Kevin Kelly analysis

Considering how much has already been accomplished, it is very surprising to learn that the web has only been around for 5000 days. Since that time we have accomplished so much, such as finding different ways to communicate with people across the world. It is near impossible to imagine what the next 5000 days will bring us.

I think the most interesting aspect that Kelly talks about is his idea that everything will eventually go through the web. This includes phones, businesses and television. The Internet, it seems, will control our lives, if it hasn't already happened. To do this, the web will have to keep up with all of this demand.

The one thing that I do disagree with is how Kelly claims that the human race could not have lived without technology. I will admit, that now with the introduction technology to the human race, we probably won't be able to survive. However, this does not mean that if we were not first introduced to it, we would not be able to survive. Many species, who are unable to even come close to our achievements, have survived longer than we are. However, as a species we adapted to a point where it is now a necessity for us. The problem comes when we become too dependable on machines, the human race will no longer need the ability to think for itself.

Web 3.0

Web 3.0 appears as if it is already happening. I believe Web 3.0 will be solley based on what the user wants. For instance, I believe the internet will start reading a trend with the user. Instead of typing something in Google and getting a bunch of useless responses, the internet will simply filter what responses fit you best based on you previous searches. It will act more as an assistant than a search engine. On the downside, this will also help with advertising being able to pin-point what products to market to you. Although this is pretty much already a reality, Web 3.0 will be a much more defined system and will give you more accurate results. Also, with user generated content, the system will also be much more defined. Instead of simply being able to have a blog, a user may now pretty much be able to pretty much create a whole world within the realms of the Web.

My illustrator shows how the Internet has effected the way campaigns are run and how candidates have to be careful of their actions because someone is always watching.

During the 1960 Presidential election, candidate John F. Kennedy used the power of the TV to broadcast his message to the American public. Although today it seems like an obvious way to run a campaign, back in 1960 it was seen as a revolutionary step and is highly credited as being the driving force to Kennedy eventual winning a close election against Richard Nixon. Just as the TV revolutionized the 1960 campaign, so did the Internet with the elections of 2004 and on. With the invention of the Internet, politicians have found a new way to reach a greater audience and at the same time be held more accountable to what they do and say with the introduction of Web 2.0.

Elections truly changed in the 2004 presidential campaign when Democratic primary candidate Howard Dean used the Internet his main basis. In response, he received record numbers of donations. The main reason for these donations came from the fact that the people who were donating were of a different generation than most voters. They felt that with Howard Dean using the Internet as a campaign tool he truly related to younger voters. But as much as the Internet helped Dean, it was also he downfall. During the Iowa caucuses, Howard Dean gave an energetic speech to his audience with many video cameras rolling. The speech showed Dean as rowdy and was almost instantly streamed on YouTube. The video became viral within hours with many bloggers thinking his actions during the speech were “unpresidential.” Dean went on to lose the Democratic Primaries, but his ability to use the Internet did not go unrecognized. After he dropped out of the race, he was elected to be head of the Democratic Party. However, this was not the last time a campaign was destroyed by the Internet.

The Internet has made it so politicians have to be more careful for what they say. The greatest incident of this came during the 2006 Senatorial campaign in Virginia. During a speech, incumbent senator George Allen repeadietly uttered the word “macaca,” a racial slur, to an Indian-American, who was filming for the opposition campaign. This video spread fast throughout the Internet and like Howard Dean, George Allen eventually lost the election for which he once had a strong lead. The Washington Post analyzed and speculated that if this election was before 2004, the simple word of “macaca” would not have made headlines and George Allen might have been a prominent candidate for the 2008 Republican Presidential Nomination.

Midterm Essay

Being a political science major, I have decided to write a 3-5 page paper on how the internet has effected elections in the United States. I will examine the 2004 election, where the internet was first successfully used for campaigning, to the 2008 election, and finally discuss how the Internet will be used in future elections.

Group Project

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

We don't think media production will stoop down to individual productions. There will always be movies that have this strategy such as (Paranormal Activity, Blare Witch or Clover Field), however, it will never take over all media. It will never be the main way of making movies. We believe it's just another way to convince the audience to buy a product or service, as well as intriguing people to watch movies and television.

2.
Find a news article and write down tags you would use to define what the article is about. Now goto Digg or another tagging site and see how others have tagged it. What did you learn from the differences or similarities in tagging?
New York Times article
Live Analysis; United States versus Canada

Tags: Olympics, Hockey, Sports, Canadian Upset, US, Canada, Sport's Media, Men's Hockey
Digg: Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, hockey, Jaromir Jagr, Men's hockey, Mike Babcock, ron wilson, Russia, Sidney Crosby, Sweden, United States.

The Digg website consisted of more specific details than our tags. We focused more on the sport and the different aspects of hockey, instead of the Olympics in general.

3.Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

It is important for transparency to be involved in the Social Media world because its what sustain the whole social media or user generated world. If people weren't ready to expose themselves on Facebook or Twitter, than those types of social media would be non-existent. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube rely on people to express themselves and their opinions. If people slowly stopped being transparent then the social media would feel the "domino effect" and eventually fail. As a group, we believe that is just as important to be transparent online as well as offline. Being transparent online allows you to express and connect yourself to multiple people at a time. However, having transparency offline allows more personal interaction as well as creates a more personal relationship. Overall, we think that people have a tendency to be more transparent online than offline. However, we think that there is no distinct reason for transparency to be more important than one another.

Digital Nation part 2

I found that the most interesting part about the second half of Digital Nation is how much people live there lives through characters on an online game such as Second Life or World of Warcraft. I never doubted that people spent hours of the day playing these games, but I never thought it got to the extent where people would actually die from not eating due to the result of playing these games.

It's hard to say whether I think these games are a bad thing. Sure, it is a much better experience to go outside and play with friends, but that's not always an option for people. I guess games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allows us to be someone we are really not in real life. After watching the film, I decided to create my own avatar for Second Life. When I was creating it, I guess my initial reaction was to create the person I would have liked to be. Rest assure, I wasn't really indulged in the Second Life world, and really spent only a few minutes on it before quitting, but i could definitely see the appeal for someone who may be into that.

Movies like the recent Surrogate and Avatar really do show an accurate way in which what life may turn into in the future. It may come to the point where we only communicate with people through machines. It's a future which is not necessarily something that people want to embrace, but it is looking more and more likely as time passes.