Final Blog?

For a final blog entry we were asked to examine our online uses and see if there has been any change. And to that question I can not say there are any major things that have influenced me in any way. I do think if anything it has been a bad influence on me, exposing me to other things that I do not really need to be using but find fun or simply a relaxation tool. One such example of this is face book which I did not have until the summer and the main intent in getting it was to stay in tough with people that were away fro the summer and now I find myself using it to avoid talking to people because rather than calling them I can just write on their wall. I wish I had almost stuck with the original intent of using it to keep in touch and not a lazy person’s tool. But in general the class has made me more aware of the things I am doing and causes me to question things like, would it be easier to just call, or do I really need to buy these shoes because I can support small business by going to the store and purchasing them in person. What is a person to do? I almost wish the class had made us explore the more personal aspects of why we do things online, sort of like a psyche class that relates online behavior to the way our brain functions. I hope to farther examine myself and try to grow on a personal level about who I am and what I do online. With the intent that someday I can merge the two together and ensure that people know the same me online and in person, but I am not sure which part has more room for improvement because like mentioned earlier it is often just easier to open up when not face to face versus when we are, and that for me is a large task that could use a lot of work. So in short I have learned a lot about myself in a way that I did not expect to at all. I may even choose to continue to blog as a means of keeping in touch wiht some friends and family.

The New Flu

The computer has not only helped us stay in touch with those that are far away but it has also helped us to stay away from those that are near and dear to our hearts while they are carrying a nasty virus called the flu. Although most people think they are safe from that by talking with these fallen friends via face book some 120 million users have been stricken by the newest in a series of face book spread viruses. This virus being referred to as koobface is spread to people via their friends list. The virus makes not of the friends and sends them an email notification as most normally get when someone has written on their wall or tagged a photo of them. Which is essentially what notification states, however it then prompts the user to take the time to install the latest version of any number of video programs to allow this notification to come through. Then during this process it infects the person whom the notification was sent to, causing a wider spread of the virus because it now has a new friends list to attack. So between the vast numbers of friends some people collect and the six degrees of separation theory it is quite possible to have the virus working its way to a computer near you. This all happens ironically as the beginning of the actual flu season begins to hit and people prepare to venture out to get their flu shots only if where that simple to get a simple injection for your computer or face book page and have all the troubles of online viruses go away.

Learning Vs. Gaming

While mulling over the idea of Second life being more of a game for many of us rather than a community like those that are devoted second lifers, I came across an outline of the possible uses for the use of CMC in classes. The site http://nettskolen.com/forskning/19/cmcped.html is a detailed description of all the potential things that could be done in regards to using the computer. I found a small section on the gaming community and how it can be used for this type of learning.

From farther investigation it seems that a professor can find or create on online game or simulation where the students then go on and play. The difference is that they use the game in terms of a real life situation. Try for example they would have a part where student gamers go into an office for an interview to role play the types of questions and actins that would be appropriate for whatever the job field they are applying for. This then gives them the opportunity to act as if it is more of a real life situation, because they have know way of actually knowing who is doing the interviewing and could potentially build vital skills to help them succeed in attaining a real life job.

Also I could see this being used in an expanse of helping individual’s whit personality disorders to better understand appropriate behavior for social situations through a game. This idea stems form the series of studies based on how violent games influence behavior so why not create games where they are repercussions or actions seen as inappropriate to teach proper behavior. This could then lead to an online escape for a gamers to learn for a future career of even what is considered the normal types of behavior for today’s society.

Last minute decision

With the elections coming up more and more people are in a last minute search for information on which the best candidate for the presidency is. It is quite possible for many to stumble upon information provided by blogs or other sources that seem more credible that have a hidden biased. These are just some of the simple ways that computer mediated communication has affect our most important political decisions.

One of the best examples of some of the good being done comes from the way in which our representatives are leading the way. Instead of sending letters or trying to meet with the representatives, the citizens can simply email their concerns to the corresponding government officials. True the representatives are unlikely to read every concern they receive, but chances are they have a staff that is responsible for directing them to the most important of issues.

Some of the major downfalls though come from the same basis. People are more likely to try and spread there opinion based on the ease at which they can do it. People can use blogs, podcast, or even personal emails. It is not too much work to accrue a long list of email addresses and simply press send after jotting down ones political beliefs. On the same time they could be using the same methods for good and simply encouraging others to vote. Not all people need to try and press there thoughts onto others. Most people though do wander onto things with intent to find things that they either previously agree with or can comment on and try to stir up farther emotion and create a war of words.

So in the end it is quite possible to use computer mediated communication to help gain support for one side of a political election while at the same time having other push those same supporters away. Which in the end creates more of a mass of confusion, for those who have not taken the time to do their research prior to the election?

