Breakingthrough Technology and New Media

Technology is a very powerful device. Cellphones, computer and internet has played an important role in people’s lives. Since it is prevalent in our modern world, it didn’t just change the way we work and the way we live but it also influenced our values, our point of views, our vision to ourselves, and also to our society.

Technology + Information = Time Flexibility and Less Expenses. IWantTV at your own time promo of Bayantel DSL is one good example of this. You can catch your favorite television shows either by watching it live online or by watching it in your free time. Another good example would be the newspapers online like inquirer.net and philstar.com. You would save up more by reading the latest news online than buying newspapers but as for me, I prefer buying my personal copy. I enjoy reading more in a comfortable position than having an eyeball date with my lappy. J

Easy access. Dogs are considered as man’s bestfriend as well as search engines. Google made the works of employees, self-employees and students easier. The big question now is how sure we are if the sources of information are credible? We may ask ourselves and answer these questions. Who is the author? Is it outdated or new information? Yes, with just one click away viola! A research is done and copying and pasting it is the next thing you are to do. Pretty simple huh? But if you are responsible enough, you would read it first and edit a little. And oh! Another thing, don’t forget to paste in your credits for your sources.

Reality vs. Virtual Reality:

Communication with Friends. Nowadays, people enjoy more impersonal chit-chats with friends by means of using their cellular phones and computers. The traditional way of keeping in touch has evolved in a modern way. People today see personal communication as what’s ‘out’ and high-tech form of socialization as what’s ‘in’.

“There’s this belief fostered by the media that if you don’t stay superconnected with people, you have no friends. And having no friends is like having no life. So if you’re not in social networking, you are nothing.”-Katrina,18 (Awake!, July 2011)

Media and peer pressure are just two of the biggest factors why many people are tempted to join in at least one social networking site. It has a great appeal to the masses because of the connectivity convenience it creates.

Communication with Strangers. “Don’t talk to strangers”. When I was young, that is what my parents are always reminding me. Every loving parent would always remind their children to be careful especially for people whom we don’t know, knowing that we are living in a dangerous world. Funny fact, as time goes by, it is not only the young ones but also the young once who forgets to apply this to their everyday lives. As our communication lines extends and upgrades, it is now common to befriend a stranger with the use of social media.

Technology and Freedom: What should we know?

Free culture is what the new media offers us. We have power over our own freedom in the media society. Though our conscience can determine right from wrong, some people are being reckless whenever they post something into their social network accounts. As a responsible person, we should apply practical wisdom and good thinking skills before doing something because one wrong word can never be erased in the minds of people who will be able to read it and it can also ruin your reputation and relationships to others. 

courtesy of: Awake! July 2011 page 27

Privacy. By the time, you sign up in social media sites, you can never have privacy. But you can secure yourself by not posting your personal information and making your accounts customized to your friends (only your friends can see your profile). Also, keep in mind that everything you put in the internet is permanent because website owners’ backups the databases or their domains either erased or not. A healthy reminder: Think twice and be wise.

Social Media Revolution

What’s on your mind? Broadcast yourself. Create a blog. Follow me. New on this? Join us Today! Sign up now!

 These are few of the popular taglines of social media networks today. Catchy-words and phrases are must have’s of these sites. At present time, billions and millions of people are engaged in using social media for different purposes. From businesses functioning, school activities, socializing, political campaigns and many more.

It was year 1997 when SixDegrees.com, the first Social Media was born. It was created to build long-distance bonding to family members, friends and even to strangers. We use now the modern way of informing and persuading people with the use of Social Media. As of today we have over 400 social media sites. And almost all of us have at least one personal account.

Versatility is the power of social media. You want to send e-mail? There’s Yahoo. You want to share a video? Watch a movie? YouTube is present. You want to connect to people? Here comes Facebook. You want to market your products and services? Multiply will help you.

As what you can notice, the word “YOU” has been used over and over. Yes, every social media site is designed for YOU. Its target is not only a group of people but also every individual who have computers or who can use computers with the use of internet connection. No doubt, social media truly helped people to connect to each other in the cheapest and fastest way.

