Lauren Shild

I found the first article, “Mediamorphosis” hard to follow because of the mass amount of expanding technology that was introduced.  After reading the article its clear that human interaction is the key and goal to many digital communication systems and is the very reason I also seek out the web and different media outlets.  The most interesting aspect of the article was the discussion of electricity and how pivotal this invention was to the still growing digital technology world.  Electricity allowed a collapse of “the physical and psychological barriers of time and distance that had always limited human interactions.”  With developments over time, the web allows individuals to “hyperlink” in which “users add new content, and new sites, by other users discovering the content and linking to it.”  This very statement rang true for my own personal interests.  Lately I have found myself subscribing to RSS feed for certain sites and taking a strong interest in Twitter and the sharing functionality.  Twitter has proven to me the ultimate collapse of a time barrier through their trending topics and almost immediate exchange of information.

The Web 2.0 article really expanded on the idea that individuals reach out as means of interacting.  What is also fascinating is the idea of a web democracy in the sense that people can choose what to look at and how to filter the information they are receiving.  I discovered that Web 2.0 allows for good and news-breaking topics to surface to the top while allowing mass opinion and commentary for the public.  It’s useful and quite interesting to look at the web as a social aspect with a form of “collaborative learning”.  I find that I enjoy wikipedia and the free range for individuals to share information rather than visiting a site with straight forward, drowning facts.

The last piece of reading regarding the top tips of writing struck right at home for all the questions I had surrounding blogging and virtually writing your personal diary on an open forum.  It makes sense that one should not take themselves too seriously and I liked the idea of remembering that most people dont have the time to read your blog and most likely will never come across it!  It seems more productive to write for yourself and for your own passions.

• Hyperlinking stands as the foundation of the web.  In what ways do you personally add to web content?
• After studying the transformation from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, in what ways do you think the live web will shift/expand in the future?