The Moneybook

Social networking is what is hot in technology and will not be going anywhere soon. It gives a face to the technology. When the internet started, it was built to share data for businesses, institutions, and large businesses. It then opened up to the general public, which ushered in an era of tacky personal websites and equally as tacky commercial endeavors at web design in the 1990’s. Programmers gave designers more control and everything started looking better. Personal websites became blogs and format was generally controlled by sites like blogger.com and blogspot.com, which are now the same company. And social networking services like Myspace, Friendster, Facebook started popping up. Business websites started to look more professional. The web was and is evolving. At some point in all this, Facebook has become the apparent winner in the social networking sector. There are other sites that have features Facebook does, but Facebook does it all.

Facebook is successful because it does literally one thing very well. It connects people in a non-obtrusive easy to use website. This is very good for businesses. And since a huge population, as discussed in the Facebook Effect, of the world in on Facebook, it is a very large free (if they choose not to buy an ad) way to advertise. The pyramid affect can be seen when starting a group for something people really care about (Kirkpatrick, 2010). This is important to businesses as well. Friends have more influence over each other than random strangers. Someone buys something from a store and gets great service at a good price. The ability to tag profiles on Facebook gives that person the ability to write about their experience with a direct link to that business’s Facebook profile. This will show up in their friends’ news feeds. Say two people click on it and use that business. That is two new customers the business would not have gained without Facebook. And the cycle can repeat. Not only does the information show up in the new feed, but the business gets an alert that they were tagged. This is direct marketing because Facebook gives identity (Grossman, 2010).

The opposite can also happen. Someone gets terrible service at a business and tags them in a post. Again this will get the business in the vision of everyone on that person’s friend list and an alert will be sent to the business. Instead of just having a ticked off customer out there complaining to everyone, now you have a way to directly communicate to the customer and know exactly why they are ticked off. And they might even make another post saying how well the business ratified the situation. I rarely see things like this happening, but I feel mostly because businesses are just really getting on the Facebook bandwagon and worrying less about their websites.

Many businesses are using social networking links on their websites on literally every page. Whether a like and/or tweet button or an actual link, more and more businesses are starting to do this. The only reason I really started paying attention and why I know social networking matters so much is from a conference call I had with my dad and his business partner, Frank Watson. I will be working with them if all goes right after I graduate in a few weeks and I’m building the business's website. The reason the like and/or tweet button is important is because it tells everyone that you are looking at something and now page view goes from one view to potentially an entire friends list which can translate into business.

There is a lot more that can be used in converting online traffic into real life business, but Facebook and its simple features can be used as a powerful weapon over the other guy. And like the Facebook Effect and Time said throughout, Facebook is only growing which means businesses using it as a business tool have the potential to grow as well.

Outside the Box

The computer started as a workhorse, but since has evolved into a hybrid of workhorse, entertainment, communication device, etc. The possibilities are endless and growing. None of this would be possible with the user. The user of anything always seems to find alternative methods to using something other than its original use or non-users will find alternative uses to a given product. The computer and other technologies are no different. Computers have become a product where almost everyone in the world is a stakeholder with their own needs and uses individually, but all working as collective to improve, change, and recreate its uses.

Larry Lessig has a concept of “open.” He defines this term as no effective control and it relates to computers and technologies relating to interaction design. If he can say Facebook is essentially not open, then I will talk about something even more restricted to show everything has potential for openness. Having the concept of Twitter in mind which is an incredibly controlled idea, one can realize everything is essentially open. Users of Twitter have found work-arounds to their 140 character only limit. 140 characters means pictures, videos, and compressing thoughts into 140 characters. Companies almost immediately popped up for Tweeters to host pictures and videos bypassing Twitters control over this word only means of communication. It gave Twitter users more control over Twitter and gave a means of not only worded communication, but visual communication as well. Of course, there still is control over how Twitter functions making is not open, but people find ways around control making things less closed. Twitter also has a function called hash tags. This is a way for people to communicate about a topic to make it easily searchable for others, essentially networking.

Social networks are the now big thing. There are many variations of these and all do different functions. Shirky told a story that was a little scary, but also pretty amazing and would not be possible without social networking. Shirky met a friend of a friend at a bar without ever meeting him before because of a site called dodgeball. The friend’s picture was even sent to Shirky’s phone. This relates to the ladders of social tools; sharing, cooperation, and collective action. Social tools are generally used for the greater good, but what if someone has ulterior motives for using them?

Uses for functions on a computer get locked-in according to Lanier. I’m going to have to agree mostly. He kept referring to the MIDI and creating music digitally. The use of MIDI for creation of music may not come with human expression like an instrument played by a human has, but it does definitely have expression. One can feel what the creator was feeling when they were creating the piece. It is fast or slow? It is major or minor? Expression comes through, just a bit differently.

