Virtual Technology Dominating Traditional Face to Face Conversions

"Communication is a systemic process in which people interact with and through symbols to create and interpret meanings." (Wood, 2009) Communication takes place everywhere, every day, and is the primary foundations for establishing relationships amongst oneself and others. As the years have gone by and changed, innovative measures have taken place and many things were invented to hopefully "benefit" society positively and more effectively. Virtual technology is taking over the world faster than we know it, with substantial numbers generating online like nothing we have ever seen before. Too much technology can in fact hurt relationships and create many detrimental errors.

Technology Changing Over Time

Technology's main purpose began with the invention of tools to allow for simpler, easier, more efficient ways to develop more products in the workplace and on the farm. With machines taking over the workplace it allowed certain companies to get rid of workers and hire workers that just specialized in their specific fields. It saved the companies money and allowed them to produce at a more efficient rate than previously. It wasn't until the mid 1990's where the Internet was invented, where HTML and WWW, invented by Tim Berners-Lee attracted enormous numbers to the Internet where navigation became extremely easy. 

Hundreds of companies were started, and everybody wanted to invest. Millions of people decided to go online virtually overnight, companies expanded rapidly. America was becoming online, adding 1 million new users every month. The market soared from $70 million at the time of 1992 to $150 billion in early 2000! 

In the article from TIME "Is Technology Moving Too Fast?"by Stewart Brand, Brand talks about many ways why technology can fault and is becoming dependent on too much.

"Constant technological revolution makes planning difficult, and a society that stops planning for the future is likely to become a brittle society. It could experience violent economic swings. It could trip into wars fought with vicious new weapons. Its pervasive new technologies could fail in massive or horrible ways. Or persistent, nagging small failures could sap the whole enterprise."

Essentially, Mr. Brand is criticizing this technological revolution where technology and its reliance can destroy the world with the ability to create new brutal weapons. 

America is Becoming Virtual, With Face to Face Conversions Taking A Serious Drop

Where has the traditional face to face conversations and communicating gone? Now a days, all we hear about is Facebook, AOL, Twitter, or Apple Products such as iChat. The virtual world has substantially increased with approximately 1 billion users alone just using Facebook. Everything has become online and relationships are established more online now than ever. With the use of video chats, webcams, e-mail, dating sites for all types of people, instant messaging, and even online classes taking place in schools, people are conversing and establishing relationships online, but is it effective?

Statistics show that more people are living alone, with about 31 million Americans alone. Which pertains to the point that people have no reason to leave their home as they can do everything online; from shopping to paying their bills. Face to face conversations give you a sense of emotions and physical appearance that cannot be established virtually, however with the rate of technology increasing, their may be a shift to a completely virtual world. In today's workplace, young people who have grown up fearing conversation show up on the job wearing earphones. According to The New York Times article "Flight From Conversation," A senior partner at a Boston law firm describes a scene in his office. 

"Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptops, iPods and multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. 'Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits.' With the young lawyers in their cockpits, the office is quiet, a quiet that does not ask to be broken."

From Owings Mills, MD, Mr. Paul Lederman, who just started working for PDR Web Solutions , with a Bachelor's degree in Communication on Public Relations, talks about why technology is so crucial now more than ever and that face to face conversions rarely take place in such company. 

Technology is Harmful to Your Health, Physically and Mentally

In the modern age with technology taking over, 1 in 4 people spend more time online then they do sleeping, with on average over 32 hours spent online per month. With that amount of hours spent online oppose to meeting people and conversing, too much technology is detrimental for your health. Physically an overdose on technology creates extreme tiredness which has a toll on your body and leads to people getting sick. An example of this would be college students staying up hours and hours, even days studying for finals, which creates lack of sleep, which can lead to serious health problems such as: heart attack, heart disease, heart failure, irregular heart beat, high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes. Not only does it lead to health problems related to the heart, but too much technology can also lead to childhood obesity according to such article. 

Mentally, too much technology can impair relationships and lead to an unhealthy family. More kids in present time are spending absurd amounts of technology on their computer, gaming systems, and television. With the amount of time spent on these things, oppose to talking to their parents or making friends, the only thing they care about essentially is technology. Family dinner's and the time to bond as a family are fading, most of the time Families watch television while having dinner anyways. Not only does it destroy and prevent relationships from establishing, but in some cases leads to extremities. Too much technology can create a fantasy world in a person's brain and allow them to portray themselves as a fictional character in which they hurt themselves or others. 

