awkward narration, I do not have a future as a voice over actor.

Have a great summer!

Here is the link to my semester blog analysis presenation.

If anyone has trouble with this link, please let me know in the comments section to this post.

http://youtu.be/TJIJTvWKCcM

In another course I’m taking this semester, we read an article by Marshall McLuhan called “The Medium is the Message”. He argued the media affects our stream of consciousness without us realizing it. I think what he means by this is that we subconsciously accept certain things in our culture without question. One of the things this class has encouraged us to do is take a step back to recognize changes in technology and the impact it’s having on our lives. This is not to say that technology controls us or vice versa. Rather, it’s to understand how we use new media. Computer-mediated communication doom and gloom rhetoric is hyperbole that distracts us from the truth of the matter. CMC won’t be the downfall of the world anymore than the television, the landline phone or the written word was.  New technology is part of the inevitable course of the advancement of our society. This is not intrinsically good or bad.

CMC can make our lives easier and more stressful at the same time. We have access to more information than ever before. Solving a problem can be as easy as pulling up a browser on your phone, laptop or PC and typing in a topic of interest in a search engine. Thanks to wireless and satellite technology, we are constantly connected to our networks, which have become more individualized. It’s easier to stay in touch with remote friends and relatives. It’s also easier to stay plugged in to work and school from home. Conversely, more is expected of us because of these constant connections. The stakes have been raised in our personal and professional relationships. The demands on our time are growing, and we have to oblige if we want to keep up the pace. Otherwise, we risk losing friends or falling behind at school and work.

It’s important to remember that all good things come in moderation. Computers and mobile phones are wonderful devices. Studies show that a large percentage of people have access to and use new technology in some capacity. As with anything else, however, you have to be careful not to let it run your life. It’s good to unplug sometimes. It’s good to experience the moment the old fashion way. As CMC continues to trend toward the ordinary, I hope the next generations will not be as infatuated with it as we were. It will become a part of their lives, but I hope it doesn’t consume their lives. With a daughter on the way, I’ll be interested to see how her generation uses the technology. Of course, it’s inevitable that a radically new technology will emerge at some point, and the cycle will begin anew.

This has been one of the most interesting classes I’ve taken in college. I use the internet for hours every day, and yet I’ve never taken the time to really consider how much it impacts how I feel about myself and my interactions with others.

One of the most fascinating concepts was the idea of online communities and bridging and bonding capitol. The internet gives us so many resources, and I’m afraid I often see it as evil and negative (because of how little time people now spend face-to-face), without seeing the good it has provided. It was also interesting to think about the longevity of online communication. The thoughts that used to be bound up in journals hidden underneath our beds are now stored online, allowing people to know our teenage angst decades later.

On one hand, we show so much of our private lives online, but on the other hand we only reveal a small part of our identity. Things like virtual worlds and gaming make it so easy to craft a persona for ourselves that is entirely different than in real life. Once again, I used to view that idea as entirely negative, but reading about how gaming allows people to deal with real-life issues made me empathize and realize that I can’t cast things off just because they are different or misunderstood.

I think that the three main points of this class were well-instituted. The blogs and reading gave us a lot of opportunities to understand the concepts, and it was very easy to translate them into real life scenarios.

I feel like there have already been so many great studies done in online communication, but I would be very interested in learning more about how these new technologies are impacting girls’ self esteem and their susceptibility to falling for internet predators, etc. Since they can hide behind a Photoshopped persona online, does that make them less confident about themselves in real life? Also, I would love to learn more about whether or not the internet is making people more open-minded about religions, races, and other cultures.

Throughout the semester I had to write 14 blogs. Before this course I never wrote a blog, so it was a great experience to learn another form of online social interaction. Writing my own blogs and participating with the other students’ blogs by writing my comment give me the chance to express my thoughts and share my ideas. I also enhanced my understanding about blogs by doing the semester analysis on a blog for someone who is stranger to me and learn how blogs evolved from journals to an important tool to socialize online.

          In my first short paper I read four different researches about linguistic diversity online.  I learned the effects of dialect and gender on the representation of consonants in Jordanian chat; the internet language system that created by Chinese to communicate; how teens in the United Arab Emirates adapted a new internet language that is cool and funky to communicate; and the variation of linguistic in internet relay chat channels of in German-speaking Switzerland.

          The second short paper was my favorite. It was very interesting thing to analyze the self-presentation strategies of a stranger on the internet by examining her MySpace profile and learn how this person introduced herself publicly to show her unique identity and share her photos and posts with her friends.

          The last short paper was also a valuable experience where I had to analyze online community and see how people support each other financially and emotionally and exchange the information to cope with their daily stressors.  I found this online community have strong ties and bonding with each others. Also they are bridging the information between each others and using the online resources to improve and expand the voluntary work online and offline.

          The development of the internet and the other technologies such as the iPhones and iPods changed my life to the best.  For example, whenever I have long boring doctor appointment, instead of sitting in the waiting room doing nothing and feeling sicker I can use my iPhone to Google something to read. If I was waiting for an important email from a professor I can check it anytime instead of waiting my time in school looking for a lab to use the computer or carry my laptop with me everyday to school as I used to do before I start using iPhone.

          Some questions such as whether the excessive use of internet and other new technologies would affect the language and the face-to-face social interactions of our children and many other questions need to be re-examined. However over all the researchers are optimistic about the future of these new technologies.

