Selective Democracy (April 4th)

  The more we use the internet, the more we become selective about what we choose to see while surfing the internet.  Along these lines, we use internet to acquire our news.  The internet can be a helpful source of news, however because of the selective nature of the internet, we are able to choose what we see or don't see.  So how is this a problem?  Why is it a problem for people to see only what they want to see?  Well it's a problem for our global awareness.  If we selectively absorb news, we will only learn information that we choose to learn from.  It is important to get all of our 'servings' of news.  Using the example of 'servings' refers to looking at news consumption like food consumption.  Of course we don't want to eat our vegetables (refering to news we don't want to watch) we still have too.  News is just like food in the sense that you need a balanced diet.  If we only wish to receive news form celebrities then our minds and social awareness will diminish.  However, if we watch a balanced diet of news, we will understand more about the world around us and the important issues.   Also the information we tend to read is not only relevant to what we want to hear... it tells us what we want to hear.  It is dangerous because you may never see both sides of the story if you refuse to read both sides.  This is a problem because extremists will only read up on stories that fortify their arguments.  All in all, selective news watching/reading is dangerous because it malnourished our brains and fosters ethnocentric views because of lack of exposure from anything we don't want to see.

Copywrongs

    In the digital age of technology ideas spread like wildfire.  With the use of constant web connectivity, almost limitless information can be gathered.  Along with this information includes artistic forms of expression such as music and artwork.  Many copyright laws apply to forms of artistic expression and according to the government copyrights were created to keep the free market economy moving and inspire innovation.  Copyright laws were never intended for someone to be set for life financially after writing a single song or creating something.  With this in mind, copy right laws state the owner of a copyright gets those loyalties up until 70 years after their death.  I feel like in current society copyright laws are necessary for artists and inventors to make money.  However, due to the rate in which our society as a whole and as individuals process information, copyright laws should be shortened after death.  The government created copyright laws to inspire innovation and prevent inventors from becoming lazy and only living off of one thing.  Our countries forefathers would be upset to see grandchildren living off of legacies of one hit wonder bands.  In other words, copyright laws are just too long and need to be adjusted to the digital age.  These laws were implicated to ensure success of an overall market/economy and not just so we can sue each other for developing similar ideas.

Unreal Reality

    I recently joined Second Life, the online social community and discovered another area of web based social communities.  Despite flaming and being a newbie, second life was pretty fun.  Most people I talked to who were online were friendly.  Existing in cyber space is an interesting concept.  I've existed before in cyber space in online games but never a game like second life.  Where games I have played online before reflect fictional goals and achievements, this one takes ordinary life and makes it fun.  For some reason there is something fun about watching my character dance instead of me dancing myself.  And it's not just because I have two right feet in real life.  There is an allure to being able to create a character and save it to go back to at any time.
     It took me a while to figure out all the second life controls.  Several of the controls contrasted with previous games I had played.  Everytime I tried to strafe and run sideways, I ended up flying!  Only to fall with a not so graceful thud onto the ground.  Proponents of second life boast it's many activities and fun things to do while online.  However, I will take an online fictional take with MMO's because I prefer them.  Within second life, many social communities exist.  However, I did not find many common goals or adventures that you can share with friends unlike many other MMO counterparts.
    Overall I thought second life was quite interesting.  The allure of second life is to escape reality into a similar reality.  You can make friends, learn things, talk with people, and many more fun exciting things.  I enjoyed my trip to the world in second life, but I don't think I will make it back often.  This is because Second Life focuses too much on real life aspects for me.  I prefer to play video games that couldn't be real.  However, Second life gives opportunities to many who are home confined or unable to afford more expensive online games.

