Essay 4-Information beauty

Information overload

Every morning after I get up, I start my computer and open MSN, Gmail, face book, Flikr, My Space, Last.FM to check if everything is OK with me and see the latest updates of my friends. Then, if I want to relax, I surf on YouTube and Google Reader to read interesting news and videos. I know I spend too much time on Internet, however, I can not control myself and get addiction to Internet. Why? It seems I know what is good and what is dangerous, but I can not stop my car only because I don’t want to get lost.

Two-way communication

Digital media has changed our communication methods. In traditional media, our mass people are more like listeners. Computer and Internet technology has transformed it into two-way communication which means viewers are becoming co-producers. New technology not only brings us convenience of life but also give us high information pressure. In order to catch up with new technology, people are becoming more nervous and even got ‘Information allergy’. Some people can not adjust to the mess which is brought by information technology and they got the dieses of ‘Information trepidation’. They feel uncomfortable after getting to know some information and always worry about losing other information. Actually, I think the philosophy is very simple: there are too many information today, so make a quick decision and make this decision to be the right one.

Recently, a rule comes out in China which is to define people who get addiction to computer games like ‘World of War Craft’ as mental disease. Talking about the value of spending time on Internet, I think there is no standard to say what is valuable to everyone. If one really get happy when playing ‘World of War Craft’, so why not? No one have rights to judge the meaning of other people’s lives and happiness if personal feeling.

Information beauty

From my point of view, the important thing for social media is to transfer information in a more beautiful way and reconstruct the way we gather information. Information is a kind of product, so product needs quality. And the purpose of information is giving viewers some kind of power. Some information can make goods sell well and some may make us feel shock and give us deep impression. The first stage of information beauty is clear which means make viewers get the point easily and the second stage is unique which means bring fresh thinking and innovative thinking and the last stage is humorous which means make people feel happy except for getting the key point of the information.

Essay 4 – Virtual friend = Real friend?

To begin this essay I started by asking myself the question; What is a friend? To answer that question I would say that a friend is someone who loves you and needs you just as much as you love and need them, who you can share your feelings and thoughts with, can have fun with, and can call at random just to talk. When thinking about this it came clear to me that I have many different types of friends, which I have divided into three groups for clearing things out. One group that is my closest friends that I share pretty much everything with. The other that includes friends that I meet and call on regularly basis but as I wouldn’t refer to as best friends and the third which includes people I would refer to as friends but which I don’t meet often or even talk to on the phone regularly for different reasons.
So with this background I will go back to the question for this seminar; can virtual friends replace our real friends? Are we less dependent of human relationships these days? In one of my previous essays I mentioned that in the global society of today we connect and meet so much more people compared to just a few decades ago. We have the opportunity to travel a lot and see the world which makes our social connections even larger. I believe that different social medias like for example Facebook can in a certain degree help us to easier maintain certain social connections, but in general it is mostly the friends that I defined in group number three that really needs this help. This is the friends that we probably would loose contact with if it weren’t for the social medias. Our closer friends on the other hand which I defined in group number one and two are people that never can be replaced by technology. I don’t believe that sites like Facebook are replacing these real friends with virtual friends because a friend in the real world posses so many qualities that can’t possible be reflected on the Internet. These sites rather help us to connect with people on a more shallow level.
And so I will end this short essay with a quote:

“Life is a balancing act; a friend is the safety net. Love may make the world go around, but a real friend keeps you from falling off.”

Essay 4- Negative effects of social media

New media technologies and Mash -up of social network are providing lot of ease to people but I think some compact negative effects also generated by social media. May be the visualization of those effects is not seen at present but in future these will show its symptoms. Different people argue in different ways, My experience is this, I have left or it seem to me that abilities of the making analysis in depth are decreasing, I mean social activities reduced my physical and educational activities. When you read things on your behalf you have some strong arguments and knowledge, you think more and try to be creative and love to discover some things but new technology and social solutions make the things to easy that we do not feel to use our own skills all the time. So according to my point of view self confidence is lost in previous few years, for example instead reading of some books we trust more on something written on Wikipedia and some blogs and derived some desired solutions , just need of some mixing and base knowledge. Not all but many people are doing so, especially student community.
I have observed that students are sitting in class and they are more interested in the social networks or online social activities than their lectures, now it really a common practice to spend the time to get rid from other. Chatting is positive but excessive chat not only put effects on your mental, physical state but at the same time is source of wastage of time.
If we look in generalized frame we will find that without knowing about results sometime we spend our time on social networks like youtube, on gaming websites that can be used in more productive work and we realize it sometime but ignore every time our developed habits. Now a day’s people are more interfering in the privacy of other on the behalf of social media like Facebook and other, straight forward comments or usage of unnecessary language in discussion mess up other members of social network which can create a social space between the different groups. I have observed it seem that society is centralized on a social network, I think actually people are subdivided into different groups and sects within the network which have strong opposition, feeling against each other and some time they show. This can be dangerous in the future for social networks. Again as we discussed earlier essay we are losing qualities of selection vs. quantity. I have written things on my experiences more which I felt so essay is based on my assumptions.

