Monday, August 2, 2010

WK 2 - Readings Q & A

The five most important concepts to my belief are:
1. Networks

a. They are at the heart of the Internet, New Media and interrelationships between societies at large. Networks commenced as early as the invention of speech (van Dijk, 2004), and has evolved from a physical to an organic, and neuronal to a social, technical and ultimately to a media network. A network is self-sustainable and adheres to those that interact and impact the relationships within. For that reason, networks will continue to evolve and increasingly pay tribute to our societies.
2. Digital divide
a. Pertains to the differential access to and use of the Internet according to gender, income, race and location (Rice, 2002). I believe that this is the front-runner of geo-targeting, and any type of segmentation to qualify or disqualify Internet users/societies for specific information, offers, and so forth. These days geotargeting is used as a powerful tool to monetize one’s resources and increase the impact of new media solely for those, to whom it pertains.
3. Security & surveillance
a. It goes without saying that the increasing use of the Internet makes use users more vulnerable to defects in the system. Whilst we are more and more interlinked to all kinds of systems, such as payment, identification and proprietary systems, it’s all a matter of trust. Creating this trust, commitment and sufficiently information-rich communication is both a condition and a problem for social and media networks (van Dijk, 2004). Users have actually become so dependent on new technologies that there is no way back. In the event of increasing insecurity of systems or applications this will eventually lead to its break-down (Van dijk, 2004). Note the latest glitches of Facebook and Google that triggered the enthusiasm of new developers in creating similar but yet to be proven, improved applications.
4. Ubiquity
a. Proliferation of digital devices, the density, interconnectedness of networks and both the multiplicity of forms of use, and the routine nature of uses of new media embedded in all aspects of daily life (Flew, 2008) is rapidly changing. I believe that in the near future, mobile devices will contribute a larger part in society than computers. These mobile devices have embedded ‘user system’ that allows for a one-click payment option, easy membership opt-in and instant qualifications, and customized media and information delivered to the device.
5. Collective intelligence (CI)
a. The exponential contribution of users to enhance the collective pool of social knowledge (Flew, 2008), which relate to the aspects of strong and weak ties based on the kind of relationship established – online and offline. Its impact is becoming greater and greater now more sites have emerged; CI requires a vivid participation and contribution of its users to create a ‘prospective’ greater outcome; it extends to crowdsourcing, and creates communities that share similar interest.


Key Concepts Missing:

• Increasing digital and proprietary media tools to modify existing media such as Picassa and PhotoShop.

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