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There are many different viewpoints on the importance of Twitter. Some people like twitter because it is convenient to access (from either a cell phone or computer) and because it is a good way to keep up with what friends are doing. Also, the speaker we had in class talked about its practical potential. If someone puts an update on Twitter about bad traffic, it can save us a lot of time, or if a friend tweets about a good sale, it would help both the company and the people who buy the products.

But there is another group of people, myself included, that are just asking “Who cares?” I think Twitter is interesting to check once in a while, but there isn’t really much motivation for me to keep checking the site just so I can see that one of my friends is “eating PB&J” or “doing homework.”

Other concerns about Twitter are the commonly-heard complaints that it is too brief, can be annoying if people update it too frequently, and has a tendency to exceed bandwidth (in which case the “fail whale” will appear).

But another concern with Twitter, to which I had never really given much thought, came up when I was reading an article on CNN.com called, “Scientists Warn of Twitter Dangers.” This article expressed some scientists’ beliefs that using social-networking devices such as Twitter are numbing our sense of morality. The argument is that Twitter is so brief and rapid, that it doesn’t give us time to fully experience the emotions that each post is trying to convey, and as a result, we are becoming more and more indifferent to human suffering.

I thought this was kind of interesting, because it is something that I never really would have thought about. What kind of impact this theory will have on the future use of Twitter, I don’t really know. But I think the chances of us slowing down at all for the sake of morality are pretty slim.

And Sorry about the lag, guys! I'm not really sure how to fix it...

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This week in class we tried out using Second Life. We created our own avatars, customized their appearance, and then explored the digital world. But, frankly, I didn’t like it at all.

Customizing my avatar’s appearance was a chore because it never did quite what I wanted, and at one point my avatar’s skirt was floating 3 feet in front of her… And even walking in Second Life is extremely difficult because the graphics take such a long time to load.

However, even if all of these pitfalls were corrected, I still don’t see the point of the average person using it to just hang out. Maybe it has some benefits to the business world, but I don’t see why hanging out and exploring a world with complete strangers is so appealing. I understand that there is some level of social interaction, but not nearly as much as on other social networking sites, like Facebook. For this reason, I don’t think that Second Life will ever become as mainstream as Facebook, but I think the idea can be built upon and can provide some benefit in the future.

An example of an area where the concepts presented in Second Life can be useful is in the realm of online shopping. I just read an article today about how online stores are thinking about changing their layouts to look more like Second Life and allowing their users to create their own avatars. The avatars can walk around the store and try on different outfits, so the buyer can get more of an idea of how it will look. Customers can even meet up with other friends online to go shopping together! This in turn will increase sales, because customers will feel more certain about their purchases, and retailers can see how popular certain clothing items are by seeing how many times it was “tried on.”

While I personally do not think that Second Life itself will grow much larger, I am very interested in seeing the possible future benefits that it can bring.

I found this on the comics section of my iGoogle page, and I just thought I'd share it with you guys!

Image by Stuart Barr via Flickr

When cell phones were first created, the original purpose was to bring people closer together. You could phone an aunt or uncle who lived far away in a matter of seconds. But as technology is advancing, it seems that we are also coming up with new ways to avoid people and potential awkward situations.

I mean, how many of us don’t pick up the phone when we see a certain name appear on the screen? Or choose not to respond to a text when it’s inconvenient? I know I’m definitely guilty of this.

I recently saw an advertisement for a company called “Slydial” that takes you directly to a cell phone user’s voice mail, and thus avoiding any unwanted conversation. One of the advertisements was, “Dump your lover directly on voice mail!” I mean, really? Have we become so dependent on technology, that we can’t even have a personal conversation without having to use some sort of gadget for a crutch?

I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with the concept of going directly to someone’s voicemail. I can see how it would be useful to just relay a quick message or reminder, or if you aren’t sure if it’s a bad time for them, etc.

But if we can’t even talk to someone in person about an important matter, like breaking up with them, then it seems as though we’re just using technology to hide behind, and our real-life communication skills are taking a dive. Who knows, maybe in the future there will be no personal interaction at all. I don’t think it would ever go that far, but we certainly seem to be headed that way. Hoj

In the real world, with our economy in shambles and people losing their jobs left and right, it is natural to wonder if the economy’s effect on real life businesses has a similar effect on a virtual one.

Second Life, for example, is a virtual world that mimics real life. It contains virtual businesses where users can buy, sell, rent or trade land, goods and services with other users. But, how are decreasing incomes in real life changing consumer’s spending habits online?

This question is not as simple as it seems, because it varies from user to user. Some may argue that the Second Life Economy is actually more stable because 1 U.S. dollar goes a lot farther in the game than in real life (1 USD = 228 Linden Dollars), and only people spending large amounts of money on the site are trying to cut back. However, the general consensus seems to be that the economy is definitely having a negative impact on Second life spending.

Since most people buy Linden Dollars on credit cards, whose interest rates are skyrocketing, everyone is thinking twice about purchasing them. If you travel through Second Life, you can see that many of the high-end clothing stores are almost completely empty, whereas the stores with the most bargains are continually packed.

From this, we can reasonably say it’s possible that the world’s economic problems are impacting the virtual one. However, since the number people actually playing Second Life is not decreasing, but the amount of money flowing into it is, another question that awaits us in the next few years is whether or not Second Life can continue to survive like this.

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When I read the title of chapter 9 in Everything is Miscellaneous, titled, “Messiness is a Virtue”, I’m not going to lie, I was pretty excited. As someone who should probably clean her room a little more often, I was intrigued by the possibility that maybe messiness had a little more to it than just laziness. And to an extent, it does.

While, dumping last week’s garbage all over the floor can hardly be called productive, if not plain gross, there can be an aspect of putting things out of order that makes them more accessible. Thomas Hyde, a librarian at Bodleian Library understood this concept well. He placed Shakespeare, Shakspeare, Shakspere, and Shaxberd all together in one category, defying alphabetical order, with the objective of making them easier to find.

I can even see examples of this in my own room. For instance, I have a random granola bar placed on top of my Economics books, which are sitting on my desk. This granola bar was taken from its box in the food section of my room and placed with my schoolbooks in order to remind me to take it with me tomorrow morning. Even though it is not in its “proper” category, with the food items, it much more useful out of place.

However, the only pitfall of disorder in the physical world is that a certain order may only be useful to one person. What if my roommate thinks that all granola bars should be with the cereal, oatmeal and other breakfast items? How would we reach a compromise?

This is hardly a problem in the digital world. If you upload digital pictures, your computer automatically captures the metadata and arranges them into categories based on the date, who uploaded them, and what type of camera was used. Then, if you upload the photos to Flickr, people can start adding tags to them and categorizing them in different ways. The computer then takes these different categories and creates relationships between the photos, thus making them easier to find.

The more information added in, the more useful it becomes. Personally, I love this concept of the ability of technology to make something useful out of what seems like an unsalvageable disaster.