Rzheng117's Blog

I am dedicating this entry in response to Nicholas’s term research project titled, The Effects of Net Neutrality and its Existence in the Future. His research topic is something that really brought things home for me, as net neutrality is a topic I have heard about in several instances and is something I do think about seriously. In his presentation, Nicholas gave thorough insight to the economic ramifications of a neutral and non-neutral internet. In extreme cases we see that the costs of the unequal use of internet resources falls on the internet service provider (ISP) and the end users. Net neutrality seeks to solve this problem by reallocating costs to the content providers instead. This would likely result in less content for users of specific services, or more scenarios of paid for content, both of which cases the costs ultimately befall the users. I think this is something that we already see to some degree today, but the magnitude of the problems we face when dealing with net neutrality can be far greater, for which I am grateful is not the case as of now.

I can only assume that Professor Schwartz’s class was the only one to have both a presentation and a paper, so in the interest of avoiding a redundant blog post (see previous post) I will briefly go into the logistics of my research.

My sources consisted mostly of scholarly and business publications taken from the NexisLexis database made available by the school library. At first I was concerned with the economic implications of new media technology and how ad generated revenue would compare to that of the old. I quickly found myself going off topic with an disproportionate amount of research on ad placement in video streams and online sites. For the second half of my research, I took on the statistical data of what viewers watched online and how reports of platform shifts between television and internet viewings. Lastly I took examples from personal experiences with old and new media and incorporated them into my explanation of how new media has worked well in complementing the old.

More of my findings can be found on my new media wiki page.

For my term research project titled: Online Streaming and Old Media, I explored the various changes in viewer habits with respect to television shows and online videos. One of the most notable points to be made here is that as video streaming has become more popular with the help of expanding resources to do so (e.g. bandwidth), so have online video sites, such as YouTube. It should be made clear that online video content is entirely possible without the use of streaming, a technique that allows faster access to video content, as opposed to what would normally be a full video download.

Businesses and network/cable broadcasting companies make use of online streaming to aid the promotion of their products or shows, despite their strong ties to older media, like the television. Online videos are so prevalent today and the market for it is quite large. Advertisements on these video streaming sites and the videos on the sites are sources of revenue with the hundreds of thousands to millions of viewers every day. While the use of this new media has cannibalized the attention of some viewers by taking them away from the television set for good, it as also helped bring viewers the other way around, from the computer to the television screen.

The Baruch New Media Wiki has come along throughout this semester. I have seen our semester’s pages grow from the small empty tables in the class bios and blogs page to an extensive database of users and their contributions. Personally I have contributed the standard biography, twitter and blog to the wiki, along with my research for the term on the effects of new video media on viewing habits. As a foodie, I have tried to contribute my fair share to our class wiki project, The Edsel (named after the Ford Edsel car model), to any articles regarding food or food habits. Two pages I have left my mark on are The Diet of a Baruch College Student, which quickly outlines a few places to eat around the school, and Share Your Food Rules Here, which is a nifty page created by a fellow classmate on how we each go about performing the most important activity in all of human life, eating.

New media has definitely transformed the way people within a society interact with each other. This change may not be apparent with the generations that were around during a time when today’s new media was not as developed, but certainly among young adults, teens and children we can see how different things are. These new media offer new means of communication, mostly on a text based platform via phone messaging or social networking sites. The though of a phone call today would seem old fashioned and far too intimate for the casual conversation. This is one thing that seems the faze older generations today, and a common argument seems to be that this text based interaction forms weak bonds (which I agree with to some degree, but offer the benefit of the doubt to the new generations on the grounds of changing times and changing values). It would be ignorant to say that just because this new way of engaging in conversation is not the same as the way things once were, as the value judgment of right, wrong, good and bad are purely subjective.

The issues of privacy and confidentiality brings this discussion back to the topic on social networking media. The fact that it takes very little searching to find out some kind of information about a person on the internet makes it a rather big issue for a person to willingly disclose private information about oneself (date of birth, location, full name, etc.). By doing so, it is very easy to draw links between an anonymous person’s internet user name and the actual person him or herself. Additionally, two or three fields of information, including name and date of birth, are enough for others to engage in fraudulent activities and steal identities, the most common practice being credit card applications.

