Social Networking

How do we connect with our friends? In the past when there are limited technology, we communicate to each other via postal mail (snail mail), pagers, and public telephones. We get to know each other only through formal introduction face to face and in their social context. To get into activities with friends, we call up each other, fix a time and place, and will be there on time or else there's no way to contact except via the home telephone.

Today, we have mobile phone which we can use to contact our friends wherever and whenever they are. Official documents can be sent through Electronic Mails in an instant. Public telephones have become obsolete and pagers are  rare today. When we meet new friends, we can know them through friend's social networking sites. We can look through our friends' friends, photos, latest news...etc.No longer we have to meet up to have activities with our friends. We can have play a game of scrabble, of dungeons and dragon, challenge each others' high scores in addictive games such as icy towers.

Let's take a look at today's social networking:



Some of the more prominent social networking sites are Facebook and MySpace. Currently there is strong heated competition between these social networking sites. Check out this video:



Other than competition between Social Media network, there have also been debate on the effectiveness of social networking. 2  factors paved the ways for opposers towards social networking.

1. Communication through social network is inefficient: long winded and interpersonal heart-to-heart talk should be done using emails. social networking sites has no privacy and easily accessed by others.
2. Social Networks lose engagement over time: it get's boring after a while, it happened to Friendster and MySpace, it will happen to Facebook too. 

On a personal note,  Facebook happens to be my first social networking site. Till today, it is still as interesting as first day. What we connect is people, not applications. If people gets bored with social networking, they are probably bored at social relationships with people real-life.

Internet Politics

Obama Vs. John McCain is a typical example of how Internet prevails over traditional means to gain popularity for votes such as bidding, surveys, flyers distribution...etc. Let's watch a video about the contrast between using internet as a means for presidential election and the traditional way.



 To be successful today, Internet Technology is indispensable. First, let us take a look where does political power comes from:

1. Legitimate Power: This kind of power is given by a authoritative figure such as the President, government, or teacher. Legitimate power is used to enforce standards of behavior. A school prefect has this power to give demerit points to misbehaving students.
2. Referent Power: This power bestowed upon individuals by virtue of accomplishments. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew deserved this power when he single-handedly  built Singapore to what it is today.
3. Expert Power: This power springs from education and experience. To be called an expert, one must have expertise in a specialized field. to achieve that, he must spend years of research. 

Now, where does Internet comes in from here? Is it authoritative at all? Iran, a war-striken country, has much more online users than any country in the Middle East. During the Iranian Regime crackdown, the brutality were all captured  on mobile phone videos and posted online for the whole world via Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and email. The multitude of bloggers in Iran had closed down many newspapers firms and caused many journalists jobless. News and information spreads faster on the net then publications.

So is the Internet authoritative? During the Presidential Election in 2008, the Obama campaign used the internet to organize his supporters in a way that in the past would have required an army of volunteers and paid organizers on the ground. This not only helped him in the November election against the Republican nominee John McCain, but was probably the decisive factor in his Democratic primary contest against Hillary Clinton.

     First, the Obama campaign started off with few resources and little name recognition, but the internet helped him connect to his core supporters in cost-effective ways. It aided in his fund raising through advertising.
     Second, Obama was able to connect with young people aged  roughly 18 to 29 years old, the cohort known as the millennials. It allowed him to mobilize their energy and passion. This achieved a sense of belonging and achievement in the younger generations, knowing that they played an active and important in the future of their country.
    Third, Obama reached out to much more. He could create blogs and platform issues, which any one from any part of the world could understand and comment on his values. on MyBarackObama.com, a ‘cookie’ or internet tag, was placed in a voter’s web browser. This cookie could identify the types of sites the user visited afterward, helping inform which political ads were served up to the user.

Is Internet authoritative and influential? Well, it definitely is.

Multimedia On the Internet

We have 24 hours a day. On average, 8 hours is spent on sleeping, and the rest of 16 hours awake. During the hours that we are awake, how do we spend it?

On the move, we have the mobile phone data plan which allows us to surf the net while on the move. One can read news, watch videos or even chat to each other via messenger or skype. At workplace/school, internet is used everyday. Emails are used to transmit information between departments, search engines are used for research and development, the world wide web is used as an education platform for students. Now, so much of the internet is being used, how do we use them?

In 2.0 -> 3.0 Internet, the web is no longer about scripts and words, it has music, sounds, even videos. The multimedia can be used for various uses, some commonly used applications are education, entertainment, communications and research. Multimedia education is used in schools to spur students' interest in their subjects. Multimedia communication is used everyday when we chat to each other via Messenger, Skpye each other and even social networking such as facebook.

This is an example of multimedia. 



Today, other than the time we use for work and play on the internet, most users gain entertainment from the Internet too. Usually reading off a story from the internet would be boring, watching a movie would be interesting. Movie is a form of multimedia. Multimedia is defined as a computer-based interactive communications process that incorporates text, graphics, sound, animation, and video.

The forerunner for multimedia entertainment is Games. Games of today incorporate texts, graphics, animations, music and videos. Different genres of games such as Role-Playing Games have a story-line and dramatic music. Check out this game trailer:



As mentioned, education in schools have become more advanced in technology and learning is becoming easier. Take a look at this:



These two commonly used multimedia on the web have displayed enormous improvement from one decade ago when pixel games such as Super Mario and yellow textbooks were used. With multimedia so advanced, one wonders if anyone can live without the internet today.