Essay 4 – Negative effects of social media: lost the ability of independent thinking

In the article of Is Google Making Us Stupid, the author mentioned that he kind of lost the ability or patient for a long text book. And it did happen to me as well. I remember that when I was at high school, most of my time is spent at school having lessons and reading the text books and Even when I got home, I didn't use internet to assist my study a lot, which means that I study without the help of internet. As a matter of fact, most of my knowledge is accumulated during that time. I am not saying that internet might disturb my study, but I do assume that I couldn't have achieved it if I used internet a lot then, which is based on my situation now.

I feel like I depend too much on internet now, especially regarding to my study pattern. In the past, the focus of my learning is the knowledge itself including memorizing the principles or the explanations to the word or the text, the logical analysis steps for answering the certain questions, the practical usage of the knowledge and so on. And I answered every question by the knowledge in my mind or turn to the text book I had in hand or ask for my teacher or classmates' help, neither of which is internet. I was so independent of internet. And now, the focus of my learning is to find out all the relevant information to what I'm learning, since I think as long as I can get access to this information, I get the answer. So it is not necessary to memorize all of the text or go really deep into it, the only thing I need to do is to grasp the general ideas of it and some influential information relevant to the same area, which would make my learning more efficient. I did like this since I entered university, and I was indeed costumed to learn dependently on the internet.

However, I find that I am not that efficient like what I expected, since I was often got drowned by too much information, so most of my efforts are put on filtering the useful ones out of all, which are supposed to devote into independent thinking of answers or solutions. The initial aim of using Google or Wiki is to use that information to give me some inspiration, but it often ended up with an already available and even better solution than mine. So what I usually thought is why not I just adding something based on it instead of coming up with something else merely by myself.

That was just my story about internet changing my way of learning, but I do believe it is not just me, since it is just so easy to be caught by other's great ideas; it is so nature to follow those popular trends; it is so comfortable to just sit in a great and available conceptual idea framework; it is also so efficient to built up your own ideas just on other's great ones… Nothing cost nothing, so what might be the cost of such beautiful thing? I am afraid that it is our ability of independent thinking and future innovative ideas. And it is really disturbing to read the sentence like "The schools teach their children to operate computerized systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable to children." which is form the article: Informing Ourselves to Death.

I would like to post a presentation here, which has very sharp opinions about the dark side of social media. In the last five minutes, the presenter talked about the downsides of social media, which is articulated better than my statements. So again, I think it is no need for me to say more, just let James Surowiecki to finish my arguments here. And it is being a paradox again, am I doing the right thing or not? What about you telling me when you finish the presentation.

Essay3-The future of music

Digital music industry has gone through the experiment of ditching DRM and new mobile offerings in 2007.Along with Nokia ‘comes with music’ service appearing to the market, the whole music industry are looking for new and strong business models. Universal music group cooperate with Youtube which creates a mutually benefical business environment.

As far as I know, there are now five alternative business models in music industry according to a report ‘Digital Music: 2007 in review’ written by Steve O’Hear. A) free (maybe with advertisments) Universal has tried open DRM-free window last year and end it this January and all records come on abroad. B)Subscription which means music works is a service rather than a track. And now there are two main cooperations of this model and one is to cooperate with carriers the other is to cooperate with handset makers. Universals’ cooperation with Nokia’comes with music service’ is one example. C) pay-by-what you want which has been experimented by ‘Radiohead’. D)pay-by-populartiy which is to start off free, then the more tracks get downloaded the more price increases with a top-limits. E)’Music tax’ which is now experimented by Universal music group as I know.

From my point of view, there are some trends in digital music space. The first one is that music style catalogue are becoming more and more specific and segmented and the possibility of huge hit worldwide only made by one song becomes less. The second one is that since mutual share is the essence of internet and depending on DRM won’t be the end of this industry. The third one is to transform huge profits into mutually benefical with more content creators.

I have some interesting ideas in digital music:
a) In the huge and fast-growing mobile music space, Universal music Sweden could consider cooperate with Tele2 with subscription method which is similar to ‘buffet’.

b) Coperate with SonyEcrissson with their future product PSP Phone which maybe next generation entertainment terminal.

c) Interactive music is may be also an innovation with advanced technology support like PureData to make users get involed and even become content generators.

d) With the development of web 2.0, social network could support major labels to customized recommendation of music according to audiences’ taste.

