Mashable

The Wall Street Journal confirmed on Tuesday that Google plans to bring a tablet computer to market with Verizon Wireless. The device does not have a name or operating system yet but Verizon’s CEO said in a statement,”We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives so that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience.” This new tablet will create competition with Apple's iPad device, and the iPad 3G just hit stores with AT&T as the exclusive wireless carrier. It will be interesting to see what Verizon and Google produce to one-up Apple.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Vanity Fair’s June issue will debut in iPad form. The app will be available in Apple’s App Store for $4.99, the same price as the glossy newsstand edition. Future editions will be priced at $3.99. This collaboration could create a resurgence in print media, with more magazines and periodicals expected to follow suit and create an iPad app. The issue will feature the same ads as the print edition, as well as special ads from six advertisers, including Microsoft Bing, Aveeno and Clinique. The special ads contain features like how-to videos and Facebook Pages, and can be viewed in vertical mode. Additionally, advertisers were also able to add links to their regular print ads for a “nominal fee,” according to publisher Edward Menicheschi.

Augmented Reality

According to Dr. Pence, the term Augmented Reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are improved by virtual computer-generated imagery. Augmented reality research explores this as a way to expand the real world. Professor Greenberg’s iPhone application showing the distance between our location and the mountainous areas close to us, and Dr. Pence’s illustration of the NFL’s “1st and 10” line are excellent examples of Augmented Reality. Mainstream media has taken to this new trend, and we are seeing Augmented Reality everywhere. Advertisers are using it to their advantage, artists are using it to evolve their work and take their art to the next level, surveyors and engineers are using it to simulate planned construction projects, and even educators are using it to keep their students engaged and interested in their studies. There is also free software that we can download to contribute to this trend. Dr. Pence’s discussion did not just end at technological advancements in GPS and cell phones though. Now our military has HUD technology that allows us to see miles ahead. He also pointed out that we are working on having an HUD planted on our eye just like a contact lens. Overall, Augmented Reality is already implemented in out everyday lives and over time, I believe that we continue to technologically advance and change the world that we live in.

iPad Discoveries

On Wednesday, April 20, Apple announced the official date and time for the release of the much-anticipated iPad Wi-Fi + 3G model. The product will be available in stores and delivered to U.S. pre-order customers on Friday, April 30. Apple released a statement claiming that the new iPad, “allows users to connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before. Users can browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ user interface. iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models are just 0.5 inches thick and weigh just 1.6 pounds—thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook—and deliver up to 10 hours of battery life for surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching videos or listening to music, and up to nine hours of surfing the web using a 3G data network.” I believe that this announcement is important to new media because it is an advancement in technology that we have never seen before. Like we have stated in class, the iPad is essentially this generations Swiss Army Knife and I am excited to see what other gadgets and additional features will evolve from this model.
On Sunday, April 25, Israel lifted a ban on iPads over concerns that they would interfere with other electronics. After tests were conducted on models confiscated under the ban, results proved that the device caused no such interference, and the 20 iPads that were confiscated are being released to their owners. The article on Mashable.com states that the ban was, “frankly bizarre, and perhaps Israeli startups can now get on with developing a multitude of new iPad apps.” However, Israeli officials still seem cautious to the device and are inexplicably limiting iPad imports to one per person. I believe that this article supports the idea that Americans are culturally more accepting to new media than people in other countries. And I believe that your society has grown so much already and we will only continue gathering knowledge and essentially adapting to advancements without even knowing it.

