Creativity and New Media

Second Life is an role playing game based set in an online virtual world. In this world users are able to create an avatar and socialize with each other through the use of text and voice chat.

Below is my personal avatar that I created on Second Life:

HW Creativity

By taking existing media such as videos, music, or even software, people can use their imagination to improve upon those medias or even create their own form of media. In the article "The New Math of Mashups", Jeremy Brown used digital software to take apart 2 songs, "Debra" by Beck and "Frontin'" by Jay-Z and Pharrell, to create an entirely new song. This is called a "mashup", where the acapella of one song is taken and placed over the instrumentals of another song.

The article, "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" explores how the company Twitter looked into how their members use the service by analyzing what ideas were catching on within the community and then implementing those ideas in the form of new features. For example, the idea of mentioning another user by using the @ symbol was not originally part of Twitter. Twitter users began putting the @ symbol in front of each other's names when referring to another user and as a result Twitter implemented this feature into the site. Now when you put the @ symbol directly in front of someone's Twitter handle their name would be highlighted blue and by clicking on it you would be taken to their profile. This is known as a "mention" and every time someone was mentioned they would be notified. Tweets were also originally referred to as posts but users began calling them tweets. The term "tweets" eventually caught on with the community which caused Twitter to officially trademark the term.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds can be used in a variety of ways including stress relief, scientific testing or as a casual hobby that people can use. In the article, "Virtual world may impact real­-world behaviour" researchers created a study where they implemented the use of a virtual world to decide if the way you acted in a virtual world was a good indication of how you act in the real world. In the article, "After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?", Jackie Morie created a virtual world that soldiers in the army could use as a training environment. With these virtual worlds users are able to interact with other people without the inconvenience of leaving their homes. There is always the risk that users can become too consumed by the virtual worlds, however. Children that are introduced to these virtual worlds at a young age and grow up with them might not develop the necessary communication skills to be able to effectively interact with people in the real world. As with all technology, as time passes the virtual worlds will become more advanced and intricate. Right now virtual worlds are restricted to our senses of sight and hearing. As the technology improves we will be able to physically transfer ourselves into those worlds and be able to feel what is inside of them.

Blog about Twitter

A Blackboard discussion compared to a Twitter discussion will probably be a lot more formal. On Blackboard students might choose to type in a more professional manner, using proper punctuation and grammar. In a Twitter discussion the tweets would be more casual. Students will probably use more slang in their tweets, less grammar, hashtags and will use more abbreviations such as "lol" and "imo" to accomodate for the 140 character limit in tweets. A real life discussion compared to Twitter might have a lot less participants in my opinion. In a real life discussion there might be shy students that will be intimidated by the amount of other students in the class and will be reluctant to participate, whereas on Twitter (or on Blackboard) they will be more open to voicing their opinion without the fear of anyone judging them.

Blog: Social networking sites

The 4 social networking sites that I want to compare are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. In my opinion compared to the other 3 websites Facebook is a bit more family-oriented and private in a way. A lot of people have their close family members added as friends (there is even a section where you can list people that are apart of your family) and a lot of people use it to connect with distant relatives or even close members from high school. Twitter is a lot more opinion-based, where you can send out short posts (tweets) that can be seen by millions of people and it's also a lot easier to get into contact with strangers or even celebrities. Instagram is more tailored towards expressing yourself and showing off your everyday life through the use of photos. YouTube is video-based and there is a lot more anonymity when it comes to it's members with people tending to go the route of creating their own personal usernames as opposed to their real names.