I also strongly recommend that labels should cooperate with the P2P web service EMULE to make P2P downloading legitimate. The logic behind this action is that instead of treat them as piracy which threaten our record sales, why not cooperate with them and make them legitimate? EMULE has high downloading speed and huge music resources and in this way may turn EMULE into a big competitor with iTune store. For major labels, the benefits are cost reduction with releasing and control search engine with keywords which could help labels to promote their artists more easily. Also EMULE has queue and credit system which can actually support and realize benefical business model.

The future of music

I have to say that I am a big music fan and have been so for as long as I can remember. For me music is a natural part in my everyday life, it can make me feel joyful, happy, sad, relaxed, and so the list of emotions keeps on going. Although I have to admit that I have never been a regular buyer of tapes or CDs. I have always listened to the music that for example friends has recommended or songs played on the radio, but very seldom actually gone out to buy them myself. As probably most of my fellow classmates I now download music every now and then which has broaden my view of music. Now I can find a lot of smaller unknown artists that I never would have found earlier, also I find myself going to a lot more concerts than before. So you can say that the creators, performers and record companies are making more money on me, as a consumer, now then they did before. But I realize that far from every consumer are like me and although sales of legal digital music are growing they are not rising fast enough to offset falling sales of CDs, partly because of internet piracy.


(Economist.com; Qualms with music)

But actually I don’t think there will be such a huge change in the music industry in the next ten years. Probably they will come up with some better solutions for legal downloading but there will still be hard to try to stop people from illegal downloads. The young people of today are used to get music for free and I think it will demand something groundbreaking to make them change their behaviour. Why pay for something when you can get it for free? That is an opinion that I recently learned is more widespread than I thought. According to a survey made in Sweden with people from the age of 16 to 65 years old, one out of four people don’t consider downloading as illegal at all. (Dagens Nyheter; Ökad tolerans för illegal nedladdning) That was a bit chocking for me to realize that even the older consumers had pretty much the same attitude. This implies that illegal downloading isn’t an issue that people consider morally wrong and that is the barrier that the music industry need to overcome in the next ten years.

Essay 3 The future of music

From previous couple of years hot discussions were made on future of music with the boom of internet revaluation. Companies are feeling and felt threats to their business models and always trying to find out long term and short solutions. Apple provide a bit secure business model and now bundle of other websites like msn, yahoo they have defined their business model to define and reshape the music industry in different formats. My experience and thinking about is things may be it is good for companies but not for the artists. Artists are noting without money and fame.
I will discuss this topic with reference of social media that how much music industry is facing threat from social media , especially well known social media instead of common music websites which provide you facilities to download songs freely. I think free music download is separate issue. May be I will get some wonderful comments.
I have my own experience that today blogs are also playing key role in downloading and uploading of music freely.
http://bollyhere.blogspot.com/2008/10/yuvraj-songs-free-download.html
Some of brand new songs which are not available on free music websites are available on different blogs. As some songs released people put it on blog, this trend in developing south Asian side. So persons who are attached with these blogs enjoy initially, they download and convey message to other to do so through blogs. Then people send link on other social media websites like faebook.com and even I also did it. If I have got some new song I just published on my own blog or send the link of some other blog to my friends. Sometime after mixing and editing uploaded it on the youtube to share with the people.
With other free websites now a day’s these trends is also creating problem for their business models of companies or to some extend to me advertising the music of companies without any payment, money to people. For the success of every type of music advertisement is key factor. From my point of view social media is big source of advertisement for these companies, a free and viral marketing tool which have definitely threats but in long term advantage, people aware early and take more interest in music and artists. Discussions on groups and blogs provide them guidance and awareness in taking decisions. Youtube also started live coverage of the artists, performers and I am feeling that it will provide them more advantages in long term in business and popularity.
I think usually we see more threats, uncertainties etc but we should see that is the social media have played role in recognition of industry, artist and other. As I early discussed , group discussions, fan clubs on Facebook and Orket and other social sites are free viral and guerrilla marketing techniques and providing them source to made the singer, performer or product open source where everyone comment. I have my own experience that I never heard my country local and folk music but due to youtube, now I know more about those artists and also purchased Cds. My opinion is this, if artists, performers themselves, involve in social media activities like blog, groups or Facebook or Orket groups they can set a business model for themselves and earn money and fame both. They can encourage their fans in adopting legally activities and can keep contact in future activities. According to me, social media made the things much essay for everyone in world just need to explorer the dimensions and way of usage.