About My Project

This is late but still..

My project basically tried to describe the different perspectives in new media usage. It was a broad topic so i decided to divide it in to the usage and the issues sections for each and every perspective described. Of all the four perspectives provided, the technological and ethical seemed to be the hardest to talk about while anthropological was interesting and educational was easiest to do. Technological perspective is difficult because it is hard to understand what part is new media and what part is technology. Or the fact that should we even address to these things as technology.

Anthropological was interesting because of the cases I read through while doing the research. The fact that being such a positive thing to so many people around the world can also harm many indigenous people is very surprising.
The ethical perspective takes on a whole new level because this is a new era, the era where everyone everywhere has access to new media. So how do we decide what the right and wrong things to do in this situation are? It has taken us couple of dozens of years to decide where rights come in when related to property specially intellectual property. When New Media comes in to play, it is all broken because who knows what is right and what is wrong? Who is going to decide it? It is going to take us a couple of more years to decide when we have a green flag when we have red. Until then all we can try to do is to stay within what government says is illegal such as p2p sharing and do the right thing.

The next new thing

I think the next new thing might come in through the online video sharing. I recently read an article where a High school senior asked out this girl, who has put up videos showing makeup techniques, to prom. Seems like a weird but a regular story right? But the only difference is, he asked her out through youtube. He made a video asking her to go to the prom with him in which he played guitar and sang a song for her. This has become a new trend for teenagers. Well if not anything, this story shows New media in action. This is the reason why, I think the next new thing would be in this area. I think in the (near) future, people would use this video creating technology for much larger purposes. I can see a future where people from all over the world are contributing to the news by posting videos about what's happening around them. They'll basically become the news readers, and their opinion would be out there. This would replace the biased tv channels which broadcast news that they support. In my imagination, we could flip through channels showing different videos of people broadcasting things that happened around the places they live.

We can decide by flipping through the channels if we want to watch news from around the world, country or state. Though this has already happened, the presidents and high authorities of different countires would be online from a particular time when they would be asked questions online to which they would respond instantly. I think that Youtube and sites similar to it will go a long way.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Privacy, in this world where a person who really knows what they are doing with a computer can track down you entire history starting from the day you were born to what kind of toilet tissues you purchased online, is an important thing for everyone. New media has given everyone tools to track whatever, whoever and where ever they want. This is not to say that it is all of waste. The fact that new media makes it possible for security systems such as military all over the world to track criminals, catch users of illegal material, makes this a possible thing. But imagine every time you sit down in front of a computer you feel as if two eyes are watching every move you make, everything you type in. This is the negative effect of this kind of new media. When one puts in their information including their phone number, address and everything, it is an easy pass for an online predator who is waiting for an opportunity. Many sites that pop up or under ask you to give in your information claiming to be the original site. Many people who are just starting to use a computer would be very trusting and provide them with all the information becoming the bait for these predators. In a world of new media, where virtual worlds are used to train people in certain things and where technology becomes something that is being invented every single moment rather than a flash in every few years, privacy and confidentiality become major problems and threats.

Over time if people are not sure that the websites that they'll be visiting are fake-proof, they would probably stop visiting it all together. This is also the reason security has become such a huge industry these past few years. People need to be assured that visiting and using an online system to get work done faster is okay. And after so many things that did go wrong, this seems like it would take sometime until everyone trusts the new media.