New media continues to evolve and expand, and it has become a
way of daily living for many people because of its power to influence, innovate
and change civilization, especially since it stretches into many parts of our
life from connecting with family, creating businesses and even interacting with
the government. Furthermore, new media also affects every part of society from
how we buy products and services, meet new people, create communities, stay
connected, fall in love and date, work, find jobs and even how we watch movies,
listen to music and read books and how we consume information on a daily bases
to name a few benefits. However, even though new media offers many positive advantages,
there is still a real and dangerous dark side that has also developed such as scams,
fraud, money-laundering, cyberbullying, cyberstalking, isolation, and it has even
caused a fracture within society that is known as the digital divide, to name a
few undesirable parts that have caused people to question the benefits of new
media technological on society as a whole. Throughout our class, we had covered
many diverse topics concerning new media both positive aspects and negatives and
we even had the chance to interact with the many tools and technology that make
up new media in order to get a better grasp on how the current technology works.
With that, even though new media is here to stay for the foreseeable future, I
believe that it offers more benefit to society in general and because of this,
modern forms of new media will also continue to be developed and created that will further help society evolve in positive ways and these different tools will be designed to combat
the negative segments.
Because of this, I envision that new
media will also begin to tackle a major issue and flaw which currently exists
and that is known as ‘information overload.’ This new tool I visualize will be
able to streamline all the information we are bombarded with every day by restructuring
the information into easier and more manageable bite sizes. However, this won’t
be enough because this new technology will also have to be able to filter out fake
or junk information, websites, and news. How this new media could look like is a
combination of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), twitter, blog layout and google
search engine technology blended together. This new media will merge these different kinds
of current technology together and cut out all the unnecessary information that
sometimes dilutes the messages, reports, news, communication or data we receive by only collecting information from
reputable websites and news outlets. This will be done by having websites and
news outlets registering and signing a code of Principles, Responsibility, Integrity,
Morals, and Ethics (PRIME) with an information database collection agency who would put it into a depositary and all the information that pass the screening process would be provided with a seal of authenticity that states
all the information had been peer-reviewed by a select committee of independent
peer members and crosschecked against an Artificial Intelligent (AI) system
that would further screen out any unknown, false reports or debunk fake
information or news (almost like what rotten tomatoes do for movies but instead for online content). All information that isn’t given the seal of approval
will be put on a separate section that will indicate that it had not been
reviewed, authenticated or approved yet readers can still access the content but are warn to proceed
with caution. This will help cut down drastically the amount of information people
receive during any given day. But also, the new media tool will have to further
take the information and set them up into short bites that users can easily access
through a website or app called ‘Wob’ which is short for ‘Word Bites’ and that integrates search engine technology like Google or Yahoo for quick and easy location of relevant only information. Users will be
able to custom create what information they want to see or what information recommendations
they want to receive and like yelp, the information would have a star rating system to indicate the relevance or importance of the information, how useful people find it and also if its a topic that is trending. Additionally, users will also be able to post comments and share the information with only registered
users who also want to receive the same information and users can further verify that the information
is accurate through civilian journalism or independent research and they can add the information (similar to Wiki) and users can even flag, remove the false information or report anything that seems suspicious so it can be taken down by the moderator.
All the gathered information will be set in a timeline page layout with the most recent and current being placed first and on top (like a blog post). But the posted information will only consist of the article title and a one-sentence outline of the information
with a link embedded into the text so users can directly access more of the information and decide if they want to further
read or ignore the information and avoid being bogged down with too much text
all at ones and they can easily remove anything that doesn't interest them from their feed. The information will also be placed on a calendar chart so that
anyone can go to any particular date on the calendar to see all the information
that was posted for that particular day or year and they can flag and save the information to read it at another time but also anyone else can view the information calendar. Subsequently, the site will allow users to create small communities where they can discuss or debate the topic or information in a safe and secure environment free from harassment, cyberbullying or people posting fake information (like a book club). This will help dramatically cut down on the information clutter and ensure that the information is factually checked. There also won't be any kind of advertisement or popups since it will be a paid subscription similar to how the NewYork Times is setup where they offer a limited amount of free content per month but if you subscribe you can read unlimited amounts of articles. Finally, the information can also be converted into audio, where the information is converted from text to podcast audio formate.
As we have seen new media is the rebirth of what is considered
old media and it has in essence improved what already currently exists by
making it more widespread and easier to use and access through technology. My
new media idea also falls within these parameters by infusing current new media
together to create something different and new but more functional and user-friendly
that can help manage, reorganize, simplify and streamline the information overload
we are facing today.
