Next New

We seem to have almost every form of media around us: from virtual reality technology bringing people for collaborative projects across different places and in different time zone, to live social streaming and feeding platform such as Twitter which receive instantaneous update on breaking news, we seem to already achieve every possible means of communication.

It is no doubt that we have achieve great leaps in development for information technology, however, many of these technologies are done through an intermediary: almost all our existing technologies depend on going through a form of middle exchange for us to carry out any form of operation.

What would it be like if we can bypass these middle exchanges, and interact directly with the console or machine? I got this idea based on the movie "Tron Legacy", a great film that talks about the possibility of people getting into a total-submerge experience, and creating a scenario where we really get into the places and experience it for ourselves, instead of the surrounding experience we currently have.

Although, there are films or movies that suggested the possibility of such a technology, we are still far away from an actual, fully-deployable prototype. I'm excited to keep a look-out for such technology.

Wiki So Far

For our class wiki contribution, I have been trying to become familiar with Wiki's layout and its various functions. Editing in Wiki is something new for me and I have learned a new skill in this process. 

In terms of researching the topics, I have been editing the investment portion of Baruch's new media page, and I chose to add ’High Frequency Trading', or HFT in short, as a new topic under that page. This is an important topic because most of today's market activities are done by computer algorithms, instead of human traders, and such change can be interesting and challenging at the same time. 

Few years ago, no one knows what HFT is, or even heard of the term. Publication such as Scott Patterson's-"Dark Pool", or Michael Lewis's- "Flash Boys" allowed the ordinary folks a glimpse into this world and how huge money is made in split seconds. Titled "Dark Pool", it is a narrative about a how a bunch of astrophysicists, or mathematicians, who previously where left in the dusk for being geeky, made extraordinary amount of money in a very short time. 

Because every second, or rather, scale down to nano-second is crucial for HFT, finding ways to reduce the trading time to zero has been compare with a journey of finding the holy grail, for many other market participants. Just to show what these HFT firms can do to cut down a milli-nano second of execution advantage, a Chicago-based HFT firm bought about a few acres of land in the sub-urban just to ensure the smooth relay of signals between Chicago and New York. The benefit associated with buying the land outweighs the costs over the long run, and the company's founder established himself as one of the most accomplished fund manager. 

In my wiki contribution, I will provide an overview of what is HFT, how it works, and some of the notable events and impact of HFT to ordinary investors. 

P2P

File sharing is the process of having access to content of files, documents, images, and other forms of media from one person to another. Before the age of clouding computing, file sharing was limited to physical form and device's storage capacity. With the advancement in distributed technology such as Amazon's web service, Google cloud, and Dropbox, we can instantly upload files to the servers and then sending a sharing link to the others.

Peer-to-Peer sharing is another subset of file sharing, and the number of participants are limited, comparing to file sharing which anyone has access to the file/documents. Bit Torrent and The Pirate Bay are two notable examples of peer-to-peer sharing. In the article of "The Bit Torrent Effect", Bram Cohen, the inventor of Bit Torrent, share his ideas and philosophy of life and work. 

Bit Torrent allows users to do amazing things such as downloading and uploading of large files at speed much faster than usual. The project was initially used to initially used by programmers to swap around software / files for free, however later it was used to download large files such as movies, or event an entire season of shows. Cohen loves to play board games such as 'Amazons' to practice and sharp his thinking, and this skill helped him enormously in terms of solving complex issues and problems. 

Cohen also identified the bottom of Bit Torrent, that the speed to upload and download was very different, and therefore, by breaking up a large file across many users to upload, the process could speed up. Furthermore, Cohen also stated the protocol that encourage users to share their existing resources, and not keeping it for themselves, as the more you share your resources, the faster the download speed you will have too. 

Thompson, C. (2005, January 01). The BitTorrent Effect. Retrieved October 06, 2017, from https://www.wired.com/2005/01/bittorrent-2/

Advice

                    I would recommend Baruch to use more social media apps such as Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat to conduct student engagement. For example, Baruch could create a location-enabled filter, to allow students to use this special filter when they are physically present on the campus. In addition, to design an emoji that mimics our mascot, the bearcat on snapchat.

