I believe that the increased use of social media can make people more stressed and less focused. In my own experience I became very stressed when first being accustom to being reached by email at anytime of the day when being in a stressful situation, let say in a job situation were you find it hard to ever be able to be off work. However, when I became more used to always being reached by email I got used to this and could however lessen the stress it caused. But I think that the information “overload” that exists can make people more stressed than they themselves believe they are. Checking ones email every night before going to sleep may be custom to many people, but this habit may in fact have an impact on everyday life in the long run. But as said earlier this may be a problem people have started to handle and have come over. But I believe that some self-discipline that could be hard to develop may be needed. And that is why I think that this is or was a negative effect of social media.
In relation to this problem of information overload and self-discipline I also think that the function of always being able to be reached can become increasingly problematic and stressful. Services like Skype, msn, Facebook and mobile-internet increases this stress level and also has an affect on concentration and quality of task performance. Always being able to check ones email, msn, and facebook-account on the mobile phone while being on a subway (or anywhere) makes me stressed as my friends will know that if I don’t answer them in quite a short timeframe, than that most definitely is an active chose not to do so. I am sure that this absolutely will have a stressful effect on people being custom to these sorts of services.
People of today and especially younger people being custom to things like instant messaging since always, may have problems to concentrate while working, studying or performing a time-consuming task. I myself can have a hard time turning of msn while writing etc. This can really affect the performance outcome if focusing too much on communicating with friends online. Also the habit of checking in on any email every 15 min is something I have started doing if waiting for something important. This break from concentration may certainly affect the work I am performing. But this off course also comes with advantages such as the social media increasingly also update my learning etc., by at the cost of focus.
I think that people will be able to handle this in a more progressive way in the feature as I am certain that this will be something that will be discussed and thought about maybe also in an academic setting. It is in school that most people learn to read and have their first literary experiences. I don’t really know if social media will have an affect on in which way student will be able to read and think about literature in the future, but I think that the concerns about this problem of focusing while reading longer and more complicated texts is legitimate.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Essay 4 – Negative effects of social media.
In my mind, time is always a good excuse to blame the invention of social media, especially gaming, at least in Chinese society. From I was in junior school, the crisis over social media never stop. Parents and teachers complaint that too much time and energy was spent on gaming and the teenagers become violent and can not focus on study. I remember one extremity example is that one teenager stays in net bar for 7 days without eating anything and only play Warcraft and the result is that he died suddenly because of heart attack. Many news nowadays are also related to the negative effects towards the development of social media. In my mind, many of these news are aimed at teenagers who usually can not allocate their time in a reasonable way. Seldom a new blames adults who play too many games.
However, why people, no matter teenagers or adults, are still willing to spend more and more time on Facebook or Warcraft? From my point of view, I think one of good explanations could be that they can release pressure from the real world. In Sims or Warcraft, the player could be someone else and easier to gain the feeling of achievement in the virtual worlds. Besides, a good game can be treated as an enjoyable movie. They are good at story telling and enable to provide the players veritable sound and the real feeling of the scenes. Nevertheless, I think it’s hard to justify whether these social media provides enough value according to the time spent. Because it’s an individual evaluation behavior and the standard to define value could be various.
Another negative effect of social media is that it decreases physically active lives. I absolute agree with this argument. The virtual communication changes the way we usually chat or talk and reduces the frequency we contact friends in the real world. When we sit in front of computer for hours, like what I’m doing now, most of my body parts are staying in quiescence, only the brain and fingers are active.
To sum up, many of the negative effects I talked about above are due to the lack of self-mastery . In other word, these effects may be vanish if people can manage their time and energy in a more suitable way. But other negative effects, like the problems on language development and unpatience attitude because of the gaming culture, are difficult to alter and need long time to adjustment.
Essay 4 – Negative effects of social media-squeezed time.
As more and more social media services are available with the fast development of social technology, our 24 hours are gradually carved up by all kinds of internet-based products and services. In other words, social media services have melted into our daily life unconsciously. Every morning on the way to school or work, you may use your iPod or music cell phone to listen to the music. On the classes, you can see many students are always busy with text message. When you start working, you have to check several emails to make sure those important ones being replied on time. Many people own more than one email. Take myself for example; I have six emails, which are the Gmail, KTH email, SSE email, Hotmail, Yahoo email and Sina email. So I have to spend at least half an hour to deal with all the emails everyday although I have combined all the emails to my Gmail.