Setting aside other methods of monitoring users by IP addresses, there are organizations out there that take commercial activity in data mining information on individuals. Although the internet is generally thought to be a place to freely express oneself, it is wise to always be aware what personal information there is out there that others can collect.

The next “new media?” I would like to see something that can process and record our thoughts in a user controlled manner. I am sure that such technology or research exists to some degree, but I hope to one day find that I will be able to talk with the people I care about simply by thinking about them in my mind. This convenience (and not a hope out of laziness by any means) would surely transform the way I view communication today. In a sense this could bring personal interactions back home or to a completely new level. Then again, as if there weren’t enough concerns for the encroachment of privacy today with social networking, the threat of privacy could also be brought to a whole new level as well. As for the logistics of implementing such a difficult piece of technology, I can only assume it involves some type of implanting of technology on the end user and a some central satellite that can relay thoughts from one user to another.

My advice to Baruch College? Throughout the years I have come face to face with several issues, gripes, or whatever you may choose to call it. Here are a few to name. Now I understand that escalators and elevator have less to do with new media technology than say blackboard does, I would still like to see some improvements rather than having to climb non operational escalators on weekdays, only to find that they are working perfectly fine on weekends (yes, I am aware they are undergoing improvements to be seen by the end of 2011, but I am about as sure about it as I am sure that the MTA will have a second avenue train line running sometime soon, whenever that is). Elevators are another issue as well, which I am sure they are “addressing.” I can only hope that they decide to permanently fix the backdoor entry problems.

With regards to IT and new media, blackboard is working most of the time, but it seems to go down when we need it the most, as exampled by the outage a few days ago. CUNY should either scrap it and find a new system, or work on improving stability and the tools we actually need. I can name many of the features on blackboard that I could do without. Lastly, CUNY or Baruch needs to be clear about what they are using for student identification numbers. The use Social Security Numbers, I find, are highly unnecessary and potentially dangerous to be giving out for the simplest inquiries asked by Baruch. What ever happened to the six digit login or the library ID?

Virtual realities have several different uses, the most common one today that I can think of would be to run a video game off of (a massive multiplayer one). MMO’s are probably the most popular and marketable forms of virtual worlds, where users create their own avatars and interact with the game environment alongside with other users. A more chilled use of virtual worlds would be what man consider Second Life to be, a second world to many people. There are no elements of gaming in it, but there is still much creation and accessorizing, all left up to the imagination of the user. The pros of virtual worlds belong to the users’ ability to interact with others, barring any circumstances or barriers that exist in the corporeal world. The obvious con here is the potential loss of touch from physical reality and exclusive reliance on a virtual one. Once again, the limits of a virtual world are boundless and essentially up to the end users’ creativity to decide. There may come one day in the future that we may find virtual worlds to be an integral part of social interactions for all people, and thus we can seamlessly interact between the two worlds in our daily routines.

Social networking is one of the most pervasive forms of new media to reach society today. It is intuitively useful for many reasons, and without giving much thought to it, social networking sites are used by millions of people around the world. The most common use of these sites are for individuals to connect with friends other other acquaintances as a tool to extend the range of communication beyond the personal, day to day interactions. On the other hand, social networking is also useful in the work place as well. As shown by Nissan, and described in greater detail in the article (Why Is Nissan Mimicking MySpace?), social networking sites in a closed environment helps unify the workforce in some cases, especially when there are large corporations that have operations in several locations.

The obvious downfall, or “dark side” to be aware of when it comes to social networking is the disclosure of too much personal information. Allowing details as seemingly harmless as a birthday to be known actually puts the user at risk of fraud and identity theft. With regards to the future use of social networking resources, it is likely to become a more vital part of our daily lives, as there are already many organizations out there trying to push the social networking as the platform for their product markets. One example of this could be a controlled way of submitting a personal profile from a social networking site as a resume. This is an idea that has been previously mentioned in one of our class discussions, but I personally found it quite intriguing to see how both employers and employees would view this proposal.