Here we get a brief sense from a non-expert's opinion on the everyday effects of technology on health, to get a sense of what others think.

listen to ‘Question 2 Technology is unhealthy’ on Audioboo

Is technology more effective virtually or face-to-face?

-Face to Face-

-Emotions-
-When you meet with somebody virtually opposed to face to face you don't generally get a sense of their emotions. Certain characteristics of speech are judged when you talk to someone, such as; fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, trust, anticipation, surprise. Lets look a little bit deeper into emotions. If you are talking to somebody and they tell you something, but they look extremely upset you know that they are probably having a bad day and don't want to talk to you, so they are giving you a relatively short or rude answer. Now if this same answer was sent through a text or e-mail for example you would completely misinterpret the message and probably get upset too, leading to contradictions. Emotions are a huge factor in conversing.

-Physical appearance-
Another huge characteristic when conversing with somebody face to face. You can judge a person by what he wears, how he dresses, if he is groomed, etc. All of these characteristics are judged when you converse with a person or meet them for the first time. For example if somebody shows up to a business meeting in shirt and shorts without taking a shower they are most likely un-responsable and not going to get the job. Now if you conducted an interview online via webcam or chat then you would only see their face and not get the same evaluation and probably make a crucial mistake in the hiring process.

-Interaction-
Parent-child interaction is a huge deal when it comes to virtually or face to face. If a mother talks daily with their child and knows about his/her life they are going to have a well-developed and stable relationship. However, if that parent just texts or calls his or her child she really doesn't know what is going on in their life which is very unhealthy. If you are not close with your parents it leads a detrimental life and it is hard when you don't have anybody supporting you.

-Expertise-
I am interviewing professor Brian Butler who is an expert on technology and relationships involved with such measures. I am going to ask him questions on why he thinks face to face conversing is better than virtually and I am going to ask him if technology is detrimental to your health and life overall. With his conclusive evidence and my research I can begin.

Technology health on relationships met face to face

listen to ‘Question 1 Face-to-Face’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Question 2 Technology is unhealthy ’ on Audioboo

CNN News App: Reliable And Mobile!

       The CNN news app is very reliable on terms of providing its sources and information. It is a way to learn about the world by not having to turn on your television, but checking your smart phone for all of the latest updates. The CNN news app provides a lot of information on regards to the important things. It generates a select few of headlines that are browsed frequently and provides you with that necessary information to comprehend and learn about what is going on in the world. Not only does the CNN news app provide you with an ample amount of information that you do not need a computer or television to access, but also provides with with a  recorded of such news report to further understand the material that is being delivered.  You get to watch anything that happens and is "news" worthy. Only select information reaches the news that is delivered to Americans, and a select of that select is chosen to deliver to your mobile phone.
       A recent article that I read, proclaimed that mobile phones are actually saving people in Africa. The mobile phone is providing them banking for money, entertainment to keep them satisfied, information to get them involved with the world we live in, education to read information and learn and develop among society in which that certain measure is not usually provided, and lastly it has even helped jobs such as agriculture read the weather reports and determine which crops to harvest, and sell in the market. The mobile phone is becoming so extraordinary that people are now even turning off their television and watching videos and reading information on the news that would normally be displayed on television, on their smart phone.
       To critique this certain News app I would probably give it around a 10, a perfect score, which is very risky on my behalf. I give it a 10 because I think it meets all of the necessary needs to display its information accurately. It's information is extremely accurate, there are sections that interest you in which you want to read such as: India, politics, movies, cricket, football, formula one, tennis, other sports, IBN South, Tech, World. So basically anything that you want to watch at any given time is there, and it only chooses the most important information that you can watch, not only are you allowed to read about it, but you are allowed to watch videos in which you can just emotions and opinions to your fullest extent. It so amazing that you do not need to be sitting on your couch to learn about the world, but you can be in class or on the go and you can still learn about the world whenever you are in dire need of such information.

       The major story on their website on CNN.com is very different from the app in terms of quantity, they offer many other stories that you can learn about, but I think the app does extremely well in its correlation to its website. To compare this news app to NBC CBS is not even in comparison, CNN has different categories and whatever you need to view and understand such information. Well done, and congratulations to the manufactures of this app, watch this video and demo to agree with me

Bandwidth Has Different Meanings and Contexts?

-Bandwidth Basics-

In computer networking and computer science you should be familiar with a couple terms such as bandwidth, network bandwidth, and data bandwidth. These terms are used to refer to various bit-rate measures, which are the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. These bit-rate measures represent the available or consumed data communication resources expressed in pits per second or multiples of it. Bits can also be referred to as bytes which basically refer to speed of the certain measure. The word bandwidth is used to refer to analog signal bandwidth measured in hertz. The connection is that the channel capacity of a physical communication link is proportional to its bandwidth in hertz.