Secret Sadism

     The article "Stars and Sewers" brings up an important topic regaurding media today.  Morec specifically internet media.  This article uses the example of what happened to reporter Lara Logan to illustrate the darker side of the internet.  This reporter was mobbed and sexually assaulted in Cairo, Egypt.  After this horrible traumatic incident, users online had alot to say.
   Instead of being met with sympathy she experienced some hateful feedback.  Many anonymous users were saying she deserved it and even went as far to say they would have done the same thing to her.  This has a lot to do with anonymity.  When no one knows who you are, it's easy to say anything.  Whoever these people are they are hurtful but also probably hurt themselves because they obviously have issues going on.
     One of the negative effects of being unseen is seeing how cruel people actually can be.  On the same note the internet facilitates yhis behavior and theres not much one can do about it.  The most unfortunate aspect is that people who flame ruin posts and forums for users actually trying to have a discussion.
     Although there are negatives theres also benefits.  One benefit of it is that you can be whoever you want to be, or even yourself in ideal form.  This is fgood because it helps facilitate communication snd interaction.
     All in all anonymity in CMC is a double edged sword.  Anonymity has good aspects and bad.  However one things for sure is the internet has always been that way.  In a way, they go hand in hand and for that matter that's part of what makes the internet what it is today.

The Problm w/shorthand?

      Text-speak and e-mail slang is spreading like wild fire from middle school age to college kids and beyond.  The more adept an individual becomes with technology, the more likely they are to use it.  Thus, it becomes only a matter of time before someone adapts their speech within that technology.
     Many critics of instant messaging and text messaging critique the grammar that it implies.  Within texting there is an abundance of words such as g2g (got to go), lol, rofl, and such words.  When humans use keyboards to interact socially, its only a matter of time until language modifies itself.  Methods of shortening words involves removing letters and misspelling things.  This may create a problem if the receiver loses the meaning of the word.  However, if the receiver understands this method of communication it is not necessarily a bad thing.  I feel the only reason that this short hand method of writing is a bad thing is if it carries over to a professional setting.  If this shorthand carries over to a professional life, then obviously it is a problem.  As far as peer to peer style communication, shorthand is not a bad habit as long as it is reciprocated among users.
    I occasionally use shortened text when im texting on a cell phone.  I rarely use it online with a keyboard but that is because I am much quicker at typing on a keyboard than I am with a phone.  With phone texting I'm quite slow at, therefore sometimes I will shorten words.
    Technological communication is under the scrutiny of many skeptics and people who just flat out don't like what they don't understand.  I could see how an outsider to the technology would be skeptical of a generation not knowing how to spell "because" but as a member of the generation, there is nothing to fear.  Shorthand typing, like technology, is like anything in life in regards to a time and a place.  I would challenge a critic of shorthand and ask them whether or not they talk to their boss the same way as their best friend?
     All in all, there is nothing wrong with shorthanded text via CMC or any type of technological advance in communication as long as individuals don't bring their bad grammar to a professional setting.

Is it adapting or something else?

     Technological advances are made everyday from new apps to new processors.  The technological revolution of internet and computers is still a fairly new field of human communication.  There is no evidence of any computers before mid 1900s so we don't really know all the effects of such a technologically saturated lifestyle.  Technology has been a part of human existence from day one when cavemen invented fire.  But who would have predicted that we have gotten this far?
     So the question is, are we in a fifth age?  According to to Marshall Mcluhan, there are four ages of technology.  These ages are tribal, literacy, print, and electronic communication age.  In the tribal age, the ear was the most dominant organ because there was no form of writing.  As civilization advanced, methods of writing were developed.  The age of literacy put scribes on a high pedestal and gave them great power.  As we advance to the print age, hundreds of books and newspapers can be printed and it creates an entirely new dynamic.  People are now able to get information about things across their nation.  The last age of communication is the age of electronic communication, the global village.  Electronic communication age is defined as when humans started to talk instantly to someone over a phone or computer.  Now the question is, does electronic communication encompass things that perhaps Mcluhan did not factor into his ages of technology?  Modern advancements like instant video chat were never part of Mcluhans' design.
     According to Mcluhans' media ecology theory, we can construct meaningful social environments through different forms of communication.  The key to this is that humans are adaptive with their communication.  Many speculators thought that instant messaging and texting would not be such a craze because it lacks face to face emotion.  The prediction was assuming people wanted to have that kind of interaction.  However emotions adapted to texts and now people construct environments via texting and IM daily.  As a result, some people have more online friends that real life friends.  That topic in itself can be debated for weeks however each side has valid reasons in which their method is superior.  Some people think it's great they can text for various reasons and likewise with people who believe face to face or phone calls to be superior. 
     In a recent article I read on Slate the author Taylor Clark discusses three of the biggest contributing factors why college students and Americans are so stressed out.  One of the factors is that our brains are not designed to handle as much information as we process daily.  This is an effect of having new technologies and computers.  This causes us subconscious stress.  Another factor is loss of a real community.  When we exist solely on computer mediated human interaction, our bodies feel a loss of real human interaction.  This is bad for us because it is natural for humans to have a community.  The article states that people in Nigeria are five times less likely to have anxiety and stress issues than Americans.  How can that be possible when they are a third world nation and we are lead to believe our lifestyle is superior to other nations?  Its because its natural for people to interact with others and deprivation of that can have effects.  Like all things, computer mediated communication needs to be taken in moderation.
     The overall effect on our society from this information overload is negative in my opinion.  It allows people to communicate with people they don't want to see in person and makes it easier to say mean things.  I believe excess of IM and texting has a negative effect on people.  There is no more getting nervous to call a girl for the first time when you can just text her.  It lacks nonverbal messages so it can be whatever the sender wants.  This is ok to a degree with human interaction but eventually humans require real interaction.  I would believe it's safe to assume we are entering a fifth age.  There are elements to daily life that Mcluhan had not predicted and CMC has evolved beyond the age of electronic communication.  Although there are positives and negatives to use of CMC the bottom line is that like everything, needs to be taken in moderation.

