Sunday, April 24, 2011

New New Media

Out of all of the books we have read in class, New New Media is my favorite. Paul Levinson writes in a language we can all understand and uses cool, present day examples to get his points across. More than all that, this book does not bore us with the history of the computer, but gets into my favorite new media topic ever : Social Media!

Oneof my favorite parts of the book was the section in Chapter 2, entitled "Myspace Message From Stringer Bell of "The Wire." " This part was interesting to me because I know of the actor who plays Stringer Bell, Idris Elba. Levinson had simply wrote a review of Elba's character on a blog and then the actor requested to be his friend on MySpace, where they have started to have alot of interaction.

This interaction is what make social networking so innovative and cool. Where else can you communicate with a celebrity who you may never meet and tell him how awesome you think he or she is and get a response. Of course the phone is an option, but good luck in getting your celebrity idol's phone number. Fan mail was also a popular thing in the past, but how long did you have to wait for that generic response letter? With Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, you can be contacted instantly. However, with all of these methods its kind of impossible to verify you are talking to the actual person. Unless, you are as lucky as me and got to communicate with your favorite celebrity through a video. Through UStream, I was able to ask my favorite celebrity a question (through the chatroom) and he responded through a live video instantly and adressed me by name and everything. I loved it! This is why I can relate to Levinson posting the comment from Idris Elba in the upper corner of his blog. Its cool to be acknoledged by someone whose work you respect and would never ,usually, have an opportunity to meet or interact with.

2 comments:

  1. I totally agree that this is the most fun to read out of all of the books. It is easier to understand and Levinson has an interesting way of relating to the reader well.

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  2. Networking brings us to the idea of six degrees of separation, and online networking lets us move through a chain of connections faster and more efficiently, and in some instances, create more direct links to others than we had previously.

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