-Network Bandwidth Capacity-
Bandwidth sometimes defines the information rate, channel capacity, or the maximum outings of a logical or physical communication path in a digital community system. An example of this could be related to bandwidth tests, which measure the maximum throughput of a computer network.

-Bandwidth Meanings in different scenario's-
In computer networks, bandwidth is often used as a synonym for data transfer rate, or the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period (usually a second). This kind of bandwidth is usually expressed in bits of data per second. A modem that works at 55,000 bps has twice the bandwidth of a modem that works 27,500 bps. The main point is that a link with high bandwidth is one that may be able to carry enough information to sustain the succession of images in a video presentation.

In electronic communication, bandwidth is the width of the range, or band, of frequencies that an electronic signal uses on a given transmission. In this usage, bandwidth is expressed in terms of the difference between the highest-frequence signal component and the lowest-frequence signal component. The frequency of a signal is measured in hertz (the number of cycles of change per second), a given bandwidth is the difference in hertz between the highest frequency that signal uses and the lowest frequency it uses. A typical voice signal has a bandwidth of approximately 3 kilohertz, and analog television broadcast video signal has a bandwidth of 6 megahertz.

-What does a bandwidth mean to us?-
According to an article I read I found a quote very interesting in describe what a bandwidth means to us people. "I just don't have the bandwidth to go to that meeting tonight," the term "bandwidth" is being used a lot these days to describe our everyday condition. Bandwidth offers a pithy way to say a lot of things in one word and everyone seems to know exactly what it means. It takes a bunch of things and compacts it into one basic term "bandwidth." When people say they don't have enough bandwidth, they are talking about the all of the above option. Technologies are very available now a days and they things they offer to us are extremely endless. I think the pace of society is drastically increasing with technology, especially with blogs and certain social networks such as FaceBook or MySpace. It is driving everyone crazy to the point where technology is seeming to take over the world.

-Too Much Bandwidth-

In commuting Bandwidth refers to the capacity of a communications line or channel to transmit or receive information. I keep stressing this definition because there are many different terms of bandwidth in which people can describe it. As mentioned above people use the term "bandwidth" socially to describe many things compacted into a term. People also use the term to be specified in technology and other things we are going to stress upon. Bandwidth in this context is measured not only in bits but, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes. Internet service providers use the term bandwidth, specified by and ISP which is the monthly quota of data that you are allowed to upload and download with your internet connection. So lets get this story straight, bandwidth has all of these different meanings but bandwidth is used in this context as Internet connection? Let me explain, your monthly bandwidth allowance will usually be measure in MB or GB, the amount of bandwidth you need depends on how you intend to use the internet. For example if you are playing a game that requires many different programs the bandwidth is going to be much larger. If you are downloading a bunch of content the bandwidth is going to be much larger than if you are just downloading one picture. To put this into numbers the average web page is 50KB including images and the average MP3 audio is 4MB. As you can see it depends to what you are using your internet connection for. 

Dancing with the Stars, Ratings, Shares, Mobile Devices?

-What is a rating and share?-

In simple terms a rating is the percentage of potential audience members- whether tuned into any program or not- who are tuned into a particular program or station at a given time.

Meanwhile a share is the percentage of radio listeners tuned in to a given station at a given time. For example - a "2.4 Share" means that 2.4% of all people listening to the radio at a specified time are tuned into the specified station or program.

-Dancing With the Stars Ratings and Shares-
The TV show that I decided to analyze is Dancing With the Stars which airs on the network ABC. Adults 18-49 the rating for that is 2.0 while the share is 5. This means that the 2.0 rating means that 2% of potential audience members are tuned into Dancing With the Starts at that time. Meanwhile the 5 share means that 5% of all people watching television are tuned into Dancing with the stars for that show specifically. Adults 18-34 have a rating/share of 1.3/4, which correlates to the same as what was mentioned above. ABC has the most total viewers at 11.582 million viewers, which is astonishing.
On ABC, Dancing with the Stars garnered a 2.0 adults 18-49 rating, which is down 20% from lasts week's 2.5. This means that adults the age's of 18 to 49, 2.5% of them watched dancing with the stars last week, opposed to 2% whom watched this week. 

