hw 13- To technologically advanced?

The assignment for this blog was to decide whether blogging in business or the impact of blogging on communication that is not business or profit related was more important. At first that was a hard question to answer. Blogging is becoming so important in the business world that it can determine whether an individual or business is successful. After reading “Blogs will change your business” by Baker and Green I came to the conclusion that it would be important in communication that was not business related. Communication between people in the most important way of spreading news. Individuals spreading there feelings and emotions in a non business atmosphere can say so much more then a business blog in my opinion. Baker and Green suggest that “Sure, most blogs are painfully primitive. That’s not the point. They represent power. Look at it this way: In the age of mass media, publications like ours print the news. Sources try to get quoted but the decision is ours. Ditto with letters to the editor. Now instead of just speaking through us, they can blog. And if they master the ins and outs of this new art like how to get other bloggers to link to them they can reach a huge audience”(Baker 224). This quote really helped me make up my mind. Ordinary people have so much power through just one online blog. They can also influence many other people. The best part about this is the topic can be anything. Looking outside of the business world blogging can be about so much more. This is rather scary because it is a new way for people to communicate without really seeing each other. In this technologically advanced world communication is key, so people need to be able to express there ideas. I hope that over the years people will be able to learn more ways of communicating there ideas through blogs.

Hw 11 Interview with MacKinnon

After reading Rebecca MacKinnon’s interview I decided to look up her blog entitled North Korea Zone. The website in general is very plain. It makes it purpose clear which is to educate about North Korea. I like how it talks about many different aspects of North Korea, everywhere from politics to art. The blog has about 8 authors who all have different views of North Korea. They are united in believing that they want people to become educated. The style of writing is relaxed but formal, in my eyes it is very readable. The blog doesn’t overwhelm you with so many fancy words that you can’t grasp what its saying. Since this is MacKinnon’s own blog I think that is still corresponds to her opinions about it in her interview. The only expectation of mine this blog did not fulfill was I felt it would be more factual instead of opinionated. After all many people have misconceptions about North Korea although I believe after reading this blog people will be more informed about what really goes on. They will be educated on more then just the politics. This blog is great because it talks about all different aspects of the country.

Hw 9- Waldman Interview

First I would like to start off by saying this was my favorite narrative I’ve read yet. The interview with Ayelet Waldman was attention grabbing and very interesting. I found what she said about women’s blog’s to be very fascinating as well. I think blogging is a totally different way to express yourself then writing. Waldman is the author of six books and still found it necessary to write a web blog. Waldman is right when she says blogging is like a confessional. It’s a way to let out your feelings which many people find hard to do. Although I agree with Waldman up to a point, I cannot accept all that she says. I find her remarks on how snarky people have to be, to be false. I feel like in the blogging world you don’t always have to be rude and aggressive to be heard. That’s the great thing about blogging anyone can be heard for anything. I love how Waldman describes the infertility blog as an inspiration to her to blog. She describes this blog many times in her interview. A part that stuck out to me was when she describes how many people feel such immense pain and write about it in this blog. She says the female blogging community can also let out such emotion and love in certain blogs. I feel as though this is why so many mothers and women blog. It is a place to feel accepted and nurtured. Many women long to feel that way. Overall, this interview really opened my eyes to many other blog’s and to see blogging in a different light.

Hw 7- Preteens and Blogging

To start off this blog first I would like to say I disagree with the statement “Parents should not monitor everything that their middle school children write online”. Middle school is a crucial time in a pre teens life where they can be influenced by many other peoples thoughts and ideas. As teens grow older and hit high school I believe that parents should truth them enough to hope that they are not harming themselves by using the internet. Younger pre teens however are more impressionable. This day and age you hear of many young children being kidnapped or raped because they are talking to rapists and older men on forums. Also, pre teens are getting the wrong ideas about sex, drugs, alcohol, and eating disorders from websites and blogs. I do not think parents should ban there children from using the internet or check every little detail of there life but I do believe there should be restrictions. A parent should never make a child feel uncomfortable about expressing his or her thoughts but should let them know how dangerous the internet really is. Everything you read is not always true. Although I disagree with this statement I do believe that blogging is a good way for kids to get out there feelings. Blogging can give a child a great sense of fitting in. Emily Nussbaum’s narrative “My So called Blog” shows this. “J’s sense of private and public was filled with these kinds of contradictions. He wanted his posts to be re read, and feared that people would read them, and hoped that people would read them, and didn’t care if people read them. He wanted to be included while priding himself on his outsider status.”(Nussbaum 353). This part in Nussbaums’s article makes a very good point. To “J” a blog is way of expressing himself and feeling accepted. To a kid who feels very unwanted in school this could be a great community to belong to. Overall, children should be allowed to express themselves but parents should still know what is going on in there life.