Besides the regular usage of internet, there are also some pathological use such as excessive chatting and digital games addiction. Lots of people especially teenagers spend too much time on the internet gaming, most avatars in the internet games are designed to have a higher level and more experience based on the time consuming on the game. You can see some news saying that some teenager got mors subita after staying in front of the computer and playing a computer game without moving for 24 hours. Maybe this is an extreme example. However, Games really like the drugs, people can be hooked by them. A case in point could be one of my college classmates who play the World of Warcraft. He spent too much time on the game without self discipline, he was always absent from the class. He even would not like to go to the dining hall to have breakfast, lunch and dinner himself, it is common for him to ask somebody else to buy food and bring it back to the dormitory. Finally, he didn’t get the diploma because he failed too much courses. Obviously the social media didn’t provide enough value to justify the time he spent.
Since the side effects of the computer games have already come up, how should we deal with these problems needs considering. There is a regulation in China regarding the management of Net Café, which is the person who is under 18 years old are not allowed to enter the Net Café. How to avoid being addicted by the games? One way could be that the game can be designed to being played at most for 2 or 3 hours per day. Within the 2 or 3 hours, the players can accumulate their experience values to upgrade the levels of their avatars. Once the players play more than 3 hours, their experience values and avatars’ levels would be decreased automatically. The game company would definitely not like to design games in this way since the more time consumed on the games, the more revenue would be generated. However, whether the industry should take the social responsibility as well when making money? It is worth considering!
Besides the regular usage of internet, there are also some pathological use such as excessive chatting and digital games addiction. Lots of people especially teenagers spend too much time on the internet gaming, most avatars in the internet games are designed to have a higher level and more experience based on the time consuming on the game. You can see some news saying that some teenager got mors subita after staying in front of the computer and playing a computer game without moving for 24 hours. Maybe this is an extreme example. However, Games really like the drugs, people can be hooked by them. A case in point could be one of my college classmates who play the World of Warcraft. He spent too much time on the game without self discipline, he was always absent from the class. He even would not like to go to the dining hall to have breakfast, lunch and dinner himself, it is common for him to ask somebody else to buy food and bring it back to the dormitory. Finally, he didn’t get the diploma because he failed too much courses. Obviously the social media didn’t provide enough value to justify the time he spent.
Since the side effects of the computer games have already come up, how should we deal with these problems needs considering. There is a regulation in China regarding the management of Net Café, which is the person who is under 18 years old are not allowed to enter the Net Café. How to avoid being addicted by the games? One way could be that the game can be designed to being played at most for 2 or 3 hours per day. Within the 2 or 3 hours, the players can accumulate their experience values to upgrade the levels of their avatars. Once the players play more than 3 hours, their experience values and avatars’ levels would be decreased automatically. The game company would definitely not like to design games in this way since the more time consumed on the games, the more revenue would be generated. However, whether the industry should take the social responsibility as well when making money? It is worth considering!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Essay 4 – internet makes me isolated
Based on my experience of internet, I become more and more “independent”, which Karin concluded it as “isolated”.
It is true that I can get myself isolated, and stay in my room without any connection with my friend for a few days when I feel so stressful. When I need a desk lamp or a curtain, I can go through those online shops and book one. The only thing that I should do after that is waiting them at home. when I was hungry, I can order a pizza online or using a cellphone, then my pizza will be on its way to my home. I appear offline when using the chatting tools, which means that nobody can start a talk when I don’t want to. Then someone disappears in our life without being sensed by others. We can get a conclusion for this, which is the convenient that the internet bring to us makes us independent and isolated.
I also think there is further reason for the “isolated” problem. Nowadays, friends tend to talk online, not face to face as before. That makes me think my friend is busy if he/she is offline. I would talk to them when they are online. If some of my friends, not so closed, appear offline for a long time, maybe I notice that but never wonder why he/she is so busy to show up on line. When people talk on the internet, we can not see each other. What we can see is the word that they type in, which can cheat his/her real feeling at that time. People become not so concerned with others. Greeting becomes more and more a routine procedure when we see our friend on line with less emotion. Even when we chat on the cell phone, our voice would betray some of the real emotion of the speaker. At least when I give a phone call to my friend, I always smile when saying hello or goodbye. I know that the other can sense it and smile too. However, when I was watching a tragedy using the online TV, I can also tell funny stories with my friend using the chatting tools on the internet.
