Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

In today's age, virtual worlds are a means in which people are able to roleplay, socialize, and express their creativity in ways that they may not be able to in real life. "But Minecraft is a virtual world. It’s digital LEGOs if you will, but it’s a space for kids to exercise their imagination and to connect with others to also want to build and create things." says Jacki Morie in the article After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot? Of course adults also play Minecraft and have built some amazing things spanning from pixel art to replicas of real world cities. Games like Second Life allow people to roleplay and express themselves in ways they may not be able to in the real world. "Ms. Rayna, an avatar on Second Life, and her free-spending cohort can quaff Champagne, teleport to private islands and splurge on luxury brands that are the cyber equivalent of Prada waders or a Rolex watch. Real-world consumers may have snapped shut their wallets. But in these lavishly appointed realms it is still 2007, and conspicuous consumption is all the rage." says Ruth La Ferla in the New York Times article No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You. Of course not every one expresses themselves positively in these virtual worlds. This introduces "e-thugs" who try to act a lot tougher than they really are, and "trolls" who try to cause arguments and chaos with provocative messages or actions. Virtual worlds can also be heavily addicting.Lately, virtual reality has been further developed and may very well be the future for virtual worlds. Advanced telehealthcare is also another big possibility.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter discussions of course are a lot shorter compared to Blackboard discussions due to the 140 char post limit. You'd have to tweet in parts, or post links if you want to get more information across. The more peole tagged in the conversation, the smaller the post limit becomes as well. However, discussion are a lot easier to read since they're shorter and right there on your timeline rather than having to open someone's post on Blackboard to see what they wrote and what others replied with. Being notified any time you get a reply is also a plus. With in-class discussions, the class will generally cover topics one by one and try to keep discussions somewhat brief so that there's time left to discuss the other topics. With twitter you can view multiple topics at once on your timeline and pick which ones you want to discuss further with another classmate.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Ask.fm are all social media sites I use or have used before in the past. Facebook is primarily used to stay in contact with friends and family members. There are also games you can play, and invite other to play on facebook such as Farmville which I remember being pretty popular a while back. From my experience on facebook, a lot of people try to stay a bit more proper as their family members also follow their facebooks. I've even seen cases where people blocked their parents on facebook just so they wouldn't be a able to see their activities. A lot of people go to twitter to escape that. On twitter, most people follow their friends, fav celebrities or companies, political figures etc. It's a bit rare that anyone with a twitter account also has family members on their twitter, so they can cut loose in their tweets if they weren't able to in their facebook posts. Youtube is primarily used for watching videos on the internet posted by other users. If you find a channel that posts a lot of content you like, then you can subscribe to them so that you're notified whenveer they upload anything new. You may also make and post your own videos for the world to see. Who knows, it could end up going viral. Ask.fm is a website where people ask one another questions. Accounts may also follow one another and see what kind of questions and answers their friends are getting and giving. It is automatically checked off so that your question would be asked anonymously next to the question box, but you can opt for your username to appear so the other person knows whos asking them the question. These questions can range from small talk questions, to very personal questions. The intent of thes questions can also be harmless, or malicious due to the nature of appearing anonymous. Users also don't have to answer every question they are asked. The website itself also throws a random question of the day at the user.

Social Networking

In todays society, social networking is the big new media technology that allows people to stay in touch with friends, keep up with the news, follow the activities of their fav celebrities etc. Companies have even started using social media to hunt for job candidates. In the article Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, Frank Langfitt states "Maureen Crawford-Hentz recruits for Osram Sylvania, the global lighting company. She says the new tools have changed her life...One of Crawford-Hentz's favorite sites is Linkedin, a network of 8 million professionals spread across the world." With Linkedin, employers and employees are able to connect with job opportunities, and keep in touch with one another. Barack Obama also used social media to his advantage during his campaign in 2008. "Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans...All of the Obama supporters who traded their personal information for a ticket to a rally or an e-mail alert about the vice presidential choice, or opted in on Facebook or MyBarackObama can now be mass e-mailed at a cost of close to zero." says David Carr in his article How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power.

Social networking is very useful for allowing people to connect with and keep in touch with one another, spreading news and other information, and for promoting content. Todays presidential candidates constantly use Twitter to reach out to their supporters and promoting themselves and their ideas. News and weather companies have also embraced social networking as they realized how important it is for communicating and spreading information. "I believe the benefits provided by social network sites such as Facebook have made us better off as a society and as individuals, and that, as they continue to be adopted by more diverse populations, we will see an increase in their utility. Anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from these technologies — such as political activities organized via Facebook or jobs found through LinkedIn — is well-known, but now a growing corpus of academic research on social networks sites supports this view as well." Nicole Ellison says in the article Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum.

Of course with all the pros social networking brings to the table, some cons are also present. With social media and networking, peope are able to put all sorts of info about themselves (or others) out there for anyone to see. With this, exploitation, blackmailing, identity theft, slandering, and more are possible by malicious parties. In Jeffrey R. Young's article They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus-Gossip Web Sites he talks about school social media gossip websites in which students were able to talk trash about one another anonymously. "A female student found her name posted on JuicyCampus in a message calling her a "slut," a "whore," and other, more colorful and sexually explicit names." Actions like these can destroy a person's reputation in only a few hours and can possibly follow them for the rest of their life.

Regarding the future, I don't really know how much social networking will evolve, but it would be crazy to see it evolve to the point that online voting is possible.