Media and Politics

On Tuesday the group covered the important issue of media and politics. Much it is reminded me of my media and politics class Pols 317. We learned about the cnn effect and many other news related things that the media does in order to present the news, whether its good or bad. The media has so much power in politics and I think that more people follow politics through social media rather than watching debates or making an effort to locate candidates and talk to them. Social media has really changed how we view politics. It has changed how candidates actually get elected and it is how they promote themselves now. Obama was one of the first to campaign through social media and it worked. His campaign reached younger, liberal audiences. Most of the younger generations are liberal and most of the younger generation speaks out through social media. Even celebrities are more liberal and some celebrities are using their status to really help outline key issues in politics and bringing those issues up through social media. One of the best examples of social media and politics as it pertains to me was the Emma Watson "he for she" campaign that she set out. I've used Emma Watson's feminism campaign in so many classes because it is such a prime example of media and politics and it is an amazing social movement. When Emma Watson made her speech about equality and women, so many people followed this movement online because much of the younger generations saw this and took it as a step forward in society. The younger generations are the ones who are the future and democratic/liberal parties know this so they campaign to those audiences.

Book Panel

One of the books was very similar to the last expert group on social media. The social media group talked about how people are constantly attached to their phones and how people are communicating less in person and more online. We feel the need to constantly be online because it's addicting and it creates this culture where we view other peoples life highlights and it makes you think that you're not good enough because your boring and sitting on the couch. The social media group is similar to one of the groups that did a book panel presentation because they talked about how we now expect more from technology and less from each other. I think that is very easy to relate to because we always expect to be online, present and with technology it allows us to be on constantly. I think we have high expectations of our technologies and we heavily rely on them. Another point that the group discusses is that we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things. This was an interesting take away because I feel like we do take things for granted and even though we could lose this technology we kind of act wasteful. I'm not sure if wasteful is the right word to use but it is one word to describe how we go through technologies. I think humans do a horrible job at taking care of things and we don't treat things with care because everything can be replaced. Like phone screens. People drop their phones all the time, so we are constantly replacing phones and screens.
One really important take away that the group brought up that I resonated with was that even though our devices may not be in use, we feel disconnected with them. In the social media group they showed a video that mentioned a "phantom vibrate" which mistakes an itch for a phone vibrate in our pockets. So even if our phone isn't going off, we always think it is. I know that if I ever leave the house without my phone I feel lost and confused which is an awful thing to be attached to, but its just the culture we're used to. We feel lost and separated from society when we forget things like our phones at home. I don't think anyone has the ability to lose their phone because it is always attached to them. The feeling of disconnect is something we all can relate to. Whether our phone is in use or not we clearly identify with the feeling of being without our phones, computers, any sort of technology.

Social Media Group

The social media group did a great job on their presentation! I think that they showed amazing videos, and the definitions were good and how they set up their discussion by talking about Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr was all great. Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking is the definition of social media found on Google. This was a great starting point. I also loved that they talked about the important points of communication throughout history. From letters, to the telegraph, radio, phone, mobile phone then today with all the different types of social media that is out there. There are so many ways to connect and there are so many things that we can use to communicate it is almost overwhelming. 

When we got into groups, my group discussed snapchat and every detail about it. I use snapchat almost every single day. It's almost a part of my daily life as is Facebook. And the need to always be present online. I see the same amount of pros as I do cons with social media. We always want to be online and we always want to be present that we don't live in the moment. We talked about without Instagram would we take that many pictures? I honestly don't think I would take as many pictures if I didn't have a place to post them. I end up deleting them, and I will admit to taking so many selfies just to find the perfect one to post. Like the 19 year old Instagram famous girl, who worked so hard to build "fame" on Instagram and YouTube that she destroyed her image of herself, and she destroyed who she is through social media. She wanted to feel value and the only she thought she could do that was through social media. The only reason I can really understand why she did it, because at 12 years old she wanted to be fabulous like the girls she saw on the magazines or online. 

Pinterest and Tumblr are infamous for showing pictures of unrealistic beauty that is photoshopped as are the magazines. Tumblr people I don't think are photoshopped, they are just naturally beautiful and honestly it does ruin peoples self esteem. By looking at pictures of these skinny fabulous women, it is becoming more and more detrimental to young girls health. It is ruining how they view themselves and how they value themselves. The Instagram star at 15 was posting bikini photos thinking it was what people wanted to see, so that was the only way she gained value of herself was through others. Instagram and other social medias like this continue to make us more and more narcissistic which is awful and we shouldn't aspire to be like that. Nothing on social media is really that real. With instagram we can post the highlights of our life, then Facebook we post the general parts of our life, Twitter we post our expressions and thoughts regularly, and snapchat is for things that can disappear quickly and it's more for fun. 