The internet makes our lives more and more convenient and fast, but the platform is the screen which is such a cold and no expressions object. I would never imagine that if we face to a no expression object for a long time, we may become less facial expression, which reflects a person’s emotion.
It is true that I can get myself isolated, and stay in my room without any connection with my friend for a few days when I feel so stressful. When I need a desk lamp or a curtain, I can go through those online shops and book one. The only thing that I should do after that is waiting them at home. when I was hungry, I can order a pizza online or using a cellphone, then my pizza will be on its way to my home. I appear offline when using the chatting tools, which means that nobody can start a talk when I don’t want to. Then someone disappears in our life without being sensed by others. We can get a conclusion for this, which is the convenient that the internet bring to us makes us independent and isolated.
I also think there is further reason for the “isolated” problem. Nowadays, friends tend to talk online, not face to face as before. That makes me think my friend is busy if he/she is offline. I would talk to them when they are online. If some of my friends, not so closed, appear offline for a long time, maybe I notice that but never wonder why he/she is so busy to show up on line. When people talk on the internet, we can not see each other. What we can see is the word that they type in, which can cheat his/her real feeling at that time. People become not so concerned with others. Greeting becomes more and more a routine procedure when we see our friend on line with less emotion. Even when we chat on the cell phone, our voice would betray some of the real emotion of the speaker. At least when I give a phone call to my friend, I always smile when saying hello or goodbye. I know that the other can sense it and smile too. However, when I was watching a tragedy using the online TV, I can also tell funny stories with my friend using the chatting tools on the internet.
The internet makes our lives more and more convenient and fast, but the platform is the screen which is such a cold and no expressions object. I would never imagine that if we face to a no expression object for a long time, we may become less facial expression, which reflects a person’s emotion.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Eassy 3 - the future of music
When thinking about the future of music, there are two aspects being considered.
E-music, which can be downloaded for free on the internet, is still existed but more accepted. Nowadays, e-music free of charge is controversial, because it is considered illegal and lowering down the benefit of the record company. ITunes is well-known for its successful legal business model. Consumers buy songs in Itunes store, which charge them 0.9$ per song, much cheaper than buying a CD. Some of my friends used to be a loyal customers of Itunes, but they download music free of charge in some other website and converse the formats to load them on their Apple. And some of them just listen to the songs sang by themselves, which is also edit by themselves. Therefore, I think there might be no charge for the e-music on the internet in the future. More and more amateur singers share their records on the internet. People have more choice of different kind of music. Further more, there might be some new technology come out. With those technologies, we can have one song sang by different people. It is like when we listen to “you raise me up”, we could choose it in the voice of westlife, backstreet boys or Britney Spears. The music on one’s own player becomes more personality.
E-music is free of charge, so the companies get their benefit by concert of the famous singers and their songs used for advertisements and films. I pay no money on any CDs, but I would like to pay for the live show. That is because on the live show, the audience can be involved in the music more, different from the experience as listening to the music player. Music is more like the films. As we know, we can download most of the film on the internet, but there still so many people go the the cinema to watch the movie.
When I think about the music development, I wish there could be an education come out, the music education model, which is because we may easily remember lyrics of a song but never the context in a book. I remember when I was young, I learnt a long poem by heart very fast just because there was a song whose lyrics was the poem. Some of the parents are trying to transfer some basic knowledge, which should be remembered by the children, into Rap to help the children to learn fast. With the help of this method, the children can learn them by heart in a shorter time but also they may have an interest in them.
E-music, which can be downloaded for free on the internet, is still existed but more accepted. Nowadays, e-music free of charge is controversial, because it is considered illegal and lowering down the benefit of the record company. ITunes is well-known for its successful legal business model. Consumers buy songs in Itunes store, which charge them 0.9$ per song, much cheaper than buying a CD. Some of my friends used to be a loyal customers of Itunes, but they download music free of charge in some other website and converse the formats to load them on their Apple. And some of them just listen to the songs sang by themselves, which is also edit by themselves. Therefore, I think there might be no charge for the e-music on the internet in the future. More and more amateur singers share their records on the internet. People have more choice of different kind of music. Further more, there might be some new technology come out. With those technologies, we can have one song sang by different people. It is like when we listen to “you raise me up”, we could choose it in the voice of westlife, backstreet boys or Britney Spears. The music on one’s own player becomes more personality.
