14.1-2

social media

User driven websites and applications enabling participation in creating and sharing content, as well as engaging in social networking.

A World Economic Forum project report from January 2016 on Digital Media and Society: Implications in a Hyperconnected Era1 lays the main characteristics of the way we use digital media today:

1) Digital media are mobile. We spend an average of two hours each day on mobile devices, which is about one-third of our total online time. Millennials and digital media users spend even more time, with those 16-24 the heaviest daily users at 3.25 hours a day. Those 55-64 only use mobile devices 0.58 hours a day, which suggests that average number is going to move toward that three hour mark.2 Mobile devices have advantages, especially in emerging countries, because they are more affordable than personal computers or laptops, and can be used almost anywhere, almost all of the time. 2) Digital media are social and interactive. Far and away the most popular online activity is social networking, where on average we devote 1.8 hours (or 30% of our daily online time) each day.3 Social networking covers everything from e-mail and instant messaging, to sharing posts, pictures, activities, events, and interests with others. You can still go old school and just give someone a call on your smartphone, but you can also FaceTime with them. 3) Digital media are flexible and personalized. Digital media give you more of an active role and more control over what you use and engage compared to traditional media. Because of user accounts and cookies, content is customized for you based on your characteristics and patterns of using the Internet. You can personalize your smartphone by customizing it, adding, moving, or removing the applications so your favorite features are but one click away. 4) Digital media are convenient, instant, and fast. Not so long ago you had to be home, using a modem to connect your personal computer to the Internet so you could go on America OnLine and chat with friends. Now you can reach into your pocket and pull out a smartphone with an advanced mobile operating system that has the same features as a personal computer (and which rendered mere cell phones obsolete). Your biggest concern is with keeping your smartphone charged. The ease with which we can access and use the Internet literally brings the world to your finger tips, and if that is not true from literally every place on the planet, it is certainly moving in that direction. 5) Digital media is more content. What has also become easier and easier with each passing year is for people to create and distribute content and services online. That content has become increasing diverse, but its consumption focuses more on breadth than depth, because of capacity limitations. The "democratization" of content also increases quality control issues. This places increased importance on how the Internet filter content and makes recommendations to users (How often do you look beyond the first page of results when you conduct a Google search?). 6)Digital media is collective. The ability for people around the planet to be able to connect, share, recommend, and communicate creates the collective intelligence of McLuhan's global village where people share beliefs and ideas that can shape behavior. Because of their interactive nature, digital media have been associated with promoting online interaction, distributing knowledge between users, and enhancing collective intelligence.4 7) Digital media is fragmented and multi-channel. In a world where users access multiple platforms from multiple devices, there are concerns that the Internet might be in danger of splintering or breaking up into fragmented segments of connectivity, where people would have varying degrees of access to the wealth of content that exists and is growing every second.

1963

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is developed as the first universal standard for computers allowing machines made by different manufacturers to exchange data.

cyberspace

Coined by William Gibson Virtual reality; the realm of electronic communication.

1989

DEVELOPMENT: Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web while Brewster Kahle invents the Internet's first publishing system, a precursor to today's search engines. The following year, ARPANET would cease to exist.

1972

Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson. He comes up with the now-iconic "@" sign to distinguish between the sender's name and the network name in the e-mail address.

1969

INVENTION: ARPA goes online, connecting four major U.S. universities to provide a communications network linking the country in case a military attack destroys conventional communication systems. ARPANET's massive funding allows it to pull ahead of rivals in Britain and France.

1958

In response to the Sputnik launch, the United States forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), within the Department of Defense. The Agency will be responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the U.S. military.

1961

Leonard Kleinrock of MIT writes his doctoral thesis about queuing theory and pioneers packet-switching theory.

2006

MATURITY: Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud helps popularize "The Cloud," the computer utility model that offers nearly any software or service, including data storage, that can be done on a personal computer or larger machine.

Three possible types of fragmentation:

Technical fragmentation because the underlying infrastructure could limit or prevent system from being able to fully interoperate. Governmental fragmentation resulting from policies and actions that could prevent or limit certain uses of the Internet. Commercial fragmentation where exclusive access is granted to certain providers could also prevent or limit certain uses of the Internet.

1990

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) is launched, becoming one of the first websites to popularize user-generated content in the form of user ratings and reviews (and predating the Web 2.0 concept).

1945

The end of World War II

The technologies used to deliver Web 2.0 are rich Web technologies (e.g., Adobe Flash, JavaScript, Microsoft Silverlight), but the key elements that define Web 2.0 are not its technology but rather its functions:

Wikis—If any one element best defines Web 2.0 it would be wikis: web sites enabling visitors to make changes, contributions, or corrections ("wiki" is a Hawaiian word meaning "quick"). The first wiki was WikiWikiWeb, created to facilitate the exchange of ideas between programmers, while the International Movie Database, launched in 1990, enabled registered users to rate films, post reviews on the message boards, and submit edits to entries on everything from cast to quotations. Today, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, is the most popular wiki-based website. Social networking—Using dedicated websites and applications to interact with other users online, is perhaps is another significant defining element of Web 2.0. Social networking not only allows users to make connections with other users but also allows users to expand business contacts as well on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms. User-generated content—This covers any form of content created by online users and freely made available online: wikis, blogs, discussion forums, posts, chats, tweets, podcasts, audio files, digital images, video, and other forms of media. The freedom to create content underscores the importance of collaboration, skill-building, and discovery. Collaborative efforts—Similarly, collaborative efforts such as crowdsourcing (outsourcing tasks to an external group of people), crowdfunding (funding a project with relatively modest contributions from a large group of individual donors), and crowdsource testing (sending out prototype software or products for testing), underscore the idea of user interactivity. Mash-ups—In general, a mash-up is something created by combining elements from two or more sources. For example, the television series Glee often offered mash-ups of songs, such as their Adele Mash-up of "Rumor Has It" and "Someone Like You." In computing terms, a mash-up refers to web pages or applications that integrate data and functionalities from multiple online sources. Mobile computing—Spurred by the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices, as well as the ready availability of Wi-Fi networks, a final defining element is that users can connect with the Internet from wherever they happen to be.

digital media

digitized content that can be transmitted over the internet or computer networks and access through digital devices

malware

the broad term describing any malicious software designed by hackers to vandalize computers, steal private information, take remote control of a computer, or manipulate purchases.

Millenials (Generation Y)

the demographic cohort following Generation X, with birth years ranging from the early 1980's to around 2000