                   Moreover, Facebook's live option also allows people to do live feed for events and seminars. This is very helpful for those students who have conflict schedules, and by joining in a live feed event, they will not miss out these interesting events. I have used Facebook's live feed feature to listen several events/interviews which I was unable to attend in person, and technologies such as helped many others to join in, without the need of physical presence. Furthermore, live feed option in Facebook also allows its viewers to comment upon the event in real time, and to express out their opinions by giving various icons such as a 'thumbs-up', or a 'sad face'. These tools allow the event organizers to better understand the publics' sentiment. 

                  Such an understanding of the mass audience is important, as event organizers should use a two-way communication that gain insights into their thinking and get feedback about the event. In the traditional media, most communication is one way, one in which a sender sends a message to a person, and then depending on the timing, to get a quick or lengthy response time. New media brings the communication barriers down, and adding more participants into the market, that is, a place for people to exchange their views and ideas. And by understanding their sentiment in real time, event organizers can quickly understand what are the areas needed for improvement. 

Privacy

Thinking that by setting a photo to private would prevent strangers to see your photos? Not the case with Facebook. In today's social media dominated era, every post, pictures, videos, tweets are stored, analyzed, and viewed by some complete strangers. Moreover, the speed for infrastructure development has always exceed our ability to fully comprehend its power, and the pages after pages user-agreement just made understanding of the document unnecessarily complicated. 

Apart from your personal postings on Facebook and Instagram, a google search result is also stored and then sold to companies that have interest in knowing about you. By collecting an extensive record of our search history, search engine companies then sell these data to companies, which allow them to conduct more personalized advertisement. Have you wonder why some of the pages runs the product image of your recent search, for example, Yeezy sneakers? It is because Google records your search, and by using what's so called " associative purchasing analysis", making other sneaker recommendations / websites to you, because of your browsing history shows that you are interested in this product. With these insights, companies can do more personalized pricing, and what that means for consumers could be paying more than the others guy, even though that you both are viewing the same product on two computers, side by side. 

More recently, Equifax's massive data breach of its customers' sensitive information such as Social Security number showed the challenges which many companies are facing. Equifax is a consumer credit reporting agency that holds many other sensitive information for over 800 million individuals. Security breach on such a scale and extent would significantly bring down end users trust in giving out our personal information. 

Creativity and New Media

          I made a video about MTA with the music "wild card". I have never done any video editing before but this has been fun. I think the subway system in New York is wild card as there've been so many delays and accidents that every day commute is like an advanture for us.

          In this video, I used the simplest way of making a video by using a powerpoint presentation and then export out these slides as a video. I have trouble with trying to synchronize the lyrics and timing of the slides.

here is the url to my video:

MTA- the wild card 

Creativity

            User generated content websites such as YouTube and Twitter allow users to contribute and create their unique contents and share their views. Since everyone has different thoughts on the same topic, such websites became gathering platforms for discussing trending topics. In many cases, the topic discussed can quickly becoming a buzzword, and spreadout among many different groups of people.

           Mash-up, the editing and combing pieces from vast different types and forms of media, have proven to be successful in some cases. In the "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?", the article talked about how by putting a rapper-style,hip-hop music with Disney's cartoon together can be interesting and good to both Disney and music producers.

           Lyrics in Rap Culture are often explicitly written, and many albums have warning sticker, reminding the listeners of its content. However for cartoon, which caters more towards kids, will have a different theme than that of Rap music. It is interesting to see that the animated characters' doing the signing with their exaggerated singing and facial expression, and the hip hop music playing in the background.

           Because hip hop music and cartoon characters are two very different forms of entertainment, putting these two types of media into one piece nicely proven to be no easy task. To overcome this challenge, music producers would have to source over and think through many aspects, and in this process, that producer would have to create upon his previous knowledge, or will need more information to better improve his work. Such an inflow and outflow of new ideas and thoughts with others encourages communication, and therefore fosters intellectual creativity.

Barnes, B. (2007, September 24). Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why? Retrieved October 1, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

               Virtual worlds such as Second Life allow people to overcome the limitation of physical and geographical boundaries to exchange their ideas and communicate about their feelings. Translating their thoughts into computer programs, virtual world allows people to discover more alternate solutions and use these creations to simulate a "real-life" day to day interaction.

For example, in "After second life: can virtual worlds get a reboot? ", the author used Minecraft as an example to illustrate what virtual world is and its capability. Although users are separated, all of them join an online group that encourages open communications and collaborations. By creating an avatar, which is a virtual representation of you in an online world, users can interact and communicate with other people. And virtual reality usage has been extending to many important fields such as medical and military training, such scenario based training and interactions are vital for professionals working in these field. 