E-music is free of charge, so the companies get their benefit by concert of the famous singers and their songs used for advertisements and films. I pay no money on any CDs, but I would like to pay for the live show. That is because on the live show, the audience can be involved in the music more, different from the experience as listening to the music player. Music is more like the films. As we know, we can download most of the film on the internet, but there still so many people go the the cinema to watch the movie.
When I think about the music development, I wish there could be an education come out, the music education model, which is because we may easily remember lyrics of a song but never the context in a book. I remember when I was young, I learnt a long poem by heart very fast just because there was a song whose lyrics was the poem. Some of the parents are trying to transfer some basic knowledge, which should be remembered by the children, into Rap to help the children to learn fast. With the help of this method, the children can learn them by heart in a shorter time but also they may have an interest in them.
Essay 3- Hypothecation Tax/Public Service Approach
Many echoes can be heard in political legislative bodies due to continuous rising of so-called music piracy these days. “Big” drummers have a lot to drum against that phenomenon but nothing to present to meet today’s challenges. A major silent revolution is going to be taking place within music industry in coming 15 years instead of 10 as I think.
Peer-to-peer technologies can’t be eliminated totally from net world while we have only few successful business models for digital distribution of music (iTunes etc.). On the other hand, technology geeks can hijack any kind of restrictions or “DRM” proposed by record labels. Illegal music downloaders across the globe can’t be punished unless having a so-called global “big brother” system as matter of fact. Business models presented by record labels till that date are not sufficient enough to address the problem fairly as real artists are given just pennies while record companies still get lion’s share. Except the first world’s citizens, people from second and third world countries would never like to spend as much money as record labels want in their proposed greedy business models. 1 dollar price for a song is nothing for a US citizen but a lot for an Indian citizen where average daily income is less than 2 dollars. Alternatively, not many artists have marketing and distribution experience and knowledge for their creations on the internet and ultimately they have to involve middle men.
Then, what is gonna happen in coming decade?
In that condition, where music piracy is getting space in political agendas of many political groups, legislative bodies would definitely come with some sort of “money distribution and collection model” for music industry (especially for individual artists)in coming years. I can’t predict the exact framework of this model but it would be somewhat like where official authorities would make it possible to impose a certain fee on each and every user of internet according to his or her usage of internet, keeping in mind the average income of that country’s citizens. These funds would be distributed later among all other actors of industry on certain basis. Authorities would make sure that real artists and creators are benefited from these collectives. This model relies on the assumption that access to information is a basic right of every human being. It’s not a statutory licensing model but a future glance in right direction. While many of these kinds of models are already being practiced by many governmental bodies i-e licensing fee for public TV and Radio, entertainment tax etc. unequal distribution of music money would be discouraged because of the presence of new social media technologies as people are getting more conscious about the fact that only some stakeholders in existing business models are getting richer but not the real artists and creators.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Essay 3 – [The future of music]
When we talk about the future of the music, we cannot avoid having a glance at the history of the music development. Initially the main income of the music industry largely depended on the revenue of the tickets of live concerts as well as the record economy. The battle against the piracy to protect the intellectual property has started since then. As the development of the internet technology, more and more people can get access to lots of music by downloading them for free. At this time, many music companies found they experienced a large shrink of the record revenue. Therefore, they attribute the declining of the revenue to the newly developed social media technologies. Music companies thought the consumers downloaded music illegally through the internet for free so that they don’t want to buy the music any more. Unfortunately, as the response to protect the intellectual property, some technologies such as Peer to Peer Technology are banned in some countries including Sweden.
