W5 Reading Reflection

What Gillmore described in this chapter is something basic, already wide spread and be taken as granted now – interactive communication.

In 2002, when I knew ohmynews.com successfully gathered enough votes and pushed Roh won the presidential election in South Korea, I was really impressed by the power of online community and that country’s super high internet usage. Most people used to read news from newspapers and TV news, when they found something that they have opinions about, they talk to family, friends or themselves. Now with the function of online forum, they can directly talk to the news editor, we can’t deny it is a big improvement, and it can really change the media’s ecosystem, no matter how many concerns there still are. Just like what Gillmore sai, ” In the digital communication era, the audience can be the part of the process, and they must be.”

ohmynews.com’s success reveals another issue about amateur journalism. Would the micropayment these amateurs get a problem? Maybe not for now. To have their own reports, writing and pictures to be seen by everybody is big enough, this job used to be done by a small amount of professionals, now everybody can do it as long as the news has its value, and it doesn’t really require professional trainings. Some people just want their effort to be seen, and that’s good enough for them. But if the news medias want better writings, better story tellers, they might still have to offer paychecks for the long run.

Personal blogs are everywhere now, there are numerous of political commends blogs online, and lots of them have stable numbers of pageviews each day. That doesn’t mean big media companies are safe from the interactive communication with their audience. Because of people’s habit. There are still people who wants to check daily news, they go to Washington Post.com or Seattle times.com first. Maybe people like that, will still check some other favorite web news blogs, but they still rely of the big brands more.

Since everybody, and anybody can run blogs now, one thing we need to consider about is the blog content’s standpoint. Is it fair? Can I trust it? (Unless the bias content is what I WANT.) I like the hyperlocal idea, and that is a way for communities to be agglomerated. The problem is, without much things going on, without deep reporting, community papers/ blogs would be tasteless and plain. How to make enough motivation for community members is a challenge.

Of course we still need professional journalists and photographers. No matter how many amateur reporters are there, we need pros to help to edit the incoming news, or even we need pros to be there for a more in-depth report. The news industry still need qualified professional to offer qualified news and pictures. But when it comes to natural disasters, interesting stuff at the street corners, someone’s dog saved a baby’s life under a truck, amateur’s service would be much handier. The co-exist of professional and amateur would enhance the journalism. There are just some rules that every news media should always follow, “No matter which tools and technologies we embrace, we must maintain core principle, including fairness, accuracy and thoroughness.“

Questions:

• From the case of Lawrence.com ( it shows the city that 20 year old resident knows, not the 50 year old resident knows), how to we cross blog’s age barrier? Or the old folks’ opinions will be ignored since they don’t get online that much (or not at all) ?
• As the gate keeper for news, how do mainstream medias filter the news/pictures from amateurs to make sure they are fair and true?
• How to re-educate journalism school faculties who has not adapted to the ideas of technology communication?

Week 4 Group3 Discussion Summary

How can internet technology/industry be explained from the viewpoints in The Victorian Internet?

• Even though the telegraph speed was fast to them in 1945, the internet speed is way faster. The question is, why people want everything to be faster? To save more time and get things done faster?
• Everything was going on after the invention of telegraph. and everything is still going on right now.
• We have the personal publishing ability now, which makes information spread much easier.
• We have even more to expect from technology now, we wish to have advanced-technologies, i.e, self0learning computers.
• information overload is still happening and still making anxieties.
• We are stepping into a “me-me-me world”, with personal blogs, people share their daily life things online and personal issues, i.e, someone’s dog, someone found a new Thai restaurant…,etc.
• We are both undershot customers ( when we need some certain products which is not there.) and overshot customer ( when what we have is too much for us. )

W4 Reading Reflection – Predictions

Dr. Bush sharply predicted the future in 1945, which is 62 years from today. All the ideas he mentioned in “As we may think” came true. He already saw the overshooting market, information overload, too much technology inventions and limited way to access them. As he mentioned, we live in the spider web of mental, we and technology were, and still are highly involved to each other, as we try to keep up with always-rolling technology, we should never forget something important, technology is/was still from humanity, people brings out these technologies to the world to meet needs, to solve problems, it’s people who keep the invention going and it should also be people who can access those inventions without barriers.

