It was not long ago when my parents bought me the first computer when I was in eleventh grade, for me to follow my passions in career that required communication across the geographic bounds. It was not just this box that was useful but the internet facility, and with this internet came the inventions of communication tools that made human interactions easy, enhancing their social circle, resolving their issues and making easy to help mankind. I always used to think highly of my Graphic Design portfolio but it was not until that I uploaded it on flickr and got comments from my friends, giving me confidence boast and then I was ready to face job and admission interviews, knowing that my portfolio is worth it. I also got to see others work and could compare myself that how would my creativity be ranked in real world in comparison to all the innovative minds around me. Honestly, I need to thank the social media and its incomings for my admission across the geographic limits of my homeland and especially all my foreign friends on Facebook, Orkut, Flickr and messengers (Yahoo, Google, Skype and MSN) that provided me information and helped me realize my dreams.
For me social media means, being available to my friends, family 24/7. They can leave me messages anytime, telling me about their experiences or problems and I can respond them right away without spending a hand full of money. It is new innovative mode of communication in real time which is accessible and affordable by every being. It helps me share information that excites me including my fun pictures or the funny videos on youtube, to have a quality laughter time with my friends.
But with all the excitements it has its short comings; I always fear the fact that my account can be hacked and used purposefully. I am never confident that my privacy would be respected. It cannot be all wild and precious when you had an experience of somebody intruding your privacy and hacked your account or computer, I lost my account password, had to make another account, recover all friends ids just with the help of my memory and apologizing them if they get some useless information from my previous account. Just for the matter of fact that some person who had a lot of time to waste, found it funny to create some troublesome circumstaces for me or may be he wanted to impress with all his evil skills.
Then there is problem of fatal viruses, data loss that these social websites carry with them. I had my moments of disk crashing, data corruption on a night before submission of project, and I am sure everyone would have had their share of such experiences.
But sincerely I personally do not discourage such activities, because they create healthy competitions among web2.0 market players. Raising the standard bar of improvement every time, when a new disasterous virus is out there, it helps market player create product differentiation and making it easy for user to chose the best trade-off among such an enormous variety. For the old market players bringing constant innovation in tools is important, such as it is important for new entrants to bring solutions for all existing or anticipated problems, if they want to create Brand recognition in virtual world.
2 comments:
Kanza,
Were you alright even after your disk crash? This appears to me to be the kind of issue that doesn't yet harm the society, but rather the individual.
But this also gives me an uncanny feeling. Is there a limit for how significant the data can become to our lives, when we clumsily store the data on a computer? What if there will be incidents causing psychological effects - grave as those of war, rape, diseace etc. - and possibly causing destructive behavior because of "evil" computers. (Who knows? I'm no psychologist...)
Well, as you say. There's no problem as long as we are aware of the consequences of SMT. But, I think there's a difference in being aware of security consequences and social consequences. When I say social consequences, I mean there are certain consequences that follow being avaliable 24/7. Of course there's the possibility for us to disconnect whenever we feel like it. The problem is whether we will actually "feel like it" when we need it. SMT can be like a drug, if you see what I mean. I think it will be harder to protect oneself from those than from security issues.
But, drugs as such are usually subject for discussion depending on their side effects. So, I have a question for you. Do you have needs for being offline? (apart from obvious neccessities) If so, why? And to which extent?
As for myself, I have a need being offline now and then, preferably on regular basis. As I've grown up in Sweden, I'm used to having long vacations from school or work, and I would not be surprised if our cultural background could help explain our needs.
Cheers
I really enjoyed reading your essay about the virtual world, you’ve experienced both the downsides and the upsides of Social media technology.
I agree on the fact that new media could be imposing and requires a lot more protection. The fact that we can’t rely on our own computers and our own storage spaces will limit the creativity and the openness of our work.
You seem very aware of the problems with Social Media Technology and you don’t try to deny it but rather emphasize its value to new media and the creation of new solutions. Though your personal integrity should never be comprised in such situations as you’ve mentioned, and as new technology advances we will see more of this. More “evil-doers” of the world will make computer users more scared.
The way you’ve shared your portfolio and gotten feedback from it is a excellent example of how Social Media Technology works at its best. Getting to know other people with similar interests and experiences and share thoughts and wisdom with each other is a great way to communicate.
Cheers
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