P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the practice of distributing files that are digitally stored on a computer. P2P file sharing is file sharing with the use of a software. Users connect to the peer-to-peer network with other users with the software to share files with each other. There is a big debate whether file sharing is ethical or unethical. In the article "Minnesota Mom Hit With $1.5 Million Fine for Downloading 24 Songs," Thomas-Rasset was made an example of the dangers of downloading and sharing illegal music files online. Some examples of peer-to-peer file sharing is using programs like LimeWire, Kazaa, Napster to download music for free. Other peer-to-peer file sharing such as Bit Torrents let people download illegal programs, music, movies, etc for free.

Privacy & Confidentiality

The issues of privacy and confidentiality is greatly related to new media. It is on the news all the time. Because almost everyone you know is on a social networking site, privacy and confidentiality is compromised. Everything you post on these social networking site is now public information. Anyone who clicks on your profile page would know who you. They may be able to see your personal information such as full name, phone number, school, birthday, home address, etc. Basically whatever you filled out in order to join the site. Therefore it is EXTREMELY important to set your privacy setting and limit the amount of personal information you are willing to give out. These sites are a big target for identity theft and companies to find what people are like. You should check out spokeo.com to see what they have found about you by putting together information on all public sources. It is pretty shocking of what is public.

Advice to Baruch College

A way Baruch could use new media to improve the college is to have a forum where Baruch students and other professors can interact with each other. The forum could be divided by different categories such as Baruch news and updates, general questions, departments, a marketplace to sell books, calculators, looking for roommates, etc. This would be really helpful for students so that they can have a place for their questions that other students are asking too. It would be the place to look for answers before going around the campus searching for an answer.

About My Term Research Paper

As a reminder, my research paper topic is Social Networking: A Purposeful Loss of Privacy. I used scholarly articles that I had found using the Newman Library database. I also used Google to find more about other topics that I included in my paper. I choose this topic because it is important to know all the dangers associated with posting your personal information online on social networking sites.

Creativity and New Media

This is a avatar that I created using Second Life. There are so much things you can do to customize your avatar.

Creativity

New media fosters creativity. Because contents are shared on the internet, people are being creative to keep others interested. In the article, "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers," users comes up with new ideas that the company can implement. Many companies rely on the user-generated innovations because it saves them tons of money with development costs.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

There is a wide range of uses for virtual worlds. Businesses are noticing the money making opportunities virtual worlds offer. In the article “Toys with a Second Life,” the toy industries are getting their hands into virtual worlds by targeting kids to buy their toys with a redeemable code to use for their online avatars. Most virtual worlds can make more money by selling virtual goods for real money.

Virtual worlds help people with communicate better so they are better at it in real life. It gives people more confidence to be more social. In the article, “iReport: ‘Naught Auties’ battle autism with virtual interaction,” people with autism join virtual worlds join virtual worlds to work on their social skills on situations that they may come across in real life, all in the comfort of their own home.

Virtual worlds bring all kinds of people together by similar interests. People are able to express themselves freely and do what they want which they can’t do in real life. People with disabilities are able to experience what it is like to be someone else.

Virtual worlds foster creativity because people have a tool to think outside the box and create what they want. In Second Life you can design your own building for people to explore or even use it to design a room that you like and bring it to life in the real world. Basically if you can imagine it, you can build it.

However, people may start to become addicted to the virtual world rather than reality and be disconnected with everything else. They like what they have in the virtual world because it’s how they want to live but they don’t have it in real life.

Virtual worlds can potentially become like what we see in the movies such as the Matrix where everyone lives in a virtual world and can’t tell whether something is virtual or reality. It can also be like the movie the Surrogates, where people live in isolation and interact though robots. Or it can even be like Avatar. We can only imagine what will happen in the future.