Did social media change everything? Did it change you?

Back to the days where exchanging of letters is popular, it takes many days or even a week for them to read your personal message and it’ll cost too. But now, instant messages are just a click away within a matter of seconds. It helped our commerce to be more effective and efficient. Yes, it did change us and will always be. We live now as if it became a necessity for the world. We can’t live without it, since the birth of social media has take place the revolution had started and will be ongoing.

Social Media has many good things to offer and the people behind this are still trying to get the people always hooked into their sites. Improvement is what they always keep eye onto to satisfy the needs of its users. They change for us as we change for them. But as these things gets famous let us not always forget to look back, that personal communication is still the best way to communicate with one another.

Mediocrity vs. Excellence: A student’s Dilemma

No person is born unintelligent. We differ from one another not because of the nature that we have but because of the nurture that we had. To sum things up, we are all born with such intelligent minds and we, ourselves is the one responsible in molding and cultivating our specialties. We can choose excellence over mediocrity. You may ask, How? But first let’s give differentiation between the two terms.

*Mediocrity- you can identify your mistakes yet you do nothing about it; the average type.

*Excellence- you can identify your mistakes and you make right actions to it right away; the excelling type.

Think of our brains as a Computer Hard Disk with the same memory capacity. We feed our memory with data and files. Files are categorized into sub parts. Here are some:

Open files. These are the knowledge that have we already stored in our memory. Yes, we may already have much knowledge but this will only be meaningful if we will give interest on studying more. We must love to learn and re-learn because it’s a two way continuous process. You may write on a piece of paper why what you are doing now will benefit you even in your future. By knowing this, you can determine what should be your priorities.

Hidden files. Of course, we must not forget these files because still they are important part of every computer. These files can only be seen by changing the settings, if you’ll require them for you to see them. As a connection in life, it is not only what we see is important. Sometimes the unseen things are more vital to life. We are all given with special talents and skills but we are not inborn the best. Though we have these special abilities, it is always up to the person if he will cultivate his own uniqueness. Practice makes it perfect and it requires so much patience.

Broken files. There’s no way to shortcut studying, studying is the way. The real thing may not seem to be pleasant in our ears but it only speaks what’s the best for us. Students may have broken schedules, and may not maintain a balanced schedule. If we will budget our time wisely and choose wisely what are the thing to do first. Let us also consider a time for relaxation but make sure that right after it, there will be no buts, we will proceed on the work we are assigned to.

Missing files. These are the files that if filled out will make us feel complete and whole as a person. What a person may sometime lack is his self-confidence. If you believe in what you are doing you’ll absolutely love the outcome of it.

                        Try to reinvent and reinvent things, until you come up with the one you think is the best among all of your works. Focus on the small details and have a passion for it. Great ideas give great works, so we must invest a lot in brainstorming.

Softwares. Literally, softwares are the installed programs that give command to a hardware. We can compare them to our conscience that is usually the guide to our destinations. We must never ever take for granted doing the ‘right thing’ in our everyday lives. Some events may lead us to excellence but is from the wrong thing. By doing this, we will never be happy even though we already chased success.

            Everyone has the capacity to restore and upgrade their own room for improvement.  Yes, every computer may differ from one another and so do people.  It is our uniqueness that makes us special. And when we say special, we must give great value to it.

 “Think outside the box!” --- Every time I work into something, I just can’t help it but to think over and over again what might be missing. I admit it; I’m a halfway perfectionist before but for some reason my views had changed. I’ve learned that the best thing and the perfect thing are in contrast, the first one is balanced while the second one is not. Being just the best and not the perfect doesn’t mean that you are practicing laziness or you are the average type. Being a perfectionist can lead to disappointment of your own capability. You just have to give attention to your work and do the best of what you can, till you attain what you want in the first place. We must never forget that true excellence is about making the right choices and the right actions.

The Prometeus New World

The video entitled “The Future of Communication” is a combination of predictions. Predictions can be either certain or uncertain. It can be somehow certain because the predictions are based on what’s happening today and it can be somehow uncertain because these are purely visions of what might happen in the next few years. Yet, we can’t give judgments until the predicted dates that the video gave have already passed.