Improvement to an existing result could be done by asking the right questions and conducting scenario testing, two key steps in finding viable solutions. However, that capability was bounded by the limits of physical world, as each scene can only host one event at a time, and lacking the power of analyzing results in real time. Virtual Reality solved this issue by allowing users to put multiple scenarios together, and therefore testers can examine their ideas from multiple viewpoints to look out for where improvements are needed, and how could this testing could be improved upon. In "Avatar 2: The hospital", conducting a crisis scenario rescue would be a managerial nightmare. Thanks to virtual reality, administrators can now forget about the logistic troubles that come with it. By clicking a few strokes onto the keyboard, they can carry out the scenario exactly the way they wanted, and as many times as they wish. 

However, I think that lack of person to person interactions presents a major drawback. Even though that virtual reality does foster users to enhance their thoughts and experiences, missing out a face to face communication means we will not get a sense of the other's facial expressions, and leaving out such details, which often are the keys for how to improve the existing challenges.

I think that augmented reality would be an interest area to watch. For example, development such as HoloLens from Microsoft is a great leap towards the next generation virtual reality technology. From a two - dimensional representation to a real, interactive systems that gives instantaneous feedback to users. The HoloLens is different from a Virtual Reality Headset as users can press onto the button and get first person view, instead of an different view.

Mehta, D. (2013, April 30). After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get A Reboot. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/#1a949d4f735a

            Simon, S. (2010, April 13). Avatar II: The Hospital. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703909804575124470868041204

About Twitter

             Crowd sourcing is a force too powerful to ignore. With the accelerated changes in information processing capabilities, the time to disseminate the message across has drastically reduced over time. Using a simple hastag, trending topics could quickly escalated into a national headline. Moreover, it is shown that many big news such as corporate earnings or Federal Reserve's rate decision are first identified on Twitter, followed by printed medias. 

             Twitter main differentiation from blackboard discussion is that of user familiarity. Using Twitter is simple and intuitive, whereas using blackboard requires prior usage with the system. For a first time blackboard users, the panel for discussion requires some knowledge about the platform to find the right option. Furthremore, Twitter has a much larger user base comparing to blackboard's, and to avoid the chances of confirmation biases, it is important to hear from others for their opinion and ideas as well. 

            I think the main differences is that of feedback mechanism in between Twitter and Blackboard. In Twitter, a tweet marked with a hastag invites others to join in the conversation as well, an important feature which blackboard lacks of. With a timely update, users can reduce the waiting time for a solution to their problem, and improve efficiency. 

           However, the benefit of an in-class discussion should also be analyzed. Although you can get the lastest information on Twitter, a person to person discussion allows a more thoughtful process for students to exercise on the critical thinking skills and interpersonal skills, traits which are crucial even in today's data dominated world. 

Social networking sites

           Social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram have spent a huge sum of money into their product development to better service and understand their users. With a more personalized design and layout, and each platform came up with their unique ways in building its structure and gaining customers.

           Comparing with Twitter's word limit of 140 characters, Facebook's did not impose a strict number of characters you can post, and I feel that this can be both a good and bad rule. First, by restricting the number of characters you can post, writers need to write a concise message, and straight to the point. It is therefore important for writers to know what's the central theme of the post. Posting on Facebook is a lot more dynamic compared to Twitter's posting: you can write a more detailed message, without the characters limits.

          Twitter also shows you what are the current trending topics among your followers, and to join the discussion of a specific topics, you use the hastag # sign as a common identifier to find all of the people who are tweeting about the same subject. More importantly for users who like to gain the latest information on breaking news, Twitter has really became an indispensable tool to get the message way before the official channel reports.

          Instagram is another social media platform that are more visual-based comparing to Facebook and Twitter. In Instagram, you post pictures and videos about yourself, or even the products that you are selling. A common feature between Facebook and Instagram is that both have the "live" option that allows viewers to join in and engage in real time. Twitter lacks a bit behind in this but it is the crowd-sourcing power that differentiates Twitter from the rest.

         LinkedIn is professional-oriented social media company that allows people working within the same industry to connect and get to know each other. Besides establishing new connections, LinkedIn also allows job seeker to connect with recruiters, and apply jobs that they are interested in.

         As a software-as-a-service company( SaaS), LinkedIn also different from the other three companies as users can upgrade their profile by joining a different level of membership plans. Unlike profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, LinkedIn profile allows other to understand what skills and job experience you have. By listing down a set of skills you have honed, human resource management people can quickly identifying the good candidiate vesus the right candidates from the applicant pool.

