Gazing into Future

Human beings have never stopped their explorations and speculations about the future world. And that’s the very reason why the technoledge kept developing rapidly. However, we still can get a few glances at the way the future might look like. In my opinion, with the popularity of smart phones, people’s life in the future will be tightly linked to mobile phones.

About 200 years ago, it was hard or impossible for people lived in that time to imagine that they could speak to each other through something called receivers and electric wires 100 years later. While, for the people lived in the telephone era, it was impossible for them, even Bell himself, to imagine that the telephone could be made into a hand-size, portable mobile phone. The more amazing thing is that the smart phone today can be used to have video chat between the users. We have reason to believe that what the mobile phone might become in future will be far away beyond our imagination. Now, the mobile phones can be used as mini laptops to some degree, actually, the functions of today’s smart phones are more than we can imagine. It is reported that by installing certain software in your iphone, it is easy for you to control your car from a distance. Isn’t it amazing? With a smart phone in hand, we can see, hear and talk to our friends and families whenever and whenever we are. It becomes possible that we read news, novels; watch movies, videos and listen to music all in one mobile phone. I think I don’t have to list all the wonderful functions mobile phones have; in fact, there are too many things that mobile phones can do that it is hard to list them all. Life becomes much more convenient and easier with the help of mobile phones. For example, when I first arrived in Melbourne, I wanted to explore this beautiful city by myself. With my iphone, I can locate my current position through the Google map, and therefore, find out the public transportation that suits me, and have a look at the famous restaurants around me. Even though I have never been to Melbourne before, it is still very easy for me to find out all the fantastic scenic spots and the suitable route for me.

(understqding smartphone consumers)

Just as Christel Quek said, mobile is the future and will be the cornerstone of all our activities in the future. (Christel Quek, The Future of Social Media Relevance – Mobile, Niche, Meaning? viewed May 14, 2012) in the future, people will be always moving on, and all the efforts people has done so far is to make people’s daily life easy and comfortable. To live a simple life, we have to use the smart and multi-purpose goods. Why bother to buy some other electronic goods when one mobile phone can do all the work? There is a report about the situation of the using of mobile phones in China. Following are some statistics: about 66% of Chinese internet users access via mobile phones; there are 879,000,000 mobile phone subscribers in China; 70% of Chinese people say they cannot live without their mobile phones. (http://www.slideshare.net/eskimon) From the situation of Chinese users of mobile phone we can say that mobile phones in people’s life all around the world have an irreplaceable position and the role they play in people’s daily life will be more and more important.

The purpose of social media is to give users a platform to interact with each other. While mobile phones can meet almost all the needs people have. You can do all sorts of communication through your phone—make phone calls, send texts, and as long as you get access to the internet through your mobile phone, you are having a mini laptop with you.

The mobile phone is comprehensive equipment. It can meet most of people’s needs. Whether it’s communication, entertainment or even doing work, everything can be done through one Smartphone. Because of the functions mobile phones have and its’ convenience, mobile phones will be the major social media in the future.

Not satisfied with your current life? Try your second life!

   Isn’t it amazing that you can design your life and choose your age, your appearance, and your job as you like? That may sound crazy to some people, but the truth is that everyone can enjoy such life through the online game—second life. From my perspective, the second life is a great idea and it makes the best use of the internet and social media.

     

      Second life is an online virtual world designed by Linden lab. Till 2011, the online game has about one million active users. The users are called residents and they can design their own images, called avatars, which can be children or adult no matter how old the user really is. The reason why the game is called second life is that the users can choose their jobs, make money, travel around, and even get married in the game. Almost all the things people might do in the real world are able to be done in the game and the life in the game is no different to the real life. Just as the term media equation, put up by Byton Reeves and Clifford Nass, indicates that media experiences equal real-life experience. (Meadows, M. S. 2008, I, Avatar: the culture and consequences of having a second life)

I think the game is great because it offers people a platform to escape from the pressure in the real world for a moment and chill out for a bit. In the second life, residents can hang around, get involved into the discussion about the topics that they are interested in or realize their dreams that they cannot achieve in the real world. Just like the name of the game, the users have their second life from the game, which is as real as their first life. The most important thing I think about Second Life is that users can experience their life all over again and make up for the losses in their first life.