The Machine

According to Vannevar Bush, “Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.” Bush predicts that science will continue evolving and will provide faster communication between people. He states that in the future, the Encyclopoedia Britannica will be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk and millions of people can have access to it. Machines with interchangeable parts will be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they will perform reliably. The world will arrive at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it... A future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library that stores ones books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It will act as an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. In one end is the stored material. Personal files and business correspondence are obtained and dropped into one place. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, and all sorts of other things. Kevin Kelly believes that we have come to that age and are already preparing ourselves for the future.
Kevin Kelly states in his speech, “The Next 5000 days of the Internet” that in the last 10 years, amazing technological advancements in science have been made. With the emergence of the Web, we now virtually have all of the information we would ever need right at our fingertips. According to Kelly, everything will be connected to one machine, and that one machine will be connected to the Internet. The Internet will be something that we are surrounded by and always connected to. From our clothes to our cars and the groceries we buy, everything will have access to the Internet. Kelly claims that society will have to give up personalization to be transparent. Just like the alphabet, we will learn to adapt to the Internet in our lives and make it seem normal over time. The next 5000 days will be smarter. Our computer’s operating systems will know us. It will know what our favorite sites are and will recommend more information based on our opinions, thus making us more transparent. Kelly predicts that we will be right in the middle of the Internet. It will become a part of our lives everywhere.

New Media & Politics

The article, Political Communication - Old and New Media Relationships reflects upon the ways television has changed the political landscape. It also looks into how far new media, such as the Internet, are displacing television or reconfiguring the political communications ecology. Since the 1960s and the JFK/Nixon debate, television has held the center of the political stage, assuming a “co-producer” role. Television gradually moved from the role of observer of events and provider of stories and emerged as definer and constructor of political reality. And without necessarily breaching journalistic norms, television came to have an impact upon the events it covered and how they were covered. Networks like FOX and NBC began to favor different sides when covering politics, setting different agendas. It is these reasons that the Internet is now taking the spotlight.

Since broadcast news limits what we learn on different topics, we are looking to the Internet for additional information (the same goes for newspapers). The article states that a majority of Americans who accept new media get political material from blogs, comedy sites, government websites, candidate sites or alternative sites. Furthermore, data shows that younger people are more heavily represented among new media users, suggesting that the trend will accelerate. Since 2004, the number of Americans citing the Internet as their first source of presidential election campaign news has increased by almost twenty-five percent. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are also finding ways to attract their audiences towards politics. The viral energy of the blogosphere, social network sites, and wikis constitutes a new flow of incessantly circulating publicity in which reputations are enhanced and destroyed, messages are debated and discarded, and rumors are floated and tested. President Obama’s decision to use Facebook as a source to reach out to young voters could be considered a key component in his election. It allowed him to open up to a specific audience that he knew he would not reach on any other media.

Television must find a way to incorporate the Internet in its broadcasts to maintain its dominance as a political source. However, it will first face consequences before it will be a success. Although television still performs a public service function, this function is struggling to survive in an increasingly market-driven, competitive media environment. Broadcasters must now be able to operate across media platforms and engage collaboratively with a broad spectrum of off-line as well as online communities. Now it is required to produce 24/7, cross-platform content, sometimes at the cost of journalistic depth and even accuracy. Overall, the media and politics will continue to be mutually dependent. I believe that in time, collaboration between the Internet and television will be made and our country will be exposed to a new form of gathering political information.

Let the Music Play

According to Joe Pignato, assistant professor at SUNY Oneonta, the music industry is not dead. However, the record industry is. In a time where everything is digital and no one buys CD's anymore, it is hard for a new artist to come out with a single and actually make a profit off of it. With the birth of Napster and other peer to peer torrents, more and more people are simply downloading music from other peoples shared files. However, many people report that they often purchase a band's CD after hearing their downloads. Ultimately, I believe that music downloads could help the record industry. If artists find a way to put their music out for free on sites such as Rhapsody and Pandora, more people will be exposed to their art, making an impact on the artists career. Selling recordings, playing live concerts, and selling merchandise such as T-shirts will always be a lucrative business for artists. Overall, artists will always find ways to make money and will keep the industry alive despite its current downfall.

