Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Assignment: Paper Review

As per our assignment, here is a critique of Professor’s article entitled: " The New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework".

The article does a good job in presenting New Media from different perspective, i.e. technology, content, social effect, and business and industry applications. It is approachable and could be understood by both a novice and an "expert"/user. Here are some specific comments that came to mind that may be useful:

  • pg 6: "The Old vs. The New" table, specifically "Film-> Amateur videos on the web": true there are amateur videos on the web but there are also professional videos on the web, for example KPMG published its recruiting videos on their site as well as Youtube.
  • Would it be helpful to define modding and mashup? (depends on the target audience of the paper I guess)
  • Table III pg8-9, Timeline of New Media- Related Technologies, it may be good to include mobile technologies as well
  • pg 12"Technology has become the great equalizer" .. True but only if you have access to it.
  • Also on pg 12, the notion of creativity and user generated content, though this is not explicitly mentioned in the paper we discussed in class about the "80/20" rule where only a small percentage of the population actually produces the content and the rest consume it... one could counter-argue the "80/20" rule by pointing to platforms like Facebook and Myspace where an overwhelming amount of users are generating content every day.
  • pg 16 NASA is not only using SecondLife to collaborate with their employees but also with their project partners.
  • Questions (things I didn't understand):
    pg 14 "divergence of technology" - does this mean accessing Facebook, etc in different locations i.e home, work, train, etc ?

Overall, I thought this was a great paper that really conveyed the essence of New Media and accomplished its purpose of establishing a "framework for scholars and educators who wish to learn from and contribute to this field of study."

Thank you for sharing the paper with us Professor.

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