Meanwhile, second life can practice the users’ creativity. Second life is not all about playing or dating, if residents want to enjoy their second life, they also have to work hard to get money, called Linden dollar. The work in the second life is not easier than that in the real world. If you want to make millions of Linden dollars, you have to be very creative; otherwise, all you can do is those less skill required but very hard work. For example, the first vitual millionaire, Anshe Chung (a Chinese player) became the wealthiest user in second life by building her own online business of selling virtual lands, buildings and other items. She creatively practices the theory and success of real estate into the virtual game and thus achieves great success.

However, just like all the online games, second life is a virtual game after all. It is very dangerous for the users to get addicted to it. What’s worse, since the second life is so real, some users say sometimes they might confuse the real world with it. There are some people who even spend more than 10 hours per day online and might ignore their real life. Even though people can find love, earn money in the second life, and everything in the game seems as same as what is in the real world, there is a difference between the real world and the virtual world and life in the virtual world can never be replaced by the virtual world. One worry is that as virtual reality environments become much higher quality and immersive, they will become attractive to those wishing to escape real life. (Warren Bennett, Advantages & Disadvantages of virtual reality)

All in all, I still think second life is a great idea, for it creates a virtual world for people to realize their dreams, experience a different life and relax themselves. It is a new form of social media for people to make friends and enjoy social life. On the other hand, I think the users should view the game objectively, it is a virtual game after all, and cannot be viewed as a replacement to the real world.

Mobile Phone—Friend or Manipulator?

    It is true that all of my friends have their own mobile phones; one of them even said that she cannot live without her mobile phone and that mobile phone is her best and most reliable friend. There is no doubt that mobile phones have made our lives much more interesting and easier, however, instead of owning their phones, some people let their phones “own” them and manipulate their life. Should we totally rely on our phones?

I think that my life is filled up with my mobile phone. In the morning, I am waked up by my mobile phone; during the day, I check my emails through my mobile phone, read about news on my phone and chat with my friends through my mobile phone; I always use my mobile phone when I am taking the train or bus to kill the time; the last thing I will do before going to bed is check my phone for texts or emails. Mobile phone has been part of my life and it is the part that I cannot live without. In today’s society, mobile phone was such a common facility among people’s daily life. The reason why I say that I cannot live out with my phone is that I even cannot remember the phone number of my best friends, actually, the only number I can remember without checking my phone is my dad’s. Since I can save all the contact details in my phone, remembering the numbers has never bothered me, but occasionally I am still a little worried that what can I do if there is something dangerous happened and I cannot use my mobile phone, and even if I have some mobile phone available, there is still few people i can turn to because I cannot remember even one of my friends’ numbers.

Mobile phones today are not luxurious items that only the wealthy or powerful people can have. The number of children who are using mobile phones today is increasing rapidly.. As Ling reports for Norway, only 3 percent of 13 years old had cell phones in 1997, while this percentage has risen to 50% in Nov 1999 and to over 80% in 2001.For 16 years old, the percentage was less than 20 in 1997, but about 80% in 1999 and almost 100% in 2001. (Ling 2001a: 7).

Actually, none of my friends has no mobile phone. Some of the people I know have already seen their phones as a symbol of themselves; they will spend a lot of time and energy on decorating their phones and they seem like will never get tired of changing the wallpaper of their phones. Mobile phone today can be seen as a mini-computer. Taking photos, playing games, having video-chat, and watching movies…it seems like mobile phones today can been seen as mini computers and is kind of personal e-secretary. But the problem is that are we really the master of our phones, can we control our use of our phones?

It seems like we use our phones every day, but the fact is that our phones have all the information we need--we have to turn to our phones to check our daily schedule, find out somebody’s phone number and the most basic function of our mobile phones is also the most important that we cannot live without, that is to contact with other people. Sometimes, the mobile phone can be very distractive to people. I was too addicted in playing games on my mobile phone one day and forgot to get off at my station, instead of missing one stop, I messed 4 stops in total. As a result, I had to walk back to home in dark for almost 30 minutes.

