Technology Has Gone Too Far

Second Life is a growing virtual world. It is popular amongst all types of people and businesses. I have never used Second Life, but I don't understand the drive to go on it. Why would you go online to socialize, or build a business, basically just live another life. Are people so dissatisfied with their own ability to breathe and move on their own that they have to sit at a computer and move an image around a screen to socialize? Yale University stated that they use Second Life as a virtual resource for creating new buildings on campus. This way they can see the schematics of the building without hiring an architect.
However, there are over a million active members on Second Life. All of them are probably not just online to see what a new structure will look like. What else is there to do on the site? Live the dream life you want?

If you are so dissatisfied with your own life, do something to change it. Don't create an alter ego on a virtual website. Is our world depending on technology too much and we will all become useless life forms?

Spend 4 Hours on Your Next Post

In Networking for People Who Hate Networking Penelope Trunk gives tips on how to network successfully. Her tips are extremely helpful, but seem a bit intense. She mentions how real bloggers spend around 4 hours on one blog post! That is most definitely excessive. There are much better things someone could be doing with their life than writing a couple of paragraphs on a blog. LinkedIn seems like a great way to network. Users can see which of their friends are connected to companies they are interested in working with and can network with them through their friends. It is a much simpler way of networking over the computer than blogging for 4 hours.

Stalker Phones

In 2002 Spiderman taught the world a powerful message: "with great power comes great responsibility." This message strongly applies with the technological advances today. Today we have the power to do pretty much anything. One thing we do is have GPS devices inside every phone. This is useful, but scary to many people who think their right to privacy is being taken away. NEWS FLASH: Homeland Security has better things to do than to stalk everyone in the US through their phones! These devices in our phones are created to make our lives easier, not the Federal Government's.

GPS in our cellphones allows people to figure out where they get lost while they are walking in a big city. They are made for the convenience of the everyday citizen so we don't have to carry twenty five devices with us at all times. Unless you actually have something to hide, don't worry about what the Government is doing with the GPS in your phone.

Is Our Blog Popular Yet?

10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging
What Conversational Marketing Is Not

I find it interesting that websites are telling corporations the truths and dos and don'ts about corporate blogging. Do corporations realize that blogs don't become popular overnight? They have to have the right connections (ie the right people reading them). In order to get their blog in the public eye, they must continuously blog. They must also connect with people and give them what they want while still leaving them hanging. Its the literary aspect that keeps people coming back.

My favorite 'harsh truth' from 10 Harsh Truths About Blogging is number 10. This one mentions that corporations should realize that competitors will look at their blogs. This one should almost not be said at all. It is inevitable that the competition will stalk a corporations blog to find out all the inside details about their new product. Every company does something along those lines. In order to use blogging in PR, a company needs to learn the rule of blogging and learn to accept that it will take sometime to get a following.

Is Technology Making Us Stupid?

Nobel Prize winner, Dora Lessing, made her prize winning speech about how technology has made humans stupid. She argues that

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.

This woman has grown up before the computer era and has definitely does not realize that people haven't become more stupid with technology, but just more dependent. We use technology to find the answers to all our problems. It is a much easier, more efficient method of running our lives. In this time in history, people are all worried about every second of the day. They are more strained and get less sleep because they need all 24 hours in the day to fill their busy lives. The internet makes people smarter because they have easier access to information.

The Controversies of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is an interesting idea. The website Wikipedia works off of it, but how popular of an idea is it? In The Myth of Crowdsourcing (http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/28/crowdsourcing-enterprise-innovation-technology-cio-network-jargonspy.html), the author mentions that Wikipedia isn't a true example of crowdsourcing because a "vast majority are the product of a motivated individual". Even still, since Wikipedia is open to the public to edit and update, it should still be considered an example of crowdsourcing. Most of the time in groups, there is one motivated individual that does a lot of the work, and this carries through into crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing is not too intense because it isn't efficient or smart for companies to open their networks to the rest of the world to updated their data. However, employees in firms that deal with encyclopedias and other reference works should watch out for crowdsourcing because sometimes, the people that know the most about a certain subject aren't the ones working for reference companies. In that case, crowdsourcing is definitely the best bet for sharing information.

Blog # 1- 1/18/2010

6 Myths about Informal Networks

This article mentioned a lot of myths and the realities of these myths. It brought forward an interesting point of view, but i disagree with some of the realities. The article said that people should be connected only when a strategic payoff is necessary. I think everyone should be connected, whether a payoff is necessary or not, because it improves efficiency and allows everyone access to all information about their company. It feeds into the myth that each employee knows everything about their company, which they dont. This will allow them to know more about their company.

Social Networking Analysis

Barry Wellman knows a lot about social networks. He does a great job of explaining what a social network is. He uses previous cases to explain the scientific facts about social networks. His article is mainly informative and really useful.