Small Rant Session

This is more of a rant and rave as well as a period of questioning. I was faced with a mild dilemma this past week after receiving an email from my grandmother. Knowing all to well we have all dealt with a similar situation and also just can not stand it. What am I talking about, chain emails, surveys, and whatever else may pop up in our in box.

I have found there to be two basic types the first is the informational. These ones specialize in appealing to our emotions and trying to get us to make as many changes to our lives as possible. The latest was a one sharing the prominence of a new street drug that is harming local children. The interesting part is that there are never any actual areas mentioned and more often than not you can not find any news stories related to it. They claim it appears as pop rocks and tastes exactly the same minus the effects that occur afterword. It’s also sort of interesting to me that it is occurring around Halloween much like the old stories of kids dying from razor blades in apples that they received as treats. So instead of spreading the story via word of mouth like the old ones, they are using their email lists.

The next type is those that call for political change of some sort. Whether it is to change something that has been done or it has to due with getting some more coverage under a media spotlight to expose the corrupt politicians. More often that not they are something that we can agree with, it is just hard to find the time to forward the information. It becomes even harder to decide to bother our friends and risk how they will feel based on our decision to foreword these things.

The major thing for all of these is that it is so evident how many people could be reached by simply having each person sending it to 2 other people. The possibilities are so great that it is nearly impossible to fathom so many connections. The only thing that is potentially equal in sheer size to the potential is having everyone on face book join one single group, oh wait they did its called face book.

To put it bluntly I am tired of the inbox being full of useless things that do not mean anything to me because if I was truly interested I would I would go and find the information on my own through news web sights that are relevant to me. Why can't peopel simple send you an interesting like that they found that way you can see for yourself it the infromation even holds any possible truth.

The Distortonist

With the presidential election running up behind us all, I thought it was important to show how much of a role the Computer world affects our entire nation. The first most obvious things are all the resources that are available. Some of these things include the politician’s standings on issues, blogs on what others are following, media perceptions of what is seen, and simply having the capability to register to vote.


The biggest step is the registration process that can all be done from home. It has had a major increase in the number of registered voters. My only hope would be that there could be an online voting system, we could quite possibly have 100% voter turnout, other than those that truly are unable to get to a computer or a voting booth.


Also with all of the distorted pictures we get from the politicians as they debate one another rather than the issues only serves to confuse potential voters. This confusion only gets worse when viewers watch news reports or try to gather information on the internet from news sites. The media too has their own biased opinions. The only ways to get around these things are to simply look at candidates past records, which the internet serves to speed up the process a little bit by making it, take days to learn a lot rather than years of following a candidates entire career. One good site to follow candidates past records on specific issues that may be important to a voter is Vote Smart. Which puts all the information in one place?


Therefore I feel one of the most important issues that faces us today is making a decision on who to vote for. It is almost impossible to trust our own opinions, so we need to use what is available to us to find as much good and unbiased information as we can.

Hey Roomie!!!

I had wanted to do some farther looking online schooling from the beginning of our experiences this week. But I was interested to find this article about how some colleges are using a new profiling program to have student find roommates. The link to the article is http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct-fea--onlineroommat0927sep27,0,5892616.story. It is just awesome to think that I could have known a majority of my class prior to starting college and also avoided roommate problems that I dealt with my first year. There are very few drawbacks that I can think would even occur from using these types of systems.


The part that I find the most interesting is the option the student have as well as the benefits that the school gains. The school no longer has to do the entire roommate work and hope for the best by just randomly combining students. The system works by students crating a profile with interests and study habits. They then use this system to look up one another and also are able to chat and post on a wall system much like face book.


Overall the program seems to be working well the main drawback are a lack of student participation that is hovering around 50% for most of the schools it has been introduced to. The system of allowing students to choose roommates also helps them insure they will get along with their roommate, which is a major benefit when beginning college experience. The program has also helped students to know someone before they even begin school, which really helps because most of the schools that use it are accepting more than 800 freshman and they are from all around the United States. Overall I think this should be introduced as an option at all schools allowing students to meet people and also help people get acquainted.

IM in the Office

This is extraordinary to me! That it has been proven that persons whom work in a cubical style workplace are claiming that using instant messenger only creates a small distraction compared to more common types such as phone calls and face to face conversations. The idea is that the work can be focused and only pertain to information that is essential to the work that needs to be done. It is the idea that you can wait to respond to a message more easily than a phone call where one would feel obligated to answer immediately.