Not only adults have their mobile phones, most of teenagers have their mobile phones at a more and more young age. Many parents want their children to have a mobile phone so that they can know what their children are doing whenever and wherever they are, meanwhile, in the parents’ mind, the mobile phone is a must in case their children run into some dangerous situations. However, things are not always like what people wish. Many a students are probably play games or text their friends on their phones in class, a lot of students are looking at their mobile phones instead of reading their text books or listening to their teacher. Mobile phones are not a contact tool to them, but an entertainment of life. In order to have the students keep their concentration on study, my high-school teachers in China asked students not to use mobile phone in school, in fact, we were not allowed to bring mobile phones to our high school. Anyone who against the rule and bring his or her mobile phone to school would receive very strict punishment, even had some really bad record in their resume.

Nothing is perfect, neither do mobile phones. We cannot deny the fact that mobile phones do bring us a lot of convenience, at the same time, the limitation of using mobile phones is very obvious, we should keep an eye on our use of mobile phones and don’t let our mobile phones manipulate our life.

 

(Cell phones mean safer hiking, but don't rely on it --An example of the strong power of mobile phones as well as their limited power. )

We Now Know MORE about Politics

In the past, politics seemed to be a very serious topic in many countries, especially in China. Almost all the politicians in China are admired and respected by the public. People have a sense of fear towards the politicians. However, the situation has changed a lot with the changing of society. Especially when the produsage era comes, an increasing number of people has the access to the internet—a rather free and personal platform to get involved into the outside world, thus, the politicians have to take the internet into consideration and cannot ignore the power of internet anymore. Not only some western countries like Australia or America, but also the typical eastern country, China, has seen a serious of change in the way Chinese politicians using social media. In my opinion, Chinese politicians are using the social media in a more wise and correct way.

In the past, Chinese politicians always gave people a mysterious impression. People read about them from the newspaper, and saw them through the TV news. The common people in China had few opportunities to have some face to face communication with the politicians. That is partly because the traditional social media in China, like newspaper and television, cannot offer the platform for the public to have close contact with the politicians. However, the appearance of internet in China gives Chinese politicians the possibility to have more contact and interaction with the Chinese citizens. Take the main Chinese politicians as an example, in 2008, Chinese chairman Hu Jintao had a video chat with Chinese netizen and in 2009, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao had another video chat with Chinese netizen. A report on BBC website (Chinese version) said that, “this kind of close-communication between state leaders and the civilians is very rare even in the western countries, and there is no other country in the world can be comparable to China in having such communications in less than one year.”

（Chinese chairman Hu Jintao is having the video chat with the Chinese netizens)

I have to say that social media now plays a very important role in China, especially the internet. The internet is not only a useful channel for the yong people in China to learn about the politics, but also a good tool for Chinese people to “supervise” Chinese politicians.

On the one hand, the Chinese young people learn a lot about the politics through the internet. Almost all of my classmates in China have read the Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address or seen the related video online. Since the internet is very popular among Chinese young adults, more and more Chinese young adults use the internet to learn about current affairs both at home and aboard.  This is good for both the Chinese politicians and the young adults. The Chinese politicians can use the internet to reach a wider audience, especially listen to the young citizens, and the young people in China can know what their government is doing and build up their sense of being the master of the country by being involved into the politics. For example, Zhou Jiugeng, one of the main politicians in Nan Jing, was found of receiving bribes by Chinese netizens and then was justly punished for his crimes.

On the other hand, since most people in China has the access to the internet whenever and wherever they are, the information can be spread very quickly online. As long as someone posts a message about some deeds of the government on the internet, the whole nation has the possibility to see it. Therefore, the politicians have to be very careful about what they have said and done. The internet, to some degree, can be used as a powerful tool to censor the government.

As long as I see, the relationship between politics and social media is hard to express. The social media can be used as a tool to censorship the citizen and can also be used as a channel for the citizen to learn about the whole world and in this way urge the politicians to keep the transparency of their work and make more effort in doing their work well. In this way, the social media is been used in a positive way to urge the politicians to behave well and make contributions to the nation.

(Social Networking Is Revolutionizing Politics--ABC news)