Creativity and New Media

I'd like you to show me how new media fosters creativity by creating an example. This assignment is up to you imagination. Whether you want to create a YouTube video or show me snapshots of an avatar in Second Life that you created, I will leave the definition of "creativity and new media" up to you, and let you surprise me.

Creativity and new media allows you to personalize your own blogs such as Instagram. You can post aesthetic photos of landmarks, food, content you like and think are interesting. You can even promote products if you have the permission to do so. Being creative on Instagram can really impact on how many people view, follow, and like your page. You can coordinate your blogs appearance by uploading only black and white; monochrome pages exists on Instagram and it makes it look pleasingly aesthetic. Viewing other Instagramer's pages can allow you to get ideas of what to post and that can help your own page become more interesting. Being influenced by media outlooks, it can mould your ideas into a better one.  Ideally, this would be a position where Instagram bloggers could spur their creativity to the max; whether it be something as simple as a dinner plate or something as scenic like a mural. 

Creativity

Create a new post on your blog with the above title. In your post, cite at least one of the assigned readings and discuss how new media fosters creativity.

In the business industry, creativity is definitely required in order to attract customers. No one would like to see the same thing again and again from different companies. Each company suppose to have their unique style in advertising their products and services. It would be uninteresting if it’s just the standard advertisement that wouldn’t make consumers interested or amazed. Technology has greatly influenced how the marketing industry works. Online marketing is extremely well known and is mostly used as of now in the 21st century. People buy and sell products online. New media has has changes the worlds view in marketing or online marketing. Creativity is a must if you want to be successful in the industry right now. 

New media fosters creativity by allowing everyone to have access to new media if they have the equipments such as a laptop, tablet, or mobile device with internet. A young teenager can download a bunch of apps and come across something like a singing app. He or she may discover his/her creativity and talent through a simple app. Access to the internet and websites makes it easy to create personal websites that can either become blogs or websites that can help others. Blogs can range from a food blog, adventures, integrated ideas from their own experiences can spark creativity. People can easily be capable of creating their own styles and implementing their interests into new media. By doing that, they can create blogs, their own websites, app, etc. In the article “Exploring place through user-generated content: Using Flickr tags to describe city cores”, it explains the point of tagging is to organize content for person means and are driven by idea of social contribution and desires to share with others. This tagging system can help with creativity and expose a certain content even more than without tagging. 

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

What are different ways these virtual worlds can be used? What are the pros and cons? Be specific. How do virtual worlds foster creativity? What do you think the future of virtual worlds will look like?

Cite at least 2 of the assigned readings.


     The virtual worlds can be interpreted in many ways. Relatively speaking, virtual experiences in particular are used to display behavioral fiction-tropes such as a hero avatar or a villain. In the article, "Virtual world may impact real-world behaviour", the article proposes a case-study which involves 194 undergraduates to participate in two supposedly unrelated studies to the decision of being randomly assigned to play as Superman or Voldemort. "They were asked to taste and then
give either chocolate or chilli sauce to a future participant. They were told to pour the chosen
food item into a plastic dish and that the future participant would consume all of the food
provided" (2). From this study, the people who performed the study revealed that people that played Superman poured, on average, "nearly twice as much chocolate as chilli sauce for the '"future participant"', meanwhile people that played Voldemort "nearly twice as much of the spicy chilli sauce than they did chocolate"(2).  From this research alone, this case-study not only shows that the people that played their depicted avatars are "equivalent levels of self-reported identification with heroic and villainous avatars, alike", but also, "People are prone to be unaware of the influences of their virtual representations on their behavioral responses." Although this could be either pro or con to the matter, but in this case, it is definitely beneficial to apply implications that the virtual environment opt them into a certain entity, however it is a constraint for people as "powerful imitative effects can occur when people put on virtual masks (3)". Because of these avatars portraying either heroic or villainous behaviour, it is true to believe that virtual experiences do foster creativity as it festers the mind and depicts a sort of imitative reality that manifests and exploit open-mindedness to imaginations. In the future, I believe that not only will the virtual worlds be adaptive to people's imitations and expansion of creativity but also become something that may detrimental to societal health as it can disrupt social interactions/behaviours if exploited too much of the virtual environment.
       In contrast,  the article: "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You",  discussed that this driven social networking site is called depicted by "Ms. Rayna, an avatar on Second Life" splurges on luxury brands by free-spending cohort. In this case, although players can trade physical monetary for virtual currencies,  people spend money, practically thousands, on a game for fun. Not only does this hurt the players financially, but also rely on virtual experiences over actual. In addition to this, although it is "fueling a robust company between avatar-to-avatar"(4), it demonstrates that the lifestyle of these self-driven avatars are used to depict their persona. Provided that this foster creativity, it is unhealthy to believe people to spend a lot of money for virtual currencies to vamp their character. Lastly, I believe this trend of social-networking sites with avatar customization will cease as it becomes more apparent to people that finances are too important to spend on virtual avatar-customization.

