Explore The New World

‘The Virtual Revolution’ is a British television documentary series presented by Aleks Krotoski, which began airing on BBC Two on 30 January 2010. A co-production between the BBC and the Open University, the series looks at the impact the World Wide Web has had since its inception 20 years ago.

The programme team interviewed a number of people who have played a part in the development of the web, including its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and founders of notable brands; Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Wozniak (Apple), Chad Hurley (YouTube), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Stewart Brand (The WELL), Biz Stone and Evan Williams (Twitter), Peter Thiel (PayPal) and Martha Lane Fox (lastminute.com).

Introduction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cKc_pvpuqg

Episode 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPD4Ep_J81k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrsxhRnjWCs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvoydcnV7Dw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgXWImi-Pr4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vyD_wh_Ml0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j-mPnjoOkk&feature=related

Episode 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFeJaEhUGs8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4cvwif1AGQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqesGryXoo4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APTtOVTm_Jc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj4OtguOH9E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sH4HHiMNko&feature=related

Episode 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ShMZ0Xy2Q&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr90i9q7iXI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECLBQfLwD0s&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5E9Y5rH5I&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMo2B4ILzik&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHrhLgO86zo&feature=related

Episode 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5v4q9_cVCY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkxdn7LsQH0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-9JVI8pCfQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u03HeXOK_Y&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P15WqDKlvwo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RZ218o7AjI&feature=related

I come back with the question that was raised in the first three weeks of this subject: why the people want another life on Internet?

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab launched on June 23, 2003, and is accessible on the Internet.

Second Life is an Internet-based, general-purpose 3D virtual world
where people interact with each other through motional avatars. It provides
an environment that enhances sharing through interoperability and creates
interactive experiences that would be hard to duplicate in real life.

According to Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, 80% of active Internet users will have a “Second Life” in the virtual world by the end of 2011.

What are the benefits of this kind of networking in the society? According to some researchers, Second Life is one of the most recent devel-opments, allow teachers to recreate the real world in concrete terms or to build completely new environments, providing unique experiences to students learning abstract concepts or performing specific tasks.

Second Life is also used in the hospital. Children’s Memorial Hospital Chicago sought an innovative solution to a training challenge common to healthcare providers; how to execute disaster preparedness training at a reasonable cost without endangering the staff or putting patients at risk by replicating their facility in Second Life. The virtual hospital has provided a true-to-life immersive training environment for doctors, nurses, and staff to conduct disaster drills, and improve emergency response planning without interfering with hospital operations. The project was an overwhelming success and has inspired senior leaders to expand their training in Second Life and share their positive experience with industry peers.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes. The peer-to-peer application structure was popularized by file sharing systems like Napster. The peer-to-peer computing paradigm has inspired new structures and philosophies in other areas of human interaction. In such social contexts, peer-to-peer as a meme refers to the egalitarian social networking that is currently emerging throughout society, enabled by Internet technologies in general. (Wikipedia)

In a true peer-to-peer network, everyone on the network is a complete equal. There is no centralization at all; no client-server relationship, no centralized data processing. Anyone can interact, communicate and send data to any other computer on the network equally.

Although file sharing networks are probably among the most famous of peer-to-peer technologies, there is question about the legal landscape.

The largest copyright infringement case in Australian history sees Sydney-based Sharman Networks and other “respondents” involved with peer-to-peer software Kazaa face 30 record company “applicants” from Australia, North America and Europe.

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes”, which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. (according to wikipedia)

All of us exist as part of a social network. One of the innovations of development of the Internet is the use of these concepts of social networking to develop web sites that are more powerful and more interactive.

Facebook is one of the most visible examples of social networking online. January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. ‘The Social Network’, a drama film about the founding of the Internet social networking website Facebook, just was released on October 1, 2010 in the US.