Social networking

                   Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have changed the conventional ways of communication, and also opened up many previously undiscovered ways to explore more insights about both ourselves and within our network.

                   LinkedIn, for example, allows recruiters to see who's within the potential hiring candidate's network, and what are the primary interest/specialization for candidates. By going beyond the applicant's one-page summary, recruiters can better understand if they have found the suitable talent, so as to reduce the chances of getting a mismatch. Potential job seekers could also utilize the search function within the LinkedIn eco-system to find their previous contacts, and to re-connect and re-discovery within such already established network.

                   However, the real concern of identity theft also raised in the first article ' New Wave of Phishing Scams Uses Facebook Info for Personalized Spam'. By sharing more details about ourselves online, we are leaving behind more digital footprints for potential impersonators to learn the details of ourselves. Furthermore, our friends and connections will also let their guard down when they see the message is coming from someone their trust.

                  Privary settings about who have the privilege to view our updates and postings are also concerns about social media. In another article, private postings can be viewed even from the outside network, which brings us the question of how can that be? In this article ' Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private', Randi Zuckerberg, the siblings of Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the gaint social media Facebook, was suprized to found out that a photo which was set to private mode can be viewed by people outside her network. It was later find out the reason: people who are friends within your network can also view your posting.

                 The controversial side effect of social media are multifaceted, and social medias have also opened up another platform for people to open up about themselves, finding community that shares the similar values and goals. And as of the future, I believe that the pace of technology progress will increase exponentially into the future, and will not doubt significantly improve our productivity and efficiency. However, social media technology will still be secondary to going out and meeting new people, and to re-connect with your friends.

1. BBB: New Wave of Phishimg Scams Uses Facebook Info for Personalized Spam. January, 28, 2013 http://www.bbb.org/blog/2013/01/new-wave-of-phishing-scams-uses-facebook-info-for-personalized-spam/
2. Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private,” The Atlantic Wire, Greenfield, R. December 26, 2012 http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/12/facebook-privacy-so-confusing-even-zuckerberg-family-photo-isnt-private/60313/

Blog vs Wiki

                  Blogging has become one of the most simple ways of sharing our views and thoughts about topics that we are interested, while wiki allows many users to make meaningful contribution and exchange their ideas in various unique ways.  Jimmy Wales,Wikipedia's founder, stated that knowledege sharing is enhanced by open, flexible, and rapid collaboration, and I agree with him in the following ways.

                 Wiki's main difference with blogging is the management of its content. With a blog, writers as such could express freely their views and thoughts about the topics of their interest. However, things get complicated when irrelevant comments/ messages starts appearing, and effect of preventive measures is minimum at best. 

                  Wiki's exclusive content management system is ideal for a concise, easy to digest piece of summarized information. For example in the article " an internal wiki that's not classified ", Stacie, a special assistant at the United States Embassy in Rome, was delighted at how helpful an internally build interactive, collaborative wiki can be. Not only saving up alot of operating costs of printing papers, but also ensure that its content is well organized and up to date. 

                   Information Technology formed the backbone for many today's advanced gears. For example cloud computing and storage, a decentralized way of updating, retriving, and analyzing information in real-time to give its users the next best solution/ recommendation. Having such an intergrated technology is crucial for firms that seek to obtain a competitive advantage is this data-centric era.

                   I think wiki could be more interactive in the future, for example, users could use visualization and virtualization method to envision certain topic for discussion. For example if a particular wiki is about astrophysics, users could put on specialized glasses (such as Virtual Reality glasses) to allow them to experience at first hand. 

Project title: LinkedIn vs twitter – the battle for influence

Project proposal:

                         LinkedIn and twitter are two different social platforms that many of the millennials have used. I would like to examine which of those are more effective in reaching out to our target audience. (for example, a student who wants to connect with a company's recruiter). In addition to the resume, Linkedin can provide a more colorful presentation of the one page summary. However, often that is not enough for the HR department to get the whole profile of that individual. Here is where a twitter account would provide a better overview of the individual: is he/she actively following in the industry leaders? What are some of the tweets that he/she has retweeted? and how often does he/she appears online to engage with the communities? I chose this topic because I have used both linkedin and twitter to reach out to professionals working in finance industry, and it is very interesting to see what an informal platform such as twitter can do, comparing with subscription based service that linkedin has.