Just similar to Dr. Bush’s prediction, every incredible abilities we get from internet actually already happened before, how long ago? 150 years ago! Does history repeat itself? Sometimes it seems so. Moore’s prediction still works today, and it has been leading semiconductor’s development for more than 40 years.

There are people who can already see the break-down of Moore’s law, it’s been said it might meet it’s limit in next decade. Google is the one who doesn’t follow the law, it claims that keep chasing the speed and multifunction isn’t always a good thing, it means high-tech manufactures has to keep making better and cheaper products, and it would decrease the revenue to the manufactures, or, they have to sell double times of products than last year’s. Bill Gates also suggested that focus in the future should be “quality” instead of “quantity”.

Take a look of the mobile telephone market now, every cell phone is as small as a lady’s palm, each of them is multi tasked, also, the price of a same product would drop dramatically after a year(or less), it meets Moore’s law. So here we are back to Christensen’s theory, overshooting is occurring, the next step for technology industries is to think about customers needs, instead of keep pushing fancier products, they might need to focus on how to make customization possible.

Questions:

• How did the public respond to Bush’s prediction in 1945?
• If customization is the goal, how do we know it’s not also a block of innovation?

W3 Reading Reflection

I don’t think an iPhone/iPod can show us the amazing scene of great canyon, and I certainly would not want to see ABC’s “LOST” episodes from an iPhone or iPod screen. But they are both two very hot products in the market now, their screen are big among other blackberries and similar products, but they are still tiny screens compare with televisions, but again, they are very popular. So when Rheingold suggested that “no content beyond voice and music is going to be widely popular unless it works well with a tiny screen.”, he might have missed a group who loves chasing the high-end, fancy tech products, who doesn’t really mind the video quality on the small screen, this group enjoys the never-ending equipment competition and has the emotional biases toward updated technologies.

Meanwhile, I toally agree with Rheingold’s point 2 :”The advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population.” It responds to Christensen’s overshot customer theory. For instance, mobile companies offers a lot of different services to their customers, when a person get a cellphone, it comes with camara, game, internet, download, GPS, yellow book,…etc. Sometimes, those add-on are just way too much. I believe there are also lots of customers who just want a cellphone with the main and basic functions with a cheaper price. Customers like that, are not those big mainstream mobile companies core customers, which might create a chance for a disruptive innovation from the incumbent due to the resource they already attained. ( If they realize the hidden market of it and don’t cede it.)

Christensen pointed out the government’s role as a nonmarket factor player, it has the power to push the industry toward the hotbed and accelerate the growth. Here we can take a look of the 3G market of South Korea. eBay’s VP, Meg Whitman once praised that country opens the window of unlimited possibilities, it shows the mobile service’s bright future to the world. In South Korea, the mobile technology research center is funded by the government and local enterprises. The government plays a leading role in the mobile industry. It successfully launched “Mobile TV” and Digital Multimedia Broadcasting in Korea.

As for the U&G paradigm, it is a complicated way to say something very simple. What are people using the internet for? Instant gratification. I didn’t really realize this fact before, or I didn’t really sense it. Now I can see my online activities as a self-helping behavior. U&G explains motivations and continued use and is also very useful for industries seeking long term customership, brand loyalty, and market targeting.

Questions:

• How does government as a nonmarket player avoid making actions that try to protect industries but actually drag the acceleration?
• When being attacked by disruptive innovations, is buying the entrant a better option for the incumbents who doesn’t have the skill to acquire the disruptive innovation?

Journals related to my project idea.

Anonymous, Credits. (1998, November). Internet Business Advantage, 2(23), 8.  Retrieved October 10, 2007, from ProQuest Computing database. (Document ID: 36465912).I think the journal might help me because it talks about the price differences between online stores and real stores. It analyzes the advantages of pure on-line retailers (e-tailers) and hybrid retailers (multichannel retailers) . It’s a new letter called Internet Business Advantage; Louisville., from Dec 8, 1997 (Volume 3, Issue 16) – Nov 23, 1998 (Volume 2, Issue 23).

It’s a big journal, I will take a further look of it and try to get the information I need from it.