A note on data-collection, Social dimensions and conclusion

A note on data-collection

We need to note that new media is also characterized by an astonishing and uncharted level of personal experience/exposure. Online companies and sites can track the content of personal emails and site visits in order to target advertisements on users’ sidebars and preferences.

There are websites whose sole purpose is to compile and share personal data with web surfers. One example isSpeokeo.com, a website that uses publically cached information (phone numbers, family members, emails, addresses, even shopping trends) and shares them, albeit sparingly without a membership, to all those who wish to search.

Concerns over privacy in new media are legitimate: the biggest concern is whether or not to be concerned. Perhaps in the fog of shared and linked information across social sites, business networking, as well as email messages and publically recorded data, personal privacy for those who work with new media technology may be a thing of the foggy and distant twentieth century. In reality, there is one all important caveat: Don’t write or reveal anything on line that you wouldn’t want the world to know!

Social dimensions

There is indeed something about new media that is defined by its capability to reach outside of stagnant information pools. Perhaps the term new media is more apt to describe the network of networks that overwrites traditional relationships in exchange for new ones. In many ways, traditional media outlets now rely on new media sources for data and information. One recent article from the French newspaper Le Monde charted the evolution of political blogs across Europe in order to assess emerging trends and opinions in the region. What this signals is twofold: not only does new media enable the average person to engage in political, cultural, social, and economic action, but it also suggests that old-style reporting and data outlets are secondary and not primary sources for many. New media is an enabler and the new primary source.

The exchange of ideas and images are is of primary importance in considering the potential for new media. Not only are political horizons widened but so too are artistic and educational ones. Today, there is a tremendous ability for individual users who write, paint, report, educate, etc. to make connections to one another in a way that might allow them to circumvent the conventions of institutional and closed opportunities.

One thing is very clear: New Media is experiencing the growing pains of “the Wild West.” New Media itself is neutral new technology evolving all the time. It is up to the user as to whether it is good or bad.

Conclusion: rhetorical questions of potential

So much of what defines new media is subtle, unrestricted, and not standardized. But is that good or bad? Just what determines the information and communication traffic across mobile phones, fiber optic wires, and online encyclopedias? Where is new media really going, and are we, as users, constructing the destination or are we blindingly falling into its clutches through necessities and paradigms?

Perhaps the potential of new media is a function of its intermediate development and our social, political, and economic transition within and outside of it. Either way, it remains to be seen whether or not it really is up to us to define the digital frontier. Regardless, new media and new media communications is continually evolving and as a result, its definitions evolves as well.