Next New

New media has gone through a speedy evolutionary process and is continuing to grow at a tremendous rate. Just two years ago the word 'twitter' would have been considered jibber-jabber. Just five years before that the word 'facebook' was used by a select few at Harvard University. Today those are both households words not only in the U.S. but around the world. While it is tough to predict the next new big thing I think would be fun and ultimately could be the future. It is more a combination of existing technologies than anything else, but that is how many new media tools come to be. My idea is to take video-chatting, projector and 3D technology and combine them into virtual 3D projections of friends, workers, etc. that would bring conversations to life. Imagine being in your office or living room and having the exact life-sized 3D image facing you and engaging you in conversation. While this idea might be year away I hope it comes to fruition in my lifetime.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

When we first started the class I read over the class wiki for politics and was impressed. However, not until being a part of the creation did I really appreciate how cool it really is. This site has been created exclusively by students such as myself. As the editor of the politics page I first checked the page for grammatical errors and made minimal changes. After doing my term paper I felt I had sufficient information to add my own information to the page. Most of my research was on New Media in American Politics and so that was the topic I added to. However, I hope to add more to other topics as well in the near future. I then proceeded to check and remove the links that other contributors had posted in past semesters that are now inactive or whose host site has been moved. I think the page is already better than it was at the beginning of the semester, when it was already good, and think that it will continue to improve with my classmates contributions.

About My Term Research Paper

I chose my topic, New Media in Politics, because I am a political science major. I know a decent amount about politics and love to learn more about my field. The pervasiveness of New Media in politics is obvious and even people that don't know anything about the issues know that politicians have begun using youtube, facebook and twitter as methods of communication with the public. I searched the web primarily using google and also looked through the baruch library system. I found numerous articles proving the importance of New Media in Politics, everything from empirical findings to subjective opinions. Politicians and the public are increasingly using new media to further their agendas and it seems they will continue to do so as new media technology advances. I hope to contribute early next week to our classes wiki page on politics and will post a link to the page when I do, so make sure to check back soon.