I liked starting this semester with a short history lesson on the advent of the internet. Its strange how much I already knew about the internet from my class with Dr. Markman last semester, and yet I couldn’t have told you anything about its origins. One of the things I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over this semester is the fact that we (as internet users) drive the development of new technologies, and yet so many of us participate in the doomsday rhetoric associated with the degradation of communication and our own safety at the hands of technology. I hope our readings this semester, and especially our text book by Nancy Baym has provided a new perspective for others as it has for me. While I’m still concerned with privacy especially, I think about online interactions, and particularly the concept of space very differently. For example, a lot of people point to the fact that teenagers spend too much time indoors “nowadays” and that mobile phones and game consoles connected to the internet are partly to blame. However, if they are getting the same, and maybe even more, social interaction with their peers online outside of school, does it really matter where that interaction is happening?

I had not read much about online communities before this semester, and that topic will be one of my main take aways from this semester. I had read before about the advantage of having large weak tie networks to access diverse information, but it hadn’t occurred to be how much emotional benefit some individuals get from online communities. The IRL documentary in particular was eye opening for me, because we were hearing the story from the users. However, as the next generation grows up with technology (like the iPhone and iPad) literally at their fingertips from birth, what will the consequences be? Maybe there won’t be any, but I wonder how spending so much time in front of a screen will effect their ability to translate facial expression, problem solve, or change the way they think of private versus public information. If their mothers have put naked baby photos of them on the internet since birth, what will they think are the socially acceptable limits of self-disclosure?

Lastly, I appreciate how Baym talks about finding a balance. I don’t believe that we’re reached a “norm” with mobile as we have with other kinds of computer mediated communication like email. I hope we can all find a balance to use technology to enhance our lives and have the good sense to put it away at the dinner table.

In the BBC interview with Danah and Aleks, they discuss how technology has changed so much and the methods we use to communicate. Aleks refers to back when kids used to communicate with friends from school and neighboring kids just by interacting publicly like going to the mall. The way teenagers choose to communicate now is mainly through text messaging and social media sites in which they know more than just friends locally but from other places as well. Baym discusses her views on how there is a difference in technology between people that did not grow up with certain features (2010). One thing that I liked about the BBC interview was how she described adults using social media sites for personal and it following them for the rest of their lives. It can show a trail of what a person did and gives an insight to who they are when potential careers and political runnings are at stake. But why should teachers and administrators have to live in a life secrecy when they are not in the classrooms? I feel that teachers have lives and are just as social as the next person and what they choose to do after school hours is pretty much their business. The social views of others should not matter if that person does their job and does not interrupt their careers with outside personal activities.

In the BBC interview with Danah, she talks a lot about how teenagers are interacting a lot differently today then they were before the internet came around. She speaks of a time when teenagers would meet up at the mall or the movies to be with their friends and have their social interactions. Now a days, a lot of this social interaction is taking place online through Twitter, Facebook or other SNSs. Teens are still seeing each other in person, but they are also talking about what they are doing online. Danah mentions a privacy issue. If you were running for political office, you wouldnt want people to find out stuff you did as a teenager online. She said in this age. you can go online and see how people were as teenagers and that can be embarassing to some people. Used to you would just go to a school year book if you wanted to find that out. The internet gives us a bigger platform. The biggest issue with communicating on the internet seems to be privacy.

In her BBC interview, Boyd touched on the paradox of our existence online. We produce heaps of information that stays visible or searchable. Longevity is an unavoidable certainty (nothing ever dies on the internet).  Everyone has a repository of information published on the web. One’s absence might seem more suspicious than any compromising information that could surface. So, in an attempt to strike back, we try to create a certain amount of transparency in our online profiles.  We can be mindful of our tracks and self-presentation.  We can also demand a more responsible system.

How do we incorporate technologies into the balance of our lives? They obviously have benefits, but we see their limitations and potential threats.  We are sensitive to some of the recurring issues: privacy, presentation, engagement, and responsibility. The studies we have read over the semester spanned years of research, reflective of generations of thought condensed into a short time. The more recent studies have shown the increasing acceptance and adoption of technologies by a growing population.  This week’s readings focused on cell phones, Facebook, and commentary on the role of technology in our lives.  The Smith reading emphasized our increasing adoption of tools. As we familiarize ourselves with this technology and begin to trust the technology, we become immersed in the relationship.  Older users were typified as being concerned about privacy, while younger users were concerned about their social role. Younger and more savvy users recognized some risk, and took steps to manage their settings  and presentation (Boyd & Hargiatti).

Older generations of adults saw the privacy risk as physical and psychological vulnerabilities. Their fears were technology’s intrusion on their well-being established in the real world. We might demand stricter guidelines for security. Possibly some type of certification will emerge to establish a sense of trust. (Since each site is different, there is no uniform security. A certification could make this more plausible. Sort of like good-will forces of the internet.

The biggest risk for our truly important private information will require stronger security. I think the future will hold something we see in our Science Fiction movies – of bio-identifiers: fingerprints, eye-scanners, and voice-activation, in combination with passwords, instead of archaic modes of identification like SSN #s, address, email, etc. That would stave off the physical threat of identity theft… for a while.

We have to become more educated in our mediated lifestyles, but bigger organizations should be held accountable for their ethically questionable practices.  It would really help if companies were banned from buying and selling all the information to better manipulate us.  I understand the opportunities that Big Data provides for targeted advertising, but I don’t think we should all submit to this, especially when we are coerced into accepting the inexorable structure.

We need to support more conscious designers, discourage corrupt practices, and generate more trust. These are perpetual issues of society, but just as relevant in our online social behavior.  There is so much hope and potential for our elevated communication practices, we need to adapt our structures to be more permissive of such freedom.