Man is God. This metaphor was used to give representation to the system producer- consumer information. The video mentioned that at the end of last century, the Media Revolution all started since we first used the internet.

The old world reacts. More and more laws will be made regarding copyright law. The unauthorized websites who let the people have their own free copy of music, movies and softwares will be sued. The old radios will be just a piece of souvenir item because it will be replaced by the free internet radios except if there will be a brownout here in the Philippines. Unlike the other countries they don’t experience blackout but since we don’t have budget for that, it is one of our problem until now. And I’m hoping that in the near future we won’t have this problem again. Anyway, it is sad to know that even though we will have a bunch of amazing technology on the next centuries time will come that the older gadgets will soon be phased out.

Encyclopedia vs. Wikipedia. Some people’s part time job is selling encyclopedias and then here comes www.wikipedia.org. It is the most complete encyclopedia ever. In reality, you can have your own encyclopedia at home if you have thousands of pesos, and some can’t afford that. It is truly beneficial especially for the students because everybody can have a research on their own in an expensive and easier way.

Plastic Paper. One of the statement of Philip K. Dick (avatar) in the video is that in 2011 there will be a plastic paper. And it is 2011 now we don’t have any plastic paper but we do have digital papers which is much thicker in width.

Copyright Law will be illegal. Sadly, the creators, authors and  designers will have less power over their works if the prediction that ‘Copyright Law will be illegal by Lawrence Lessig’

Who is Lawrence Lessig?

            Lawrence Lessig is the author of the Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. In his book, he explains that if you will use a book without permission for non-commercial purposes it can’t be considered as a crime. He also stated that these can be some kind of taxation scheme. You can read his book online at freeculture.org/blog/.

            In my own opinion, I also agree with him. As a student, we photocopy some books for educational purposes because honestly a book is not worth to buy if what you really need from it is below the half of its real number of pages. Moreover, we will not use it to gain profit out of it, only to give satisfactions to our requirements.

            A crime will be a crime depending on the not unacceptable motive of a person in having a free copy of works.

People will be connected for free. The mere fact that we are all suffering from economic crises we can access to every part of the world. This will help us save up more and we can more focus on our needs and not with our wants.

Google News and OhMyNews.

Google News is said to be a news online wherein we can watch anytime without waiting for timeslots of news’s in our televisions.

OhMyNews is a fancy website where thousands of journalists all over the

world posts the current news in different places. It will be accessed worldwide.

A person can have multiple on-line identities. The reality can be replicated. This statements made me scared on how things will be. The number of cybercrimes will surely increase. That’s why people have to be wiser and should seek advice of trusted experts.

Our future communication system can have multiple advantages and disadvantages. (my conclusion)

Advantages:

-Everybody can be producers and they can earn extra money

-Work at Home community will be popular and everyone can be self-employed

-It can be a solution for our economic crises.

-More Filipinos can earn dollars even though they are based here in our own country.

-Some traditional businesses will be no longer used only multimedia business.

-Everybody can share their experiences.

Disadvantages:

-Some traditional businesses will be no longer used while multimedia business will reign.

-There will be more and more cybercrimes.

-The original creators, designers will suffer because more infringement will rise against the law especially in protecting their rights

-More tax will be added to the radio, television, newspaper and magazines.

-Selling of memories will be normal.

-People will have less privacy.

Source of photos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0ztxdsFis&feature=related

The Hybrid Presentations

            Among the other presentations, the Group 1 has my praises. During their presentation I can’t help myself not to smile while watching attentively. According to Ms. Louina Beato (the leader of the said group) their presentation is called “stop-motion”. It was really my first time to hear that, since I’m not familiar with the history of making short films. Then after googling it..I got this definition from Wikipedia.org that helped me understand the unfamiliar term (Stop motion).

