New Media

In my view, one of the coolest parts about social media is the way that we can update old content and comment on it. Everything from Star Trek to Star Wars to G.I. Joe has been nitpicked endlessly on the Internet decades after those shows stopped their original run. It’s possible for people to make all sorts of content that pairs continuities or comments on what was always charming. The classic Star Trek had a lot of episodes that were fairly silly in their basis. “Roman planet”, “mobster planet”, “Nazi planet”… 60s and 70s sci-fi was willing to explore a silly premise if it meant commenting on an interesting or fun idea. The consequence, though, was that The Original Series only had a few episodes where it really felt like they were actually meeting new civilizations. I decided to make a play off of that concept. This kind of fandom and commentary often has a lot of sarcasm for things that they love. Just like the old playground wisdom that only I get to say something bad about my Momma, sometimes it’s the fans of a show that are exactly in the position to comment upon and appreciate the flaws.

Creativity

                  Powerful art often comes about as a result of collaboration. New media is almost entirely about collaboration: It facilitates nearly infinite dyads of cooperation, letting people work together in whole new way. YouTube mashups are a primitive example (Barnes, 2007). They let people blend together videos in order to create humorous effects or parodies. This is not new, of course. The Internet has always had such parodies in GIF, Flash or other forms. But what Youtube has allowed is the mass creation with ease of these kinds of mashups. With a simple video editor, one can make all sorts of content. In the future, this content will increase in complexity and artistic value. The present state of the remixed video is likely similar to the very beginnings of moving pictures. The Citizen Kane of YouTube is still probably around the corner.

Virtual World

                  Virtual worlds are fantastic areas for collaboration. Second Life is somewhat controversial due to the way it has been used (Mehta, 2013; Knafo, 2009). It is relatively simplistic, very user-oriented, and has become used in largely fetishistic ways. Some interesting things in Second Life have let people recreate spaces from history or from popular culture. But future virtual worlds are going to be much more complicated and much more like Minecraft, with much more robust physics and interactions tools that are going to require much less overhead on the part of participants.

            Virtual worlds have one major con: They aren’t reality. When they are confused with reality, they can be very harmful. People can become addicted to a safe virtual space and confuse progress in a virtual sense with real senses.

            However, virtual worlds have many advantages. They create alternative spaces that complement and modify the existing spaces in reality. They can be used for all sorts of collaborative enterprises, including fascinating art, explorations of interesting ideas like analog computing, and so forth.

            The future virtual worlds are likely going to be seamlessly integrated the way websites are. People will transfer from specialized spaces repeatedly. Education spaces, for example, could transfer instantly and seamlessly upon the completion of such spaces into areas designed for shared interaction.

            Virtual worlds are also likely to be integrated more with video gaming and electronic elements.

The Dark Side of Tech

            Virtually any technology has a “dark side”. Technologies are tools, and human beings use tools for both nefarious and salutary ends. People use hammers to kill, to build shelter and to create art. Social media tools have tremendous potential. They can be used to make human resources a far more active affair and link talented people looking for work with those managers who are looking for talented people, as LinkedIn does. They can be used to allow a corporation to interface directly with customers in ways that increase the intimacy of the relationship and increase the quality of service.

           

            Because any technology has a “dark side”, I view it as irrelevant when evaluating the worth of a technology. However, when the “dark side” can be solved with engineering, it becomes an issue. The Facebook privacy settings right now, for example, are not transparent and clear enough so that most people can use them, as the Greenfield piece from The Wire indicates. Meanwhile, WKBW's article on Facebook being used to gather information for phishing shows that Facebook is not properly sanitizing information.

            These technologies can change to increase our transparency, but they need to do so in a way that is controlled and trustworthy. That means being user-friendly and intuitive. I think these technologies will begin to emphasize such tools very soon.