Broadening our Horizons

For the past two weeks we listened to presentations given by our classmates. I was surprised that everyone chose a different topic. That just shows how much is involved in the seemingly simple phrase: "Media Convergence". All of the presentations were very insightful and taught me something that I didn't already know.

One of the main presentations that sticks out in my mind was the presentation done on Skype. To be dead honest I have never used Skype, never seen it used, never heard about any of my friends or family using it. I had no idea it was such a widely used technology, and I certainly didn't know that it was free. It was also interesting to learn about all the possible consequences of using Skype. For instance, potentially someone could hack into the system and listen to your conversations, or read all of your instant messages which are automatically stored unless you change the settings. Another thing that I learned was that you can have multiple users on at the same time, I believe it was up to 25! I was under the impression that it was just for two people to talk one-to-one. I can see how this technology would be very beneficial for companies to use for conference calls. Another main benefit that she talked about was the fact that Skype has the ability to connect people who are far away from each other. The example she used in her presentation was a soldier overseas watching his baby be born through the use of Skype. It's so amazing that he was able to do that, and technology made it all possible.

Another one of the presentations that really stuck out to me was the presentation about terrorists using the Internet, entitled "Terror on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube". This was a very interesting topic, and also a frightening one. This presentation discussed the fact that terrorists are using social networking sites to send information to each other about planned attacks and even information about how to build bombs. Terrorists are also using this technology to recruit new members, and to spread the word about their cause in hopes to gain sympathizers. This class really focuses on all the ways that technology is improving our lives and the many positive uses for it. It was valuable for us to hear about the fact that not all uses of technology are positive. As users of technology we must be responsible, and also aware of what we are encountering. If we see something on the Internet that shouldn't be there (i.e. instructions on how to build a bomb) we need to report it. Hopefully the efforts of our government will continue to pay off, and they are keeping a watchful eye on the Internet and these terrorists.

Overall I learned a lot from the presentations given in class, most of which I probably wouldn't have learned about otherwise. Technology is taking over and there are many consequences because of this, both negative and positive. Our class talked about a wide variety of these consequences, however, there are still a huge amount of topics out there that we didn't discuss. It really just showed me how much I have left to learn! A lot of the information was very helpful and applicable in my everyday life, so I'm glad that we did this project.