Anthropo-what!?

     The article "The Media Equation" written by Bryon Reeves and Clifford Nass, features the topics of of new mediums,  computers, and how humans interact with them.  The theme of this book is how people treat their devices like real people and things.  This article starts out discussing how average citizens today can confuse life portrayed by the media with real life.  Because of this exponential increase of exposure to technology it is easy to blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction.  Because of the multitudes of things you can do on a computer, computers create social presence.  Even though they are not real and do not have feelings, we as humans treat them as if they do.  On a computer you can connect inter personally with friends or you can connect to mass media.  You can communicate inter personally via instant messenger, voice, and video chat.  When talking to a friend on video chat, your computer creates a social presence for who you are talking too.  Even though it is a mediated social exchange, it's an exchange nonetheless. 
     The article points out an interesting finding about human social behavior.  That behavior is that humans are adept to social adaptation.  Older discoveries of interpersonal transactions indicate that face to face interaction is much more fufilling because you can see that persons nonverbal cues.  However, due to the human ability to socially adapt, many internet users have met other users and have become friends.  Especially in the online gaming genre.  Massive Multiplayer Online games have become a utopia for meeting new people and creating an environment conclusive for social interaction.  As a result, computers facilitate these happenings and acquire a social presence of their own.  When humans treat inanimate objects as humans it's known as Anthropomorphism.
     I have personally experienced this phenomenon and I would venture to assume that in current society so has everyone else.  My laptop computer recently had a hard lesson in physics when my five year old sister knocked poor macbook off my kitchen table onto the ever so gentle granite tile floor.  Needless to say i felt as if I had actually lost one of my friends.  However, I've recently purchased a 27'' imac and have been experiencing anthropomorphism like never before!  I always make sure to compliment my computer when it demonstrates it's new graphics card.  I'm sure to brag to my friend when my computer and I download something three times as fast and i mock him as he curses his PC.  and I even bought her some screen cleaner so she'll stay clean and in turn reward me with good performance.  I treat my computer with respect and sometimes make decisions concerning the well being of the computer.
     As written in the article, the amount of time we spend on computers tends to blur the lines of whats real and whats simply a pixel.  As a result human interaction with their computers is a key outlet into another discovery of human communication.  We can use computers to see how humans treat them which leads to an honest understanding of their communication with the computer.  In otherwords, people will be polite to other individuals sometimes and as a result their responses are not always true.  When interacting with a computer, there is no face to face human communication which lends to a more honest answer.
    All in all, by studying computer mediated communication we are brought a different perspective on studying human communication.  By using computers to communicate in some contexts we can choose who we want to be, where we want to be, and be able to define ourselves to other  users as we want to be.