As I started on this week’s readings, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend several years ago about using the iPad for work purposes. This person was complaining that he couldn’t get the apps to work exactly the way he wanted them to. He was expecting several features to work like technology he was used to. For instance, he was frustrated that he had to adapt to the way the files were stored and retrieved because it differed from how he was used to storing and retrieving files on a computer. Furthermore, he was frustrated by the limitations of an app’s pen tool because it did not work exactly like a traditional pen works on paper. I explained that in order to use most technologies, you have to adapt to its capabilities. But he told me that he would have to consider the costs required to adopt the technology, including the time and energy it took to learn it, and whether it would be worth the benefits offered by the technology.

At the time, I thought this was a silly response because, as a technology enthusiast, I couldn’t imagine who wouldn’t think such adoption was worth it. But it occurred to me that some people might actually prefer to stick with old technologies because adopting a new technology could stifle their creativity and productivity. After all, as pointed out by Marshall (2004, chapter 2), new media apparatus is highly structured and often asks us to identify with someone else’s mental structure. In this way, new media could be viewed as more of a detriment than a benefit.

Correa and Jeong (2011) put an interesting twist on studies that examine how consumers use online participatory tools. By distinguishing among diverse racial and ethnic groups, they demonstrated that not all college students have the same opinions about such tools. In my opinion, their most interesting finding was white and Asian students’ discouragement with the uncontrolled nature of participatory web applications. I was surprised that members of the generation that everyone says has no limits when it comes to new media actually refrain from creating content and even stop using certain online participatory tools due to negative discourse.

Finally, I was intrigued by Blank and Reisdorf’s (2012) quest to define and examine Web 2.0. I’ve had a difficult time finding a “good” definition of Web 2.0 in the research I’ve reviewed for the trend analysis and for other academic papers I’ve worked on. They identified two components of Web 2.0 that I found useful: 1) that it takes advantage of network effects and 2) that it utilizes platforms, or simple environments where users can do what they want. While I do not necessarily like the authors’ definition of Web 2.0 (“using the Internet to provide platforms through which network effects can emerge”), I think that the Web 2.0 components they identified will be useful as I continue to develop my own definition of and thoughts about Web 2.0.