-Is watching TV the same as watching it on your mobile devices?-
Personally I think that watching television on your actual television and watching it on a mobile device are different but definitely prevalent. As the years have progressed, the ability to watch TV on your phone and laptops is incredible. What if some people don't have a TV? What is your at work or some place where there is no access to a TV, but you have a smart phone? The answer to these questions is that sure the screen is much smaller and that you don't really get to watch commercials but you are still getting the same answers to shows that you would get if you were to watch it on a television. 
According to the article "Young People are Watching, but Less Often on TV"  On Sunday, for the first time, the super bowl was broadcast online. Sure the ad's were different online then on television but there was one fact that astonished me. The network has said that the game was the "most-watched single-game sports event EVER ONLINE." Now would you say that online is prevailing? 

Controversially Digital Rights Management Is Said to Fight Copyright Infringement Online

-What Digital Rights Management is, opposing views, pro's and con's-

Digital rights management (DRM) relates to a class of access control, which refers to exerting control over who can interact with a resource; most of the time this involves an authority. Digital rights management is a technology that is used by hardware manufactures, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. Content providers claim that digital rights management is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and that it can help the copyright holder maintain it's finally say as the product is going out. An example of this is a movie director has the authoritative say in the final cut. People opposed to digital rights management argue that there is no evidence that digital rights management helps prevent copyright infringement, but it serves only to bash legitimate customers, and that digital rights management helps big business end innovation and competition.

-Digital Rights Management, works to decrease piracy and copying-

Digital rights management technologies try to give control to the seller of digital content or devices after it has been given to a consumer. In a simpler form, digital rights management technologies attempt to control what you can and can't do with the media and hardware you've purchased. For digital content it means preventing the consumer access, denying the user the ability to copy the content and produce such hardware. Digital rights management products were developed in response to the rapid increase in online piracy of commercially marketed material, which increased through the mass use of peer-to-peer file exchange programs, well talk about that later. Typically digital rights management is used by embedding a code that prevents copying and specifies a time period in which the content can be accessed or limits the number of devices the media can be installed on

-What Digital Rights Management means to me, downloading, and Apple-

Personally, I think digital rights management is very useful, but I don't think that it discourages piracy. For example, Apple is changing the way digital rights management works, digital rights management is a nuisance for the user. "We are going to be selling non-DRM music from the summer", says Dave Elston, HMV's digital content manager. Amazon has announced that its DRM-free MP3 download store, already online in the US, will be rolled out internationally later this year, according to this article.
I think that if one of the top music industry software programs, Apple, is abandoning DRM then they most likely know the best solution for users. DRM means to my downloads what is means to most people's downloads that it's going to be harder to download illegal music, which most people and college students do.

The definition of a "blog" is as follows : A Web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often havingimages and links to other Web sites. (Dictionary). I think the term "blog" has changed tremendously and has become very effective and reliable with today's generation. 

The generation that I am apart of has grown up with the everyday use of the Internet. We use the Internet for everything; to talk to people, do work, find information, read, write, and I could list a million things we use the Internet for, but I'm not here to talk to you about that certain topic. The point I'm trying to make is that succeeding generations are heavily relying on technology to the point where is becoming unbearable. According to TechCrunch sources the average time of a user spent on Facebook is 441 minutes! That is just over 7 hours of staring at a screen about your friends! 

I believe that if we become too technologically savvy and extremely dependent on technology the world is going to change; traditions are changing, children aren't spending as much time with their families, the "modern" American family isn't becoming as "modern," more like the "new" American family. The NY times and other articles are proposing the term that our generation is called "The children of Cyberspace," and I agree with that term because with all of the chats and blogs being composed by the second, we linger and float around on the Internet; Cyberspace, as you wish to call it.

With all of these reasons, articles, scientific evidence and calculation I think I can conclude the final decision that America, even other countries, is highly addicted to the Internet with an increasing rate. 

The term "Mass Media" can be defined as: all those media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication. Broadcast media (also known as electronic media) transmit their information electronically and comprise television, film, radio, CD, DVDs, and other devices such as cameras and video consoles. The question of interest is that "are blogs considered a form of mass media?" We sufficient evidence, thoughts, and insightful information I do believe blogs are a form of mass media because there are certain blogs that are read by massive amounts of the population who abide by the blogs information. When a person posts a blog on a highly populated and credential website, that website gets a lot of hits and people really do listen because the information is very helpful and the readers think so too.

A real life example of a blog that is considered a form of mass media is called the "HuffingtonPost", this website is known for it being called the Internet newspaper: news, blogs, video, community. The HuffingtonPost has 54,000,000 unique monthly visitors, now I would call that a mass audience. Now when this website posts a very interesting blog it becomes a form of mass media because it has a tremendous amount of viewers. If you would like to check it out here!

Max Parker