The Next New Thing

With the trend in research and development in both the medical and technology field I believe it is not too far into the distance future that we will be able to use unmanned mobile robots. Sort of something like from the surrogates movie with Bruce Willis. Like virtual worlds users can use them from the comfort of their own homes to interact and to carry out assignments. This technology can also benefit those that have disabilities. For example, a person may have a leg injury in which they cannot pick up their kids from school, instead they would use these mobile suits. Everything that these mobile suits see the user can also. Everybody would be given their own identification number and they can be rented out just like zipcars, all you need to do is have a membership. I envision there would also be stations to charge these robots and they would be placed even in international locations, so that even if you miss a flight for an important meeting you can substitute your presence with one of these robots. They can also be used to report in hostile locations.

Our Class Wiki So Far

I will be working on the New Media & MMORPG's section of the wiki as a contributor. Although I'm not an avid gamer I would like to learn more about this genre of gaming. I have been researching on the Psychology behind MMORPG's as I am a psychology minor. It has been of some interest to me because it has come to the media attention how gaming can become an addiction and the cognitive processes that occur. I have also been looking into adding onto the History of MMORPG's.

About My Term Research Project

I'm glad that I choose YouTube as my topic because it sparks my interest. I found a lot of my information using the Baruch Database, thank god. I also found information off of Google Scholar. The databases I use to do my research include LexisNexis, Ebsco and Jstor.

I found information regarding artists and their success stories. YouTube may seem like just a video sharing website to most of the general public. With this research I learned more about the marketing aspect and the opportunity of exposure it provided for its users. With such a broad range of ages that use this website the amount of information that it spans is amazing.

I choose this topic because when I'm at home I find myself on YouTube a lot. I figured why not learn more about this site that I visit on such a frequent basis. I spend a lot of time watching Wong Fu Productions and musicians. I love music and with the abundance of genres and originals it keeps me busy.

As mentioned earlier, during my research I found that YouTube is certainley one of the best tools to use for an aspiring artist, musician, and video blogger. This site is the new medium for talents to show case their abilities. Also for videos to become viral they not only need exposure from YouTube but also other outlets such as Facebook,Twitter, and Myspace. All in all I really enjoyed working on this paper. :]

Privacy & Confidentiality

Technology has made our lives easier in the way we can find, post, and contact friends. This has also made it easier for other people to follow our every moves whether for good or bad intentions. By doing this we have already given up a bit of our privacy. This can include simple things such as finding out what network we are from, school of attendance, birthday etc. Sure we have privacy settings but in some cases it becomes a task to choose what we want shown or hidden. Facebook provides a very long list of options making it more of a chore and you're bound to miss one or two options. For users that constantly twitter about what they are doing makes stalking so much easier and no I'm not talking from experience. This can also be done on the Iphone Facebook App in which you can use the phones GPS to publish a post of your current location. Lets not forget the companies that may scour the internet finding dirt on potential companies. One to many pictures of you being a rowdy party goer could mean the difference between getting an offer or not. All we can do is just to remember to be as careful as we can be to protect our private information. No one wants to have their credit card information stolen or be stalked !

Advice

With all this talk about virtual worlds I wonder how the idea of having Virtual classes would be like. That would cut the travel time that it would take for commuters. Just thought it would be really fun and cool idea, however it would be too costly. At least our lungs would be saved from all the secondhand smoke from all the smokers around VC and the library buildings. I believe that if we had an online newspaper that more people would actually read it or it would be a green initiative. I have witnessed many times the stack of papers that the janitor would have to throw out because rarely does anybody pick them up. One other major problem I have with Baruch is the e-sims. I'm sure some of you students feel my pain when you're all excited that a seat is free but as soon as you try to pick it up e-sims will say that the section is closed. The website needs to be updated more often at shorter intervals. My e-mail is constantly filled with spam from Baruch or student life and i think it would be so much easier to consolidate it onto a blog. This would keep my inbox happy and students who want to read up on Baruch can just visit a blog !