The idea I find hard to grasp is that employees would only talk to those that they are working with. It’s not like the employer has controls to see who someone is messaging. That and even if they attempted someone would probably claim infringement into their freedom of speech. So how do we expect employees to honestly do more work with such a simple distraction? I know for myself I had to remove Instant Messenger from my computer due to me not getting work done. Work that could wait for a five minute chat, that would soon become two hours and leave me scrambling to finish before it was due at midnight.

Hence the case for them to remove instant messenger from the office altogether. The research done was also merely interviews where they sat down with employees and asked them how they felt their work was affected by Instant Messenger. Instead of actually comparing offices productivity of businesses that allow IM and those that do not to see which gets more work done. This is an only a suggestion for potential methods to confirm or deny thee findings. But in my opinion the findings are not the best and can stand to have farther investigation .

Cyber Bullies

I found a reading to continue the idea of cyber bullying. It was interesting to see there views on how to solve the problem. The most common from both what we watched in class and what I read was for teens to block those people offending them. This is a great idea but how simple is it to create another profile or go onto a friends screen name and use it to carry out the dirty work.


The next piece of advice offered to teens suffering from the bullying is to simply limit their friend list to those whom that are truly close friends. This comes as a shock to me being that friends list should not be about how many friends they can claim to have when in fact they only talk with a few.


The following is a major hindrance to the idea of privacy. Teens sharing their passwords that are meant to only allow them to access their profile. How can it be seen as ok to share things of that nature? I find it disturbing that so little of the society is relying on building relationships in person.


I completely agree that having these means of CMC are easier to maintain long distance relationships or even reconnecting with friends long forgotten. But wouldn’t it look just as nice to keep those relationships, because if it was someone that truly meant something to me I could manage to find another way to stay in contact with them. Look people were able to do it across a country even prior to telegraphs, so why can teens not do the same and talk on the phone or just pass notes in school. This would eliminate the online bullying altogether, and when in person it could easily be deterred by a teacher, who is there to intervene.

Cyber kinetics

Cyber kinetics the art of using peoples brainwaves to control mechanics. The basis of this is to allow persons who have lost a limb to compensate by using a mechanical one. The easiest way to explain this is to take someone missing a hand and have it replaced with a mechanical one. This is then attached to a sophisticated computer system that attaches to the brain then using the brain impulses that would have once controlled the hand to do the same for the new mechanical one.


This is an awesome method of CMC, but instead of people conversing to one another through the system the system actually communicates with the machine. It’s quite impressive to think that we can use this to replace the human form. This science could potentially mean that one day everyone is plugged in, literally. We could be jacked into the car, computer, even work without having to ever leave our beds. Although at this point the science is very specific to individual systems who is to say we can not use the system to remotely control thoughts or speak to one another without ever moving our lips.


I am really excited to see where the potential of these systems takes us. I am currently envisioning a world where instead of ever typing I simply think what I want to appear on the screen and the words appear as I am thinking them. Not like the voice recognition systems that exist today, but where I can have multiple thoughts and have the ones that are meant to be in a paper appear rather than all the things that I go through my mind. Not the thought that this could happen more that this will one day be a reality is what scares me. How will our families be able to communicate with one another, let alone our children be able to have what today is consider normal social behavior.


So for the sake of lives let’s keep going with Cyber kinetics and the potentials it holds but at some point in our future we are going to need to examine where we want things to go and draw the lines of what is too much.

Buffy

While watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer we as a class were asked to look at some of the connections we found between the Computer Mediated Communication today and what exactly the producers of the program were trying to achieve. Most of which is based on our personal observations between the two.


On a personal level I felt that it covered a few things throughout the program. The first one was and is a major concern to people today and that is getting connected to others. Not only are people today continuing old relationships and helping to maintain them but they are also forming new ones. Some of which they are not aware of whom they are meeting. Such is the case in the film where one of the girls meets a demon online.


This has all come about because of the transition to the electronic age. This is exemplified in the world today by Westminster College, part of this being the renovation of the library, to ensure that it stays up to date. This updating process does not include new reading materials instead it is a physical space most of which will be taken up by student using ht computers.


Also is it not odd that during the program the cyber world of the internet became the physical though the actual incarnation of the demon. Is that to say that our thoughts dreams and face book accounts instead of being just something online will become our only means of communicating with people in at the desk next to us?


These are just a few of the thoughts that occurred to me. It is tough to say exactly what the producers were trying to secretly say through Buffy’s adventure. However it is quite probable to say that it was more a means of having the program air that it is to foreshadow their personal opinions on what the future of the Computer mediated Communication has in store for us that we have not yet found out yet. My belief is that they simply are trying to send a message that we need to make sure we look at our information systems as they develop and make sure they help more than they hinder.