Last Blog! :)

I cannot believe how quick this semester has flown by. When I first enrolled in this class, to be honest, I thought it was going to be a fun easy class that would get me closer to my 150 credit hour requirement to take the CPA exam. However, it did not end up being so simple and actually, I struggled quite a bit; kudos to the communications majors.

It was hard to get interested in some of the topics, but others I thoroughly enjoyed. For topics such as what is new media and what is new about new media I found it hard to find the relevance. It was interesting to see everyone discussing it so animately, but I questioned why this mattered in life. People really sit around and think about this? People actually have careers where this is what they do? Then I looked around…

It’s weird, but through these experiences I got a better understanding of college, of majors, of life in general. I know that was not the point of the class, but that is perhaps the biggest most interesting lesson I learned. People’s interests differ so immensely and because of that the world can work as well as it does. Every major contributes to the world in a different way. I never analyzed this prior to this class. In fact, I had a very closed mind about different majors. I honestly thought accounting was so difficult and many majors could not possibly be this hard, but as I look back, that was pretty dumb. Prior to this class I viewed certain majors as blow off majors and others I viewed as pointless, but honestly nothing is pointless; it’s just different. Just because I don’t enjoy/understand/really care about it doesn’t mean that no one does. Simple, yet I’d never thought about it. Silly me. Additionally, this brought me back to why I am in college: to get a well rounded education. Fine, I didn’t enjoy it half as much as my not-for-profit accounting class, but that wasn’t the point. The point was (or at least should have been, even from the beginning) to experience it. Why not take advantage of the large quantity of classes offered to me? My boyfriend always yells at me when I go off on my tangents about how silly this class or that class is because “I’ll never use this.” He likes to point on that college isn’t about getting a job, it is about becoming a better person. I think that is finally starting to sink in…

I know my previous rant isn’t what the professor is looking for so below is the actual required blog, but I found the above something I have been wanting to express for a while.

My absolute favorite topic to ponder was the concept of identity online. That is why when asked what topic I wanted to pursue for our group project I stressed that we further analyze identity on the web. Prior to this class, I looked at the internet (mainly social networking) and more specifically games as a time-consuming overall negative thing. I enjoy the ease of communication and research via the internet, but I did see how addictive certain site can be. If my boyfriend doesn’t read digg or his xkcd comic for the day/week he might go crazy. I was addicted to the Simms for a while. I’ve read about the extreme cases where people spend days straight staring at the computer playing games or stalking people on facebook. However, after this class I have at least seen some of the positive aspects of gaming and internet use. For example, Susanna Stern conducted a study on girls and self-expression via the web and she states, “[i]t seems likely that for some girls, the web presents the ‘safe company’ they need to ‘speak their experience’ and ‘say what is true’. It also seems to grant some girls the freedom to develop their sense of possibility and to experience themselves as active agents in their own lives” (Lister, 246). This concept of freely experiencing oneself without the restrictions of one’s physical self can be very important. In class we spoke about Second Life and how there was a Veteran’s Day ceremony online on Veteran’s Day. At first, I was upset that someone would sit at home versus going out and participating in real life. However, after we discussed that some people are either physically unable or have mental conditions that may have even been caused by their services, I began to feel bad. These people have an outlet where they can participate and interact, when in real life they may not be able to. The following article with a video attachment addresses Second Life and stroke victims who use it as a form of recovery (http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/03/is_second_life.html). There is a whole other use for these types of games that I never considered. And although I still see the negative of gaming and excessive web use, it isn’t in such a negative light as it used to be.

Another topic of interest was McCloud’s book Understanding Comics. I loved that he presented the information in such a thought provoking and different way that I had never previously encountered. I had never reflected on comics and, in fact, I considered them dead media. However, McCloud’s book brought some light to comics and made me realize how interesting they could be. We discussed what types of literacies were needed to understand new medias and it was interesting to list all of the things that seem second nature to me as necessities. It made me think about how do not have these literacies.

Another topic that I was interested in was the inequalities of the digital world and networks users and economics. Of course not everyone has a computer and of course not everyone has internet access, but to see a number put to that was a little overwhelming. The concept of the digital divide where access to online resources are globally uneven and correspond with income inequalities in Western countries, “[i]n 1999 the US Department of Commerce reported that urban households with incomes of $75,000 and higher were more than twenty times more likely to have access to the internet than rural households at the lowest income levels, and more than nine times as likely to have a computer at home” (Lister, 199). We discussed the implications of this in class and how the divide will only continue to increase if something is not done. It was scary to think of a significant portion of the world falling further behind. Certain organizations are trying to close the gap by providing laptops to children (http://laptop.org/en/). We also discussed if it is our obligation to provide others with computers. In class I said that I think we have an obligation to provide public computers to libraries or other public places, but not on the individual level. That way access will be easy and the goal is easier to obtain. It would be near impossible, especially economically, to provide everyone with a computer. Not only would the computer have to be provided, but the internet access and other applications and software would have to be provided, otherwise it doesn’t solve the divide at all. Also, there would be an issue of access to power to keep the computer running. Some areas do not have access to power sources like that. Also, I argued that there are more important things such as getting fresh water to areas that do not have it or getting food to the starving. Necessities should come before luxury.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the new media fast project, even if I wasn’t that successful. It taught me how dependent on media I am due to my jobs and school. I could only give up a select few things, because if I stopped e-mailing or answering my phone calls I could have missed an associate trying to schedule a meeting or a message about how the website I am supposed to be operating isn’t working. I would have fallen behind in my job and would have made my superiors quite upset. Overall I think the project taught me how the world works and revolves around new media. If all of a sudden new media stopped working, we would be lost. It’s actually quite terrifying. Our economy and lives depend on media whether it be to contact someone in a hurry or invest in stocks. It was interesting to have to analyze everything I did involving new media and ask myself, “is this necessary?” In most cases it was. I learned a little bit about myself in that sense because I realized that my primary use for new media is business related. I rarely use new media for social activity. The biggest exception was my phone.

Overall I really learned a lot in this class, even if it wasn’t what I was meant to learn. It was interesting seeing this class from a different point of view (as an accounting major) because we addressed many issues that I would have never been exposed to without taking this course. I challenge a communications major to take an upper accounting class to have a similar experience. It is really eye opening.