The News is not Dead

I do not believe that the news is dead. On the contrary, I think the news is evolving into its next stage. Sam Pollock, editor of Oneonta's Daily Star seemed very confident that the newspaper industry will not die. Newspapers might "die" as a hard source, but newspaper companies will continue through their websites. Periodicals such as The New York Times are charging costumers for the news and are doing quite well. The News has become something that is "winged" because we have instant access to stories on the internet. The digital age gives news companies the opportunity to release a story and update it as additional information surfaces. Online periodicals also expose you to additional stories through suggestions. Cell phone journalists are emerging and saving the news because they are an unlimited source to the news companies. Now, everyone can generate news, whether on their cell phones or on social sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The Media's New Participatory Nature

In Dana Boyd’s book, Csikszentmihalyi, he argues that people are happiest when they can reach a state of "flow." For the last few centuries, we have been living in an era of broadcast media. Most recently, however, we have been switching to an era of networked media. We as a society have changed this “flow”. We now use social networking as a means of obtaining and distributing information. Henry Jenkins states in a study that more than half of American teens online have produced media content and about a third have circulated media that they have produced beyond their immediate friends and family. Those who are most enamored with services like Twitter talk passionately about feeling as though they are living and breathing with the world around them, peripherally aware and in-tune, adding content to the stream and grabbing it when appropriate. As our information ecosystem evolves, we will see some radical changes take place. Boyd states that if we are going to try to get in-flow with information, we need to understand how information flows differently today. He breaks it down into four challenges where technological hope and reality collide (Democratization, Stimulation, Homophily, and Power). Jenkins states these issues can not be understood through a simple opposition between digital natives and digital immigrants, but rather require us to dig deeper into the diverse range of experiences young people have online and the range of different interactions between adults and teens in these new participatory culture. Overall, as we continue to move from a broadcast model of information to a networked one, we will continue to see re-workings of the information landscape, thus changing how our media will be handled in the future.

Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan. He was a champion of human-kind known for his intelligence and stealing fire from Zeus to give to the mortals, making him more powerful than the Gods. In the myth, Zeus punishes Prometheus for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle eats his liver every day for eternity. His myth has played a pivotal role in the early history of mankind. I believe that Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is very closely related to this story. Shelley's novel is even subtitled "The Modern Prometheus". This is a reference to the novel's themes of the over-reaching of modern man into dangerous areas of knowledge. Dr. Victor Frankenstein attempts to play God and create life in a time where the idea was deemed impossible. However, he succeeds in his experiment. The Monster he creates is larger and more powerful than man, thus making the Doctor believe that he is more powerful than God. However, he is punished for his actions when his creation betrays him and wreaks havoc on society. So not only is Frankenstein a modern interpretation of the Titan’s desire for immortality amongst his peers, but it also paraphrases the consequences he endures.

Frankenstein Talk

Allison McConnell makes an excellent example of how technology in our society closely relates to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. "If Victor Frankenstein represents software designers and genetics scientists, and his creature represents our computer networks and bioengineering experiments, then we are not scared enough." My generation is constantly being called different things. We are the cell phone, video games, and iPod generation. As soon as a new technology comes into the mainstream, our generation is the first to accept it and utilize it as part of our daily lives. We are a generation defined by our technology because we live in a society where our technology defines us, much like Frankenstein's obsession with life and reincarnation. Also much like Frankenstein, we are quick to turn our backs on technology. We obsess about a certain element thinking that it will solve all of our problems and once we obtain it, we find that our hypothesis was mistaken. We then grow tired of it, neglect it, and look for the next big thing that catches our attention. Our attention span is drastically declining and we now crave immediate stimulation and response. A lot of this craving comes from Simulacra and Simulation. Baudrillard’s first theory on Simulacra states that contemporary media are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images. An example of this would be seeing the golden arches from the highway. We see the arches and although we might not need to go to MacDonald’s, our mind sees the logo and puts us in the comfortable mindset that we were once in while eating MacDonald’s food, thus sending us straight to the drive-thru window. Ultimately, I believe that advances in technology are a great thing but out society needs to slow down or else we will be too consumed and will not have anything to look forward to as a culture.