Creativity

When I think of the relationship between new media and creativity, I think of people using new media platforms to share works that they have made.  For example, people can post their fan art or fan fiction all over tumblr for others to see, spread, and hopefully the celebrity that it involves will see.  

However, in the article Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers, it shows how users' creativity can be used in a different way.  Instead of sharing works of art, people share their ideas on how to make twitter better for all the users on twitter.  "When people started referring to Twitter posts as “tweets,” Twitter resisted until a few months ago, when it applied for a trademark on the term." In this case, users decided to be creative and think of a name for their posts that are unique to the service.  It is also easier to ask if someone saw your tweet than asking if they saw your twitter post.  This also shows that a company should listen to their users in order to create a long lasting system.  

Due to users' creativity, Twitter now has numerous functions that were not always there.  These features include, retweeting, tagging people in a tweet with the @ symbol and using hashtags to mark tweets with a certain topic.  New media makes it possible for users to use a platform and change it to make their experience better.  They are able to think up new ideas that not even a huge company like Twitter would think of. 

Works Cited:
Miller, Claire Cain (October 25, 2009). Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers. 
     New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html

Creativity and New Media

Using New Media, I have a character in the virtual world of Toontown Rewritten.  This platform is a recreation of the Disney made Toontown Online.  The original site shutdown in 2013.  Fans were devestated and some recreated it with Toontown Rewritten.  Now I had never played the original but my friend introduced me to the recreation and I absolutely love it. 

Below is a picture of my character that I named Deputy Cuddles Paddleglow:

I was able to customize my character and make it my own.  The name is created by mixing preloaded words that the platform gives the users.  With all the options it was so difficult to think of a name but honestly, I'm weirdly proud of mine.  You then can choose your clothes, color, and what animal you want to be.  I kind of forgot what animal I chose but I do like it!

In this game you can fight evil robot Cogs by using gags such as pies, water sprays, and other odd objects.  You are able to level up, complete tasks, and talk to other toons around the map.  It is a simple platform but extremely fun to use.  Now I must go and play this because I realized I have not played in a while and I want to revisit it.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds can be used in aspects of society that one might not traditionally think of.  Education can be greatly affected with the help of virtual reality googles.  Students are able to take field trips to far away places to learn about how refugees live or how volcanoes work (Earle).  This is more immersive because it is as if the student is in the situation and can experience it themselves.  It can also be used for a cheaper entertainment option.  During the recession, people spent more money on virtual worlds such as second life because it was cheaper to buy virtual goods than it is to buy real life goods (La Ferla).

Using virtual reality in the classroom can be good because the students are not just “consumers” of information and can actually interact with the world around them and the topic of which they are learning.  The use of VR also can help teach students empathy with real world events that are not directly happening to them (Earle).  However, it can be hard to separate education and entertainment.  If a teacher does not know how to teach through this technology, the use of VR can be pointless.  Virtual worlds can be good in an entertainment sense.  It allows users to buy high end fashion and go on luxury trips around the world for a small amount of real life money (La Ferla).  This is good in a way because people who are “shopaholics” would not run themselves into debt by spending all their money on pointless goods.  However, this is not good because if people do not buy goods in real life, then those companies will not make enough money and will have to close down because people are not spending any money.  This would lead to a worse economy and affect people in a domino affect.

Virtual worlds are made to be as a space for a person to be as creative as they want to be.  This technology is basically telling users to create their own story.  Some may be characters that are based off of their real life or they can be someone completely different.  The choice is theirs due to the endless amount of options available.

I think that the future of virtual worlds will continue to grow.  People are continuously looking for ways to disconnect from the stressors of everyday life.  For example, people who play dungeons and dragons can easily spend hours at a time spending time in a created world, playing fictional characters, doing all kinds of quests.  Since games like that are still very prevalent, virtual worlds can only get bigger from here.

Works Cited:
Earle, Joe (September 14, 2018).  The Virtual World Moves into the Classroom. Reporter  
     Newspapers. Retrieved from www.reporternewspapers.net/2018/09/14/the-virtual-world-moves- 
     into-the-classroom/
La Ferla, Ruth (October 21, 2009).  No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You. 
     NYTimes. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22Avatar.html

Blog about Twitter

Twitter creates a new way for people to have a discussion on the internet.  It is very different from having a blackboard discussion and an in-class discussion.  The obvious difference between twitter and an in-class discussion is that twitter is 100% online.  There could also be a bit of delay with a twitter discussion because you have to wait for people to respond to you whereas in-class is immediate.  Twitter is also fairly different than a blackboard discussion.  Both are fully online but blackboard allows people to type longer responses whereas twitter only allows a certain amount of characters.  The more indepth discussion on blackboard might also take longer than a twitter discussion since people do not have notifications for blackboard discussions.  Twitter is useful though because people can think about what they will respond with, unlike in-class discussions.  However, they will be faster than a blackboard discussion.

Social Networking Sites

There are many social networking sites available for people all over the world.  The ones that I mainly use are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.  Despite them all being similar because it is a way to communicate with a large amount of people, there are major differences between them.

