Creativity and New Media

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New media fosters creativity because you can use it in many different ways. I decided to make a "gif" or a graphics interchange file. My second life character is starting into a lighthouse light. But the way I captured the image i can say that the light is a teleporter to another dimension. That the shining light is dragging my character into another world. There are many possibilities in interpretation and that is what makes new media important in fostering creativity. People get access to doing things which they couldn't before.

Creativity

New media fosters creativity because it gives a chance for the everyday person to do something for someone else's entertainment. People can use their creative minds to alter someone else's work as "parodies" and that can change or give birth to new genres. In Brooks Barnes' New York Times article, "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?" states that people start creating mash ups and that started a new genre in new media entertainment. The mash ups consists on syncing Disney cartoons to songs. It is because of the new media outlets, people can use it and more or less make something their own.

Social Networking

Social networking is being used by almost everyone nowadays from the high school student to the corporate executives in large companies. Social networking can be used a multitude of ways. People can use it for finding information on certain things because its more reliable to find someone who knows what you are looking for than relying solely on the internet. Additionally, corporations use social networking to gauge how the public responds to the company's products or to listen to feedback and improve upon their products. Social networking is beneficial to many people. As stated in Frank Lanfitt's article, Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, " But what really makes LinkedIn helpful us that it allows users to share their online Rolodexes...With LinkedIn, he can find people faster using a vastly increased network of contacts." As you can see, social networking can help people find jobs easier since you can find people for any type of job. But social networking is not always a good thing. Social media can have a "dark side" as well. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education's article, They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus - Gossip Web sites, they state, "Students have more ways than ever to post anonymous attacks on classmates, thanks (or rather, no thanks) to new and expanded online forums." This article shows that social networking can be used negatively since there are sites out there that are made for users to hurt other people. These people would encourage the anonymous users to post embarrassing pictures and videos of others. In the future, social networking is just going to get easier to do. People would be able to find people for jobs easier and bullying online would be easier. I think that nothing much would change in the future regarding social networking but it would just be easier to use than it is now.

Blogs vs. Wikis

In this day in age, people in all ages has the need to be connected to the internet. The need to connect to people has become common practice within the modern world. People of all ages uses sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to be connected to people and as well as sharing one's life with everyone. Blogs and Wikis have seen less use due to it being overshadowed by larger social media sites. But blogs and wikis are very useful if used correctly. Blogs can be used for the collaboration of large groups of people. People in blogs can help people in all sorts of ways. An example of collaboration between people in blogs is that "people don't like to fight alone. There is strength in numbers" stated by Katherine Khatari in Micheal Wilson's 2008 article for the New York Times, Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid. It is because of this blog that this Brooklyn neighborhood had that it helped the police track down and arrest criminals in their neighborhood. Blogs are not the only useful one. Wikis can be useful as well. Wikis can pool together information fairly effectively. An article by Information Weekly states, "It's a well-researched, well-written, and highly regarded source of information. If one person makes incorrect or inappropriate changes to an entry, others can roll the page back to the way it was before, or keep the changed and edit them further." Based on this information, I think that wikis can be used in the classroom setting by pooling together information for classmates to help each other study for exams. Information can be edited and pooled by classmates about the materials learned throughout the semester and that can help people study.