Stop motion (also known as stop action) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Motion animation using clay is called clay animation or clay-mation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion

Also, I found out that this was the first animation technique used by other filmmakers when cartoons are only having their fresh start. After a minute of realization, I was shocked and amazed because some of my favorite cartoons before had practiced this so called “stop action.” The stop motion presentation by Ms. Beato’s group reminds me of Pingu, Mickey Mouse and other animated cartoons before. I’m very glad that the old fashioned way of multimedia presentation is not forgotten. Truly, it had played an important part of our history. It had been the stepping stone of our modern films now and other forms of video presentations.

Overall, I can proudly say that the whole class really exerted so much effort and time. The effectiveness and attractiveness of the hybrid video presentations is the evidence for the hard work of students in AB Multi-media arts Batch 2015.  

I’m fortunate to be enrolled in Lyceum of the Philippines University-Laguna. Because it is one of the Top 20 schools that leads in the Philippines. As one of the leading schools, they practice the Hybrid Learning System. The latest techniques and the latest learning strategies are more beneficial to the brand-new generation of students. It is a great advantage for every student if they will graduate in a University wherein there is an advance technology. That is the reason why choosing the school that promotes this kind of learning system is what we have to consider.

A traffic jam report!

Isn’t it nice to start a morning with a sweet and fresh ambiance of a new day? Wake up and eat a delicious and hot breakfast that your supermom has prepared for you. Taking a nice and warm bath in your own refreshing room while getting into the floor and having your big and never-seen exclusive concert.

You may agree that this is one of the best things in our everyday lives. By having a fresh start that soothes your body and mind. And then suddenly when you’re on your way to school. You find yourself staring at the other lane because you had been stuck in a heavy traffic jam.

And then let’s say that you already arrived to your destination. Then someone will ask you or yell at you “Why are you late?” Then you started reasoning and blaming the traffic jam. Yes, it may have been the traffic. You should have arrived before your scheduled time. But the real thing in here is that you should have given extra effort on waking up earlier. “Heavy traffic” is not a reasonable excuse and also it is not a professional excuse.

The reality:

According to www.english-test.net ”Traffic jams are now a major problem in most cities. However, it seems that people are not prepared to give up their cars and use other forms of transport.”

The main reason why traffic has been the major problem in the highways and roads is because many people prefer to buy their own car because of its affordability and is much cheaper than commuting. As our population grew the road can’t give the right amount of requirement of the increasing number of cars.

How to be not a boredom victim whenever traffic occurs? A day would have start at its best, if you would be only prioritizing the important ones. First, you can organize and prepare your things that you will be bringing for tomorrow before going to sleep. It saves up more energy and time the next day. It is also a good investment if we budget our time wisely and reasonably. Second, we can set time in our alarms that is earlier than the usual time we wake up. It is a good thing also to take note on how much time we spend in taking a bath, eating breakfast, changing our clothes, etc. So that we will be able to know what is the best time for us to wake up. By doing so, we prepare ourselves into professional beings. Reality check, time is one of the most precious things that God had given us so we must give great, great value for it by means of our just and right actions. So there! J

A night to remember

            Everything has its own time. And in College if there is a time to be serious, also there is a time for fun. That’s why last Friday July 1, 2011 Lyceum gave a treat for the deserving Lycean students (including Me. ha-ha!)  for doing a great job in their first two weeks of classes. Yeah, you heard it right! A night of fun was given as a treat. It was the sweetest and priceless treat for the hardworking students of LPU-L.

            Graffiti was the theme used for the said event. The plain white t-shirt that you’ll wear will be signed by anonymous students. You can ask for your classmates, friends, professors and especially your significant other to write short sweet messages into your tees. But that’s not just it. It was also a night for performers and talents. Different Colleges was given a chance to shine individually and also as a group. The different presentations reflected who they really are and made me realize how Lyceans are truly blessed with such talents in various fields.

            The night was a blast! Everything you’ll love in college is here! The audiences (including me) enjoyed cheering for their colleagues and colleges. On the other hand, the crowd also makes a difference. With the full support and high level energy of the crowd the performances were outstanding. And this is what really a performer need. An inspiration. The performances, shouts and claps are irreplaceable and worth it. Great Job Lyceum! We all really had a superb night till next time ^-^.