Modelling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds can be of many use to us. It can be used for gaming, social connection, business, rehabilitation, entertainment, and even learning. Virtual worlds however, has its pros and cons. According to the article "Avatar II: The Hospital" goes onto explaining how virtual worlds can be used to train staff in the medical field for real life situations. This is a great example of how it can be used for educational purposes.
As for a con, there's a huge change that we can miss out on the human interaction we need ever so often if we spend too much time in these virtual worlds. Diane Mehta states in the article "After the Second Life. Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?" that out of the 2 billion accounts registered to virtual worlds, half of them are owned by children age 5-15. If these children spend an excessive amount of time socializing in virtual worlds, they might lack the social skills and real-life interactions they need as they develop. This will of course affect how they communicate in person as they got older.

Aside from the negative, virtual worlds can foster creativity. Diane Mehta goes onto explaining how the virtual world Mine craft, allows kids to exercise their imagination and be motivated to build and create things. This is very beneficial for their cognitive skills. In the future, I believe that virtual worlds will be put to use by more and more companies and be used for more purposes. I think it will become so common and popular that everyone might prefer to interact via virtual worlds instead of in person since it can be much more convenient. I know I would rather socialize in the comfort of my own home than to actually take the time out to travel and meet up with my friends.

Citations

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/#53bc0194735a

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703909804575124470868041204

Blog: Social Networking sites

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat all have very similar as well as distinctive features. Twitter can be considered the simplest visually. I've only joined Twitter for about a month now, but it seems very easy to navigate and use. The tweet button, which is in plain sight, allows you to post whatever is on your mind or what you want to share using hashtags (#). You can follow anyone, and anyone can follow you. This doesn't mean you have to be following everyone that follows you, it's optional. Everyone can see your tweets/posts if your tweets are protected. The twitter homepage allows you to see trending hashtags as well. This way, you can access what's currently being talked about a lot with just a click. Lastly, twitter allows you to retweet another person's tweet, which simply means to re-share a post and/or reply to it.

Facebook might be a little more complicated for someone who is just joining. Facebook gives you way more control over who sees your posts. You have the ability to deny or accept friend requests. One thing I've noticed is that the Facebook homepage's news feed is filled with a lot of re-shared videos and pictures. Twitter however, has mainly tweets and re-shared tweets from followers. Another thing that differs is that Facebook shows you which one of your friends are currently online, Twitter doesn't. There is also a feature on Facebook that allows you to see nearby apartments for rent and things for sale. In my opinion, Facebook's homepage displays way more unwanted ads, and re-shared posts.

On the other hand, Instagram is mainly used to sharing photos and videos. Instagram allows you to share temporary videos or photos which disappears after 24 hours. This is called a "story." You can leave your profile on either private or public, depending on if you want non-friends to view your posts or not. Instagram has less ad since they rarely show up. You also won't see posts from non-friends unless you go to the "Explore page."

Finally, Snapchat is a bit simpler than Instagram. You only see photo and video posts from those you accept requests from. No one sees your posts unless you accept their requests or your account is public. There isn't anything to read unless someone sends you a private chat. All there mainly is to Snapchat is viewing photos and videos of friends.

Blog about Twitter

Discussions on Blackboard, Twitter, and in class can have its pros and cons. One might think they aren't that different from each other but that isn't the case. For starter, an in-class discussion gives both students and professor a better chance at understanding what is being discussed/ask since there can be things like follow up questions for further clarification. Questions are also answered faster in an in-class discussion. One con of in-class discussions however, is that it can be more pressuring to respond directly to questions in person since you can't spend a lot of time thinking about an answer whereas online, you can.

On the other hand, blackboard discussions allow us more time to think about what we want to say and gives us a chance to edit/delete our errors. Blackboard has no word limit, which means we are allowed to write to our desired length. However, this means people would have to read through a long discussion until they can fully grasp the main idea of the post.
Twitter has a word limit, which allows for a more concise and straightforward discussion/answer. This helps people get a firm understanding of the post right away.

Bottom line, using either of these three methods to have a discussion is great, but one might be more suitable than the other depending on what message is being conveyed/discussed and how fast you want responds.

Blog Social Networking

Social Networking is very beneficial in various ways. Sites like Facebook, allow us to keep in touch with friends and family even if they're miles away from us. Other photo-sharing sites allow us to share videos and photos so that our loved ones can also be a part of our memories. Other things like job searching/recruiting are also done on social networking sites/apps. Additionally,businesses are able to advertise/sell their products and services to millions of consumers which is really cost-efficient.

A nice example of how social networks benefits society can be found in the article "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers" by Heather Timmons. In this article, a Facebook page was created by traffic cops, which resulted in people taking and posting pictures of other drivers violating traffic rules. The idea of this Facebook page got a lot of positive feedback, since reporting of more and more traffic violations can mean less accidents and a better driving experience for all drivers.

As mentioned before, job searching/recruitment can become way more easier and faster with the help of social networking websites. The article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" goes onto show how much more convenient it is to recruit potential employees on LinkedIn. Thanks to LinkIn, Professionals like Shally Steckerl can recruit people in just 30 minutes. Not only does it make recruitment much faster, but also helps hiring managers to narrow down searches by typing in keywords to find the employees right for the job.

With the pros, also comes the cons, which means there are definitely a "dark side" to social networking. A lot of people spend way too much time on these sites, missing out on real life experiences and moments. It's important for children to build the right social skills and they might be unable to do so if they spend most of their time using these technologies.  Other things like loss of privacy and cyber bullying can occur. Technology is useful, but too much of it can be bad. From what I can see, technology is becoming a bigger part of our lives with each passing day, and I think it will evolve to become even more overwhelming to the point where people in the future no longer know how to interact with each other in person.






 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/technology/02traffic.html?ref=business 

Blog v Wiki

Both blogs and wikis are used by many in order to interact, socialize, share, and gain information. With wikis, one is able to edit or delete the original material posted by someone. Multiple people can edit the material posted on the wiki, which means its a way for people to collaborate at any time,  and any place. Wikis are really useful to companies as well. According to the article "How to Use Wikis for Business", wikis can centralize all sort of corporate information such as PDF's, Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and spreadsheets. Business can make use of wikis so that employees can collaborate and share ideas in a fast and convenient way. Blogs on the other hand, are used by individuals who seek to share some type of information on a certain topic. The difference here is that people can comment/reply to blogs but not edit or delete anything in the original post. A good example of how blogs can be used for collaboration is found in the article, "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid." In 2006, neighbors in Brooklyn came together to share their thoughts of a house they suspected to be dealing drugs. The original blog motivated more people to come forward and speak up about their suspicions and observations. Eventually, more and more complaints were made to the police and the house was raided, resulting in arrests. The convergence of today's network is extremely important. It's important that we have some way of sharing information and our personal thoughts, and blogs and wikis allow us to do exactly that whether its for work, school, or personal purposes.

I think a new and creative way to use wiki is to create some sort of  social cooking club where users can post recipes and have others edit freely in order to improve recipes or give it a new twist.

https://www.informationweek.com/default.asp
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/nyregion/26bayridge.html

Project Topic: "Social Networking, better or worse than the real thing?"

I chose to do my paper on social networking. I will be addressing both the negative and positive impact it has on people. This will include some of the pros and cons that are found while using social networking sites. My paper is basically going to be demonstrating why social networking works for some and not for others. Therefore, this paper will stick to the idea that it isn't necessarily better or worse than interacting in real life, it just depends on how and why we use it.