I think Snapchat has definitely become a bigger part of social media because it's more fun to send pictures and videos. With those you can add filters of time, temperature, funny faces, emojis and many other things! It's exciting and addicting because you get instant results, you have "best friends" and you can share things with other people. The only downside to it is the stories, when you see how much fun your friends are having without you, say like a concert or just a regular fun party and you are on the couch eating popcorn and watching movies alone, and you see your friends stories and you think that your life is so boring compared to theirs. That is what social media does. Everyone posts the highlights of their life when realisitcally they are doing the same thing as you, and that is something everyone should always remember! 

Class Discussion

In class on Thursday we discussed many things about Reed and Tapscott. We talked about online identity, new technologies and equality, internet in our personal relationships, internet and politics, and video games.
With online identity we talked about how we represent ourselves online. On Instagram people can post pictures that look professional and they are strictly for showing the best parts of your life. Facebook has also become more and more professional as time goes on. We share less and less information about ourselves. Facebook is again showing more highlights and achievements more than personal stories. It is also used to share news articles and videos that you think are interesting. Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming very similar in a sense that companies use both to test for recruiting and seeing if they are potentially good employees by what they post. We know that online identity is important because we are constantly being watched so it is important to keep everything private.
With new technologies, the digital divide is a present in our culture. It creates problems with equality and socioeconomic classes. The book review that was on Tuesday really talked about the digital divide and how big of an issue it is. Some people can't afford internet or laptops so it is an important issue to bring up. I don't believe that the digital divide has much to do with gender as much as it did 20 years ago. More and more women are entering the workforce as engineers, accountants, and jobs that use to be a mans job. Gender is not as much as an issue as it used to be. I do believe that new technologies create the digital divide between socioeconomic classes because some people can't afford the latest and greatest technology.
The presence of the internet affects our personal relationships in a few ways. One way is that we are always connected. We can talk to our friends without having to see them. We can communicate to people across the globe and stay in touch. This is a problem though because we become attached to our phones. When I'm hanging out with friends they are always on their phones talking to other friends. That is where the presence of always being connected affects our personal relationships. But other than that I think that it is used for communicating and talking to each other.
The internet definitely helps with politics unless it is ignorant friends posting on Facebook about the election and taking their parents views and not doing their own research on the candidates. During the time of elections I always have friends that post their views about politics on Facebook and it is incredibly annoying as they don't always know what they are talking about. So I personally choose to avoid Facebook during that time. I do think that the internet is a great tool for candidates to spread their campaign. Obama was the first one to really use internet as a tool for campaigning. Instead of going town to town, candidates can say what they need to say online and the readers can feel closer with the candidate and the candidate can reach a wider audience. The internet is great to persuade an audience if they are really using it as a tool. Most of the democratic party is taking advantage of the internet as most of the younger generations are online and they understand that and they think that most of the younger generation is liberal, and they aren't wrong.
Video games was the last thing we talked about and we talked about if they make you less or more violent, understanding or learners. I personally think that if the person playing video games is violent before they started playing video games, then they will be violent during the game and after the game. If the person isn't inherently violent when they start video games they will come out without violence. The only thing that I can think of that is bad about video games is that it desensitizes people to things like war and violence. But other than that it is okay in the grand scheme of things.

Ubiquitous Computing

Pervasive computing (also called ubiquitous computing) is the growing trend towards embedding microprocessors in everyday objects so they can communicate information. The words pervasive andubiquitous mean "existing everywhere." Pervasive computing devices are completely connected and constantly available.
The group that did the presentation on ubiquitous computing did a great job at helping the class understand what it is. The discussion was most helpful. In groups we had to choose things in certain spaces that were ubiquitous computing. The five groups were home, wear, automobiles, commercial and healthcare. In the particular group that I was in we discussed automobiles. 
The first question on the discussion paper was: what are some technologies that would be considered ubiquitous computing. We thought about GPS, self driving cars, keyless entry, automatic parking, automatic breaking, temperature control, bluetooth, self monitoring sensors. Many of these technologies are now built into our cars and they are always on and always present. Since these technologies are built into our cars it is built in our minds and we don't have to think about the mundane things. We don't have to think about unlocking a car door because the keyless entry allows us to be near the car without actually unlocking it manually. Cars with automatic parking and breaking are good features for distracted people. Self driving cars would be amazing for drinking and driving because it would be the best safety feature in the world. I loved Darion's argument that he brought up during class though that so many people get speeding tickets and that is tax money and they would rather get money than have people be safe. Self driving cars would be fantastic and Google has proof that it can be safe and every accident that the Google car has been in has been because humans aren't good enough drivers. 
We also discussed the pros and cons of each aspect of the automobile ubiquitous computing. One of the pros is that it makes life much easier and you can be distracted. Bluetooth for music and phone is brilliant because people can answer phone calls in the car if the phone is connected to the car stereo system. 
The biggest con is that people get used to it. People become familiar with backup cameras and sensors and blind spot sensors that if we transfer to cars without it, there could be a huge accident because we have become use to things being done for us. If technology fails, we forget how to do those simple things like brake and parallel park. 

