Social Media

This week's focus is about social media and there are so many familiar stuff that I've come across this week. I especially like the section on how the Internet provides another platform for interaction such as Half-life, blogs and networking sites like Facebook.

I find Half-life especially interesting because you can do so much in it as in real life, much more actually now that I think about it. One can build houses, play games, interact with people around the world, conduct experiments regarding consumer preferences, buy and sell items and the list goes on. I can't do some of these in real life! Build houses? Maybe from Lego blocks... Just from the short videos alone I've discovered so much, how about those who've spent countless hours on it?

Blogs are familiar to me not because I have one of my own (until now that is) but because they provide me with a way to keep up with my friends' more exciting lives. I also find blogs most intriguing because each blog has its own personality. Of course I hear some people saying "Duh!" because the blogs are updated by different people. What I meant is that some people use blogs to update people what exactly went on in their lives (in excruciating detail!!), some use it as a place to showcase their literary inventions, others use blogs to discuss current events while there are even others that post photos and provide commentary. Yet whatever form they take, I am nonetheless fascinated, entertained and even tickled by what they have put up for the virtual world to see. Just today I went to blog-hop my classmates' blog for this module and I've learnt so much about not only the Internet but my classmates as well. So now I know, that whenever I run out of books to read, I should just come online and entertainment is just a blogspot away!

So the question posed to the class this week is: Social media is a bad idea - the rise of social media has caused more and more problems like Internet addiction, social isolation and invasion of privacy, especially with the young generation. Do you agree?

This is such a wonderfully-researchable topic that we could probably churn out pages and pages. However, I shall attempt to provide an OPINION rather than a research-supported thesis. Pardon me my indolence.

I feel that social media is very much like a knife; tools that are neutral and are neither inherently bad nor good. Rather, it is the user who uses the tool that makes the consequences positive or negative. If one were to use a knife to cut up say, a chicken and make a totally delicious dish of chicken chop accompanied with mash potato and salad and maybe soup and... Anyway, make a meal, the final product is (hopefully) good and edible. Conversely, if one were to use a knife to chop up people, that's bad. Similarly, social media is just a tool one can use to keep in contact with old friends, make new friends or set up events which makes it useful. By the same logic, social media can also lead to all the abovementioned problems like social isolation. I'm sure research provides information that weighs in on one side or the other. I say blame not the tool but the users. Let's find ways to reduce, if not eliminate, these problems unfairly associated with social media. Internet addict? Get a life, a real one. Go on and make friends online but meet up for coffee if you happen to be in the same country/region. Or sign up for activities that allows your body to produce enough Vitamin D. Invasion of privacy? Knowledge is key. Learn to avoid sites that sneak information of you, emails that phish you for personal info or install softwares that can protect you. I find social isolation a weird problem because the Internet provides us with such a spectrum of sites in which one can ENGAGE in socialising. Maybe it's referring to those who surf exclusively for -cough- porn -cough-. Well, someone needs to see a doc is my opinion.

So that's it for this week. Not so much a journey of discovery but of looking at familiar things with new lenses. My my, I do go on in this post. Will attempt to be more succinct in the next post. Goodbye and a Happy, Prosperous New Year to everyone!

First Web Browser

During the last lecture, a line of inquiry was put to the class should anyone be interested: Who invented the first web browser and what was it like?

Without further ado, here's what I discovered.

The web browser was actually invented by the same person who invented the World Wide Web! Sir Tim Berners-Lee. And, he called his browser the WorldWideWeb. "Most creative" was my first thought. Snarky comments aside, the browser was first invented in the late 1990s for the NeXTStep operating system, which I know is all Greek to most of us. Anyway, below is a screenshot of the browser:


The above image was taken from here where one can get more in-depth bio of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. It's main page is also linked to W3C site which provides tons of information such as articles, interviews etc about the Internet. Incidentally, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the director of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) which oversees how the Internet develops.

Moving on, the article from which I got the info from moved on to describe how the first browser did not display images at first, then Mosaic became popular, followed by Netscape, Mozilla and also the birth of the Internet Explorer and other browsers like Opera. With each browser, the functions that came with it grew and improvements and updates follow each browser. The article also provided a link where one can peruse the timeline of the browser evolution to some extent.

Personally, I'm thankful for the current existing web browsers available on the Internet. I'm a user of Mozilla and prefer it over IE any day. More importantly, I'm thankful for the browser for allowing me to be able to do so many things, now considered an essential part of life, like checking my mails and keeping in touch with friends near and far. It didn't hurt that there's so many, less-serious stuff to do online like Facebook and Youtube.

That's it for this week's discovery!