A debate has risen regarding whether we should blame the piracy behavior to some technology or shall we consider the transforming of the revenue model of the music industry. All of these require us to think about what is the most valuable stuff on earth when the consumers purchase the music. Is it the physical music CD disk in the past that they buy in the traditional music stores, or is it the digital code that they buy through the online music stores? The answer is neither of them. What the core stuff they purchase is the intellectual property of the music. Although we should protect the intellectual property, shall we just simply prohibit the related social media technologies such as the P2P technology? Is it fair to the technology engineers who develop such kinds of convenient technologies? The answer is no. A case in point could be the printed industry. Can we just ban the usage of the duplicating machine in order to protect the intellectual property of the book authors? As we know, duplicating is allowed in many libraries, you can duplicate some pages or even some chapters of the book to read; however, you cannot duplicate the entire book. Hence, the root of solving the piracy problem is not to ban some technology. Instead, the contents providers online should be well supervised. In addition, many surveys and investigates show that those people who often download the free tracks illegally are those people who often purchase the music and go to the concert. The reason for the illegal downloading behavior is that they want to make sure whether some songs and albums are worth buying or not.
I believe that no music companies would like to classify their potential consumers to be the people who offend the law. Hence the changing of the revenue model of the music industry is necessary. First of all, the successful reform of the supply chain of the music industry such as the online music library could be kept with the implementation of the long tail theory to satisfy all kinds of niche markets. As we know, in the past under the traditional music economy mode, the music disks CD or tapes should go through three stages before they reach the ultimate consumers, which are the manufactures, distributors and retailers. Under the digital music mode, the music can directly reach the consumers from the content providers.
To solve the illegal downloading problem , the content providers could buy the music from the music companies at a low price to build a music library where the consumers can easily search their required songs and download them for free so that they will be able to listen to them three or four times but with lower quality than the original tracks as well as with advertisement due to the fact that the people who purchase the music and go to the concerts are those who download free material actively since they should have an opportunity to know whether the songs are good or not. Hence, if music content providers offer such a platform, it will make a contribution to the music industry’s revenue, to which online ads can subsequently benefit. It should be stressed here that it is the large consumer base for music that the advertisers want to target, which is the real resource for the online advertisement business.
Finally, there could be another development trend of the future music industry, which is based on the value constellation and open source concept. Consumers are the providers as well. Such as YouTube, you can record your own album and upload them to share with people for free. And the economy compensate could be from the online advertisement also.
A debate has risen regarding whether we should blame the piracy behavior to some technology or shall we consider the transforming of the revenue model of the music industry. All of these require us to think about what is the most valuable stuff on earth when the consumers purchase the music. Is it the physical music CD disk in the past that they buy in the traditional music stores, or is it the digital code that they buy through the online music stores? The answer is neither of them. What the core stuff they purchase is the intellectual property of the music. Although we should protect the intellectual property, shall we just simply prohibit the related social media technologies such as the P2P technology? Is it fair to the technology engineers who develop such kinds of convenient technologies? The answer is no. A case in point could be the printed industry. Can we just ban the usage of the duplicating machine in order to protect the intellectual property of the book authors? As we know, duplicating is allowed in many libraries, you can duplicate some pages or even some chapters of the book to read; however, you cannot duplicate the entire book. Hence, the root of solving the piracy problem is not to ban some technology. Instead, the contents providers online should be well supervised. In addition, many surveys and investigates show that those people who often download the free tracks illegally are those people who often purchase the music and go to the concert. The reason for the illegal downloading behavior is that they want to make sure whether some songs and albums are worth buying or not.
I believe that no music companies would like to classify their potential consumers to be the people who offend the law. Hence the changing of the revenue model of the music industry is necessary. First of all, the successful reform of the supply chain of the music industry such as the online music library could be kept with the implementation of the long tail theory to satisfy all kinds of niche markets. As we know, in the past under the traditional music economy mode, the music disks CD or tapes should go through three stages before they reach the ultimate consumers, which are the manufactures, distributors and retailers. Under the digital music mode, the music can directly reach the consumers from the content providers.
To solve the illegal downloading problem , the content providers could buy the music from the music companies at a low price to build a music library where the consumers can easily search their required songs and download them for free so that they will be able to listen to them three or four times but with lower quality than the original tracks as well as with advertisement due to the fact that the people who purchase the music and go to the concerts are those who download free material actively since they should have an opportunity to know whether the songs are good or not. Hence, if music content providers offer such a platform, it will make a contribution to the music industry’s revenue, to which online ads can subsequently benefit. It should be stressed here that it is the large consumer base for music that the advertisers want to target, which is the real resource for the online advertisement business.
Finally, there could be another development trend of the future music industry, which is based on the value constellation and open source concept. Consumers are the providers as well. Such as YouTube, you can record your own album and upload them to share with people for free. And the economy compensate could be from the online advertisement also.
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