To start off, let’s talk about Facebook, which has been around longer than some freshman in high school.  The impression that it gives off is that it is a very standard social networking site.  You can do just about anything on there.  You can share videos, pictures, articles, very long posts or very short posts all on this one site.  Of course it is also harder to keep all your information private. It seems like people rely on this platform for a lot of their news coverage

On the other hand, Instagram makes it simple to keep your information private.  The only thing public to all is your profile picture and your biography.  Besides that, no one will see the pictures you post unless you specifically allow them to follow you.  That being said, instagram is mainly just for posting pictures and videos and captioning them.  From what I have seen, it is mostly for people who want to share posts about themselves or of things they are passionate about.

Entering the Tumblr world it is basically just a blog for someone’s emotions and where creativity flows, but also some unorginiality.  In my experience with Tumblr, it is easy to fall into many pits.  You can find yourself posting a lot of sad and emotional stuff one day, and then a lot of artsy looking pictures the next, and find your way to the fanfiction pit.  That last one is unavoidable sometimes and that is where you can experience how imaginative people can be.  I feel like you can find out about things that people do not usually express about themselves in the real world.  In my opinion it is because you can make yourself be more anonymous by not sharing personal information.

Lastly, there is twitter, where I have had the least experience with.  It is a place for people to post quick thoughts due to the character limit with posts.  Users can also post pictures, videos and articles if they desire to do so.  Not knowing much about this site, I view it as a place where people can follow their favorite celebrities and people to keep updated on their lives and any pop culture news.  

Social Networking

Social networking is used in many different settings.  People use it to stay connected with loved ones,  voice their opinion, or just organizing their thoughts.  However, in the corporate setting social networking seems to be very helpful.  According to Dave Klonke, he uses Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin for different ways of communicating with the community.  Instagram is used to post pictures of the products that are being sold and is good for a more organic growth in consumers.  Facebook is used to tell the story of the company and communicating with the consumers.  Lastly, Linkedin is used to generate leads for new employees (Lavenduski).  Through this example, social networking is now a key factor in companies all around the world.

Now, of course, there are some benefits to social networking and some downsides.  One benefit is that people can easily stay connected with one another and allows there to be a constant connectivity between people (Stout).  They never have to be that far from the action of life.  Companies can also create relationships with customer (Lavenduski).  A perfect example of this was when I was looking for a place to apple picking this year.  I messaged each place that I was interested in to see what they had to offer.  It was a quick easy connection and I preferred the places where I was able to have an ongoing conversation with an actual person.  However, there are definitely some downsides to social media.  People become more withdrawn and skittish when it comes to face-to-face interactions since most interactions are now done online (Stout). Another is that websites, such as JuicyCampus, are created and encourage anonymous updates and discussions on people (Young).  This easily leads to cyberbullying and creating an unsafe atmosphere for students.

With all these technologies being developed I do believe that technology will lead us into more secluded lifestyles with very minimal human interaction.  You can see this happening at establishments like McDonalds, where certain locations have a kiosk machine where people can order their food without the help of another human being.  Also with apps like Uber Eats where a person can order food online and wait for their food to be delivered with almost no human interactions.

Works Cited
Lavenduski, Sara. “How to Build a Community on Social Media.” Advertising Specialty Institute, 
     26 Sept. 2018, www.asicentral.com/news/how-to/september-2018/
     how-to-build-a-community-on-social-media.
Stout, Hilary.  “Antisocial Networking?” New York Times, April 30, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/
     05/02/fashion/02BEST.html.
Young, Jeffrey R. “They’re Back, and They’re Bad: Campus-Gossip Websites.”  The Chronicle of 
     Higher Education, August 31, 2009, www.chronicle.com/article/theyre-backtheyre-bad-/48220.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Wikis and blogs are both new media platforms where people can contribute to a topic by virtually writing their ideas and information.  They are very useful in doing what they were created to do.  However, both platforms have their fair share of people who like to cause chaos.  People tend to write irrelevant information or post inapproriate things such as pornography.

They also have a fair amount of differences between the two platforms.  One major fact being that blogs are usually created and run by one person or one group.  Wikis on the other hand usually have multiple contributors of varying knowledge of a topic.  Blogs are used more to create a converstation between people where as wikis are for collaborating on a topic and sharing information on the same document.  Another main difference is that wikis have introduced “flagged revisions” which do not exist in blogs (Cohen).  These “flagged revisions” were put in place to assure that information being put on the wikis were accurate.  It is where an expert looks over the revisions and makes sure it is true and that it is talking about the correct topic.

In most aspects of life, convergence is important.  These blog and wiki platforms make it easier for people to put their minds together and be on the same page.  These platforms especially help businesses in many ways.  One being that people can exchange information between groups and people.  On wiki pages, businesses can share meeting notes, agendas, and important documents, allowing them all to be in one place (Goodnoe). 

The best way to show how blogs can be used for collaboration is to look at the Bay Ridge Talk blog.  Through people in the neighborhood writing what they have witnessed throughout the years, it lead to a drug bust.  Neighbors would write what they saw and heard to all other people in the neighborhood.  Eventually, five people ended up being arrested for what the neighbors had watched throughout the years (Wilson).

A new way that wikis can be used that may not have been done before is a place for people to study together.  Since convergence is an important and powerful thing, it could help students study for a topic efficiently.   Students can add information to the page for others to see and together people can form a information packed virtual study sheet.

Works Cited:

Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid By Michael Wilson, The New York Times, 
     June 26, 2008.
How to Use Wikis for Business," by Ezra Goodnoe, Information Week, August 8, 2005.
Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People" by Noam Cohen, The New York Times, 
     August 24, 2009.