All of this user-friendly software and open freedom of expression is shrinking the world. It is making everything more accessible and can turn anyone into a community organizer. Thinking of it that way with the very large idea of Millennium Project its Millennium Development Goals, people can tackle these goals even if it is just a concept from part of one locally. The organizer can use Facebook as a jump-off for involvement. This involvement can grow through friend of a friend networking. Along with getting involvement through networking, a blog can be started to show others what is being done and might inspire others.

Virtual Reality

Living life on screen has started to become a more and more frequent addiction. From video and computer games to simple apps on Facebook, people are living through a created character (avatar) on screen. And technologies like computer games, console video games, and virtual reality are always improving making these experiences more realistic. This realism is blurring the line between the real world and virtual world even though I feel there is no way the virtual world can ever replace real world experiences. This addiction to the virtual world may be used to improve the lives of individuals that can not handle the real world, but also alter the thinking of those not seeking treatment.

According to The Expression of Personality in Virtual Worlds, personalities of people are reflected in their avatars. And then in turn the virtual world has the ability to change how people handle the real world (Dretzin, 2010). Soldiers are getting treatment for post traumatic stress syndrome through the use of virtual reality. It is a fairly new idea and still being tested, but it appears to be working. This proves a very positive advancement in the treatment of mental health. It just needs to be more publicized and advertised as better than using drugs to treat a problem. Of course, not all mental illness can be treated with computers, but agoraphobia and other anxiety disorders are showing a very good possibility for improvement with virtual medicine.

Searching “treatment of agoraphobia virtual reality” on Google brings up about 12,100 results. I only looked at the first few pages of results. Not really trusting a lot of information published online, I looked at any result from medical studies. It seems most studies with virtual reality used for the treatment of anxiety disorders started around 2007 and still continue today. I really could not find full text copies to these studies, not that I'd want to read them, but results are always positive in every abstract I read. Technologies are always advancing according to Moore's Law, so the possibility for treatment should grow with it as well. Like drugs, virtual medicine or just the virtual world can alter the minds of those who do not need to be altered.

The virtual world can alter the human mind, but it does not mean it will. There are games based on violence. Most can make the obvious distinction between killing people on a screen and in real life. Do these games raise the question of “How does it feel to kill for real?” in the gamer's mind? For some, I bet the answer is “I wanna know.”, but giving them the benefit of doubt, I don't think they will. That concept was talked about by Friedman in Future Technology in reference to beating up people and stealing their possessions in real life because it is acceptable in World of Warcraft. Relating this to something more mellow and personal experience, I can say video games had affected me.

My love of cars goes back many many years. I was the kid playing racing games using the steering wheel for hours and hours non-stop. It was probably around age 13 I got my steering wheel. I got my permit and barely drove and still passed my license test on the first shot. I started racing my car at age 20 and did pretty well pretty quickly. I seriously believe video games helped become better driver. Talking to others that I have raced with, they said the same exact thing about their abilities behind a wheel and video games. They made us better drivers.

Living virtually has an obvious impact on living reality and visa versa. And being that everything is still pretty new, who knows where it is going to end up. The use for treatment of mental illness, entertainment, and educational values are clearly visible in the use of virtual living, but when will it all go too far? And will its use slow down? In some aspects, living through an avatar might have gotten out of hand for some and others like myself would rather live the experience through all fives senses, not two.

The Internet is a Frying Pan

Losing the use of my dominant hand in July forced me learn to how to become left-handed. For months, I could literally only use my left hand because of no mobility and extreme pain in my right wrist. Being left-handed felt awkward and unnatural. After the acclimation period, all of the awkwardness started to go away. My brain had started the reconfiguration process. Along with the broken wrist, my right index finger suffered some pretty severe nerve damage to the point that I lost feeling in it. And my right thumb went numb after my first surgery to rebuild my wrist. Now that my wrist is better, I have become almost completely ambidextrous. And I have feeling back in my both digits. This just confirms what in now generally accepted, brain plasticity, in the scientific community and general public. People have been going through obstacles like that since the beginning of people. It just took a long time for someone, Merzenich, to come along and prove what the brain is actually doing. His discovery was just before computers started to become easily available to the general public. And then came the Internet.

The Internet and everything associated with it has been and is causing information overload and also brings many distractions. This is most likely increasing our ability to filter information quickly and also helps us learn how to block out and retain information. The Internet does not just include browsing the web. It is an experience. This experience involves browsing the web, online gaming (console and computer), instant messaging, checking/sending email, listening to music, watching videos, transferring files, video chatting, and the list goes on and on. And many people carry around smart phones, so those people are always connected. Some say this non-stop stream of detrimental information overload and constant switching of tasks is confusing us and causing jumbled memory.

I see validity to the idea of confusion originating from non-stop switching of activities when using the Internet and technology because humans tend to only be able to concentrate on one to two tasks at a time. But like I trained myself to become left-handed, I think we all have the ability to overcome nature and train our brains to do more than one to two tasks at a time, become information filters, and overcome the information overload. There is no debate whether the Internet is changing how we function. The questions are how much and good or bad. I cannot answer how much, but I do think it think it is making us more efficient as information filters and multi-taskers.