             


Cite:

1) "Virtual world may impact real­-world behaviour"
https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDoyOWIwYjc5ZTNlZjBhMTU4

2) "No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You"
https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDoxYzc0N2M4MmYxZjFlZGQ5

Blog about Twitter

Twitter and Blackboard discussions are both open to the public however, Blackboard is limited to only students. People may feel more obligated to update their twitters compared to Blackboard discussions because it's for their own interest and curiosity. While Blackboard discussions on the other hand, behind every student's mind is that it is work, this is what I have to do and there is no self-interest.

Twitter discussions allows you to comment on any posts you want. It allows you to extend tweets of your liking and interest. Your posts are more available to people who follow you. Company discussions on Twitter or companies that you follow on Twitter can give you a wider scope on the company based on what they tweet. As for personal discussions, you can have your tweets be exposed to your family and friends. 

Blackboard discussions allows you to discuss topics and contents that are related to your course. For educational purposes, it's convenient for students to ask one another for opinions and ideas. It helps students improve on their assignments, classwork, test reviews, etc. 

Blog Social networking

What are some ways (corporate and otherwise) that these technologies can be used? What are the benefits of these technologies to society? Be specific. Is there a "dark side"? Make sure to include your opinion of the way these technologies might evolve in the future.


        Now that technology has become a daily activity for people,  they're always looking down to their phones to check for the latest Facebook, Instagram, Twitter updates of their friends or celebrities that they follow. Technologies to society can bring people together even if they were across the world. Long distance relationships or family members can be reached easily by using social media and makes everything incredibly convenient for communication and updates on how they're doing.

        Lately on Facebook, 'Memes' has been really popular. A meme is basically a virally-transmitted post that contains a picture with a caption inside the photo that's intended to be funny. Facebook users enjoy reposting memes and tagging their friends if it was related to them. It's a fun activity. Facebook is one of the world's largest social media. Their mission is to give people the power to make the world more open and connected. Facebook is used to stay connected with friends and family, to share and express what matters to them, and be updated to what's going on in the world. 

        However, Facebook or any other types of social medias can or may cause negative impacts on people. An example would be cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can cause the person to be suicidal, emotionally unstable, or can be diagnosed with a disorder. In the article "Facebook Exodus", it says "One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised." What this statement meant was that, social media isn't always good. There are some "dark sides" to this new social technology. To add onto the part about privacy, in the article "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do", they quoted "the authors speculate that the increased privacy interest could come from public attention devoted to the subject, from more changes in Facebook’s default settings, or from prompts that Facebook shows users." Privacy is another effecting component to social media. Everyone has a different standard in privacy. Some people like to be publicized, some likes to be private to only friends and family.   

        In the future, everyone will probably have a phone with downloaded social media. There may be a high chance that people in the future will be more anti-social in real life compared to their online interactions. 
      

Cites: 
"Facebook Exodus" by Virginia Heffernan, NY Times, August 26, 2009 
"Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do" By Marc Parry, NY Times, July 29, 2010