Hw 6 Intrests

For my semester long project I hope to study three social computing techniques. The first one is instant messaging. The reason why I am so interested in Instant messenger is because I have used it since I was in 6th grade and I would like to research how many others have as well. I also plan on studying social networking services like face book and my space. I have an account on both of these websites and I would like to learn what kids in parts of the U.S and outside of it go on. For the final social computing technique I choose blogging and web blogs. This a new thing for me and id really like to learn more about it. The three groups I choose were overcoming sexism, overcoming homophobia and overcoming ageism. To many times in our world today people are judged on there gender, sexual preference and age. I would like to learn more about this. I would like to study people from North America, the United States and Europe. I choose The United States because it is where I am from and I would like to get to know more about the people in my country. I choose Europe because although there culture is different they share a lot of the same ideas with the United States. I hope to learn a lot of new ideas, concepts, and information through this project.

HW 5b- Blogging versus the Media

A part of “I Blog, Therefore I am” that I disagreed with was that blogging will be more then a fad and will not die down unlike newspapers. Kline suggests that newspaper will become less and less popular although they will never completely go away and that blogging will increasingly get more popular. The author insists that “but for the next 25 years at least, one can safely bet that the mainstream media, reinvigorated by blogging and by a closer and more transparent relationship to readers and viewers, will not only survive but will maintain the upper hand over what is now thought of as the emerging blogging media, when measured in terms of power, influence and revenues” (Kline 243). As of right now I do not agree with this statement. To me blogging still seems like just a fad. It has not proven itself otherwise. To compare it to newspapers and TV is a bad idea. Blogging is now where near as powerful as something like The New York Times. Maybe, far into the future it will be but for right now I disagree. Many people in the world are still so unfamiliar with technology that it can not completely take over.

HW4 opt 2-Juicy

After reading Kline’s “The voice of the customer” I choose to talk about the brand Juicy Couture. I mainly choose this brand because I believe a lot of there advertising is very misleading although it works very well. On the back of the label it says “made in the glamorous USA”. Juicy’s main goal is to make there clothes seem so amazing, glamorous and comfy that you have to have then no matter what the price of a pair of sweatpants is. Although I am an owner of many Juicy items I feel there is a lot more hype over there clothes then there should be. Within a year there was even a whole in one of the shirts I had bought. When you visit the Juicy website at http://www.juicycouture.com it appears that if you wear Juicy you will become a more beautiful fashionable even younger looking person. It also gives you the idea that if you wear juicy you will be more like royalty. Juicy promises that there clothing is top of the line and worth the price but in my experiences they were not made well and ripped. You would think that if you spent 100 dollars on a sweatshirt it would not rip after a year!

Hw3- my views on "Towards a more participatory democracy"

After reading Kline’s “Towards a More Participatory Democracy” I was shocked by all the information I never knew about the relationship between politics and blogging. I’ve always believed that the media plays and important role in the campaigns of politicians but this article really opened my eyes. To sum up this article, it spoke about how political blogs have a big affect on campaigns. It also talked about how so many Americans do not believe in the media and how many people in politics look down upon blogging claiming that no one looks at it. What really surprised me about this reading was how many big events in politics were first announced in blogs. Many people assume that when something big happens in politics they first hear it on the TV or in magazines. After reading this article, I learned that “It was the conservative Powerline.com blog that first published information exposing as forgeries the documents that Dan Rather used in his 60 minutes story on President Bush’s service in the National Guard(and yes, Rather soon resigned as CBS Evening News anchor as well.)(Kline 12).” This came as a shock to me because now it turns out bloggers are turning into the best most truthful journalists out there. I also found it interesting that bloggers themselves are actually people working in politics. It’s shocking that some of these blogs are actually people exposing there coworkers. I wonder how many other blogs are run by people who are famous that we never even knew about.

HW2- Blogs go Corporate

In Dan Burnstein’s “From Cave Painting to Wonkette: A short History of Blogging” he mentions that blogging will become corporate. As one of his 12 ideas he states “The interaction of business and blogging will be many-sided and multidimensional. Business is obviously being changed in a number of superficial ways as a result of these trends (Burnstein xxiii).” I completely agree with Burstein’s ideas on this topic. Blogging is become such a big part of our world and it is now starting to break into the Business world. One blog I saw talked about restaurants in my hometown, comparing them to each other and saying which ones were not recommended. Believe it or not this had a huge effect on where people in my town started eating. Living in a relatively small town word spread quickly. Soon everyone new which restaurants were good and which didn’t make the cut in the town. One bloggers opinion had such a large impact that a restaurant started losing business because of this.
On the other hand corporations and businesses are also gaining from blogs. They can advertise there businesses and try to sell them to the best of there ability. Businessmen and women are soon finding out that blogging can be just as useful as advertising in magazines, on the radio or on TV! I believe that sooner then we think blogging will be a vital part in the survival of businesses.