Book Panel Presentation

In the first book panel presentation they discussed peer networking then had us get into groups and discuss it. The social media platform we discussed was Groupme which is an app for texting and messaging. It is incredibly useful for many things then it isn’t great for other things. It is a mobile group messaging app owned by Microsoft. It was launched in May 2010 by the private company GroupMe. In August 2011, GroupMe delivered over 100 million messages each month. By June 2012, that number had jumped to 550 million. It creates an equal platform for group messaging across different phones. With Groupme you get texts from everyone in the group message. That is both a pro and con because you want to keep updated in the conversation but then you’re getting billions of notifications.

I personally thought that the second book was more interesting. The author brings up the digital divide and how being digitally connected becomes more critical to economic, educational and social advancement occurs each year. More issues brought up throughout the book is that no, not everyone has to be on the bandwagon of technology but the more “plugged in” you are, the better off you will be. Monroe suggests that everyone should be connected to the internet. It is a personal choice to keep up but everyone should be connected. The areas that are not connected are called the “have nots” and they are the rural areas and central cities. Which isn’t wrong because inner urban cities are clearly lacking in technology as are rural areas. So it could be a personal choice to lack of opportunity to be connected which creates a riff, therefore brings the digital divide. Technology and latest technologies creates divide between people who have the right thing aren't behind. Technology is crucial to learning. Another issue brought up in the book by Monroe was the impact of race. Social interaction through language differs among socioeconomic classes and ethnic groups. This is interesting because socioeconomic classes and ethnic groups are studied frequently on use of technology. So the race and cultural differences can cause a rift in literateness and it all has to do with technology. Culturally there are differences between classes and technology which makes it all different. So while we do live in the Net Generation, not every has access to the internet which is interesting because I feel that everyone in all my classes and schools is accustomed to technology so it’s crazy to think that not everyone has access to the internet. Something brought up in class was if the information was outdated. The book was written in 2004 and then now we are using it in 2015. To me, most of the information is still relevant and important. We clearly are still stuck with the digital divide and it grows each year.

Virtual Reality

The virtual reality group did such a good job on their presentation. I loved so many aspect of it! There was a lot that they covered and the fact that they had an oculus made the presentation so much stronger. The oculus is probably the future. Soon we will only see through simulations and it will be awesome. We probably won't but it's still a cool idea.

I think something that was interesting was the history of virtual reality. It started as early as 1940 and is now on the road to perfection. I think that the history of virtual reality affects how we look into the future of virtual reality. I think that because people will believe that virtual reality is a game and for entertainment then there's the argument that virtual reality will be used for medicine, journalism, education and just improvement of life in general. I think that is the direction that technology is definitely going towards. I think that the beginning of virtual reality really started with games me it was for entertainment! I think when arcade games came out in the 1980s those were huge because it was into article and exciting and purely for entertainment.

The YouTube 369 videos I thought were great! I mean they had some flaws but it is a great introduction to virtual reality. I found that when I moved my phone the simulation moved with me which was something new to me and it was pretty cool. Virtual reality is something that is such a new idea that most people probably don't think too much about it. I do think that since companies and people are posting these kinds of videos about virtual reality they are opening it up to everyone and everyone has the ability to use it and understand it. The 360 degree video on YouTube is such a smart way to advertise the oculus and it's a great way to get people interested in virtual reality.

While people were experimenting with the oculus, I could see what they were seeing and it was amazing to see what technology can do now. I can imagine that being inside the oculus that everything around you sort of comes to life. I think it's fascinating that technology has the ability to do that and transport us into the virtual reality life. I believe that virtual reality will be helpful with education, journalism, tourism and medicine. I think that virtual reality will change how we look at current technology. Derek talked about how virtual reality could support doctors appointments without really being at the doctors which would be a game changer in how doctors appointments work. I think the idea of virtual reality is great but there's not quite a market for it yet until more people get on board with it.