Not only for communicating between people having the same interests, businesses also use social networking concepts into their online business models. William Baker, a professor of marketing at San Diego State University, surveyed 1,600 executives and found that firms that rely heavily on external social networks scored 24 percent higher on a measure of radical innovation than companies that don’t. 40 per cent of businesses globally have successfully used social media for business development, according to a new survey by Regus.

However, there is argument that using social networking for business: risk or return on investment?

New media is a broad term that emerged in the later part of the 20th century to encompass the amalgamation of traditional media such as film, images, music, spoken and written word, with the interactive power of computer and communications technology. Most technologies described as “new media” are digital. Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs.

How new media has affected and personalised the way of broadcasting and podcasting nowadays?

What is podcasting? The development of Internet has affected the media content concept. Podcasting has allowed many people to create their own media programs. Some, for example, have created weekly audio programs related to whatever topic they are interested in. With some podcasting technology it is also possible to create live podcasting programs that allow for listener interaction. So there is a question that whether do broadcasting companies feel threatened by the idea of user created media or not?

We are living in the world where the entire face of video media is changing. Now we not only sit in front of the television and watch whatever the networks decide to put on there for us but also we are a part of creation of entertainment. Anyone can be a video director, producer, actor, etc. All it takes is a digital camera, a computer and an Internet connection.

This is the world of user generated video networks. User generated video networks allow instant access to video content of all shapes and sizes, types and varieties. It is an outlet for the creative individual to express themselves to an audience that they could most likely never hope to reach in the world of traditional media. YouTube is the largest user generated video network currently on the World Wide Web.

Natalie Tyler Tran is a video blogger on YouTube from Sydney, Australia. She is studyinng digital media at the University of New South Wales. She is also the number one most-subscribed for the categories of Director and Partners for Australia and manages the 45th-most viewed channel on YouTube of all time. Her videos include observational and self-deprecating humour, as well as stream-of-consciousness commentary on social dilemmas.

Here are some my own stories.

When I still was in Vietnam, I had a holiday in a remote area in my country with my colleagues. When we got there, there were mobile signal so we could not keep contact with everybody. However, I did not feel uncomfortable, but peaceful because there was no one bothering me. We had had relaxing time before we came back to crowded city.

Another story. I went to US some months ago. The first day when I arrived there, I could not use Internet or mobile phone to contact with my parents. This situation bothered me a lot, I felt I was isolated from my familiar living environment.

Vietnam – my country has the number of mobile subscriptions increased rapidly. According to the latest report from General Statistics Office of Vietnam, in the first halt of 2010, the number of mobile subscriptions increased by around 50% year-on-year. Many experts estimate that Vietnam’s mobile market could have 20 million more subscriptions in 2011.

My father told me that he was born in the time that he did have no idea what mobile phone is.  He could make an appointment with his friends, used public phone to call back home when he had to go home late etc. All of these without mobile phone.

Today, we became so nervous when we forgot to bring mobile phone outside. We start relationship by asking “mobile phone” number from the target.

It looks very useful until I can’t imagine can we live without mobile phone?

Nowadays, lots of people have spend more time on Internet. They can do everything online like: listening music, reading, watching movies, buying goods, even living as a second life that they want to live. Is it real?

Also, now we can store everything in a hard drive, so why we need memory? Why the people want another life on Internet?

According to definition from wikipedia, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be.

However, everything online has become so true that the people can not realise what reality is.

Using ‘The Veldt’, a short story collected in ‘The Illustrated Man’ by author Ray Bradbury, McKenzie  Wark points out in his article ‘Too Real’ about how much literature has warnings about the ability of the media and the virtual to mask the real.

“The author of ‘The Veldt’, like the parents, fears the loss of authority over the mediated experience. Wendy and Peter are not just readers, or even ‘users’ of their too real world. They are gamers. They ’set up’ their parents, for they know what their parents do not.”

It reminds me a story about internet addiction in South Korean. A couple who allegedly allowed their child to starve to death while they were busy raising a virtual child in an online game. The case has ignited a furious debate in South Korea over whether internet addiction, like drugs and alcohol, might be used as a defence against culpability.