Blogs don't kill culture, bloggers kill culture!

After reading "Nobel Laureate Says The Internet Makes Us Dumb, We Say: Meh" and "The Digital Emperor Has No Clothes", I became somewhat disappointed.

According to Lessing, "we live in a fragmenting culture where people read nothing and know nothing of the world". Personally, I am offended and I disagree. Yes, I confess that I am one of those individuals who prefers anything digital over paper based because we waste nothing and gain more for our environment. However, I may be a bit obsessed with facebooking with my peers or following celebrities on twitter but that does not mean that's all I use the Internet for. Yes, my free-time activities include listening to music on Pandora and playing a few games on Facebook. But I am also a senior in college. Therefore, I use wikis, blogs and other means of social media to distribute and acquire information, as well as to market myself.

Additionally, I was offended that Lessing generalized all techno-savvy individuals. Yes, I do acknowledge that some individuals do nothing more than play games online, check email and listen to music. But there are those individuals that only use the Internet for reading the news while acquiring other valuable information. And then there are those like myself who uses the Internet for both academic and pleasure purposes.

I am not sure if any of my readers agree or disagree with me, but I have question for you...Do you agree with the statement "Blogs don't kill culture; bloggers kill culture"?

Crowdsourcing

For week 3, we will focus our attention on "YouTube - Jeff Howe - Crowdsourcing" and "The Myth of Crowdsourcing - Forbes.com".

Honestly, I must confess and say that if I were asked to define crowdsourcing I would have probably include the word crowd in my definition. However, I recently learned that "There is no crowd in crowdsourcing" from Dan Woods. It seems that many individuals like myself have a misconception of the term. They believe that crowdsourcing involves outsourcing work to a crowd. On the contrary, it involves outsourcing a problem to an online community, which could either be a small group of persons or a large number of people, who possess various forms of expertise. For example, Wikipedia can be considered as a good resource of crowdsourcing because articles are created, then corrected or improved by many different people.

Now that we understand the true meaning of crowdsourcing, I have a few questions for my readers. First, were you one of those individuals who misconceived what crowdsourcing meant and if you were, what did you think it meant?

Social Network Analysis

For week 2, I read the following articles: "The People Who Make Organizations Go - or Stop" and "Six Myths About Informal Networks - And How To Overcome Them".

I liked the first article because it gave an in-depth explanation of what social network analysis is all about, in terms of identifying the importance of the four common role players. To be honest, I learned quite a few things from this article because I thought that social networking was about building informal relationships without realizing its importance and its effect on its respective organizations.

In my opinion, I thought that the second article complemented the first. After understanding what social network analysis was, I felt that it was necessary to be aware of the myths that accompanied it. Out of the six myths that were discussed I found two of them very interesting. For instance, "Everyone should be connected to everyone else" and "How people fit into networks is a matter of personality (which can't be changed)". Once again, in my opinion if you are connected to the right people then there is no need to be connected to everyone else. But the most interesting thing I learned was that people fitted into networks based on a matter of intentional behaviors which can be influenced.

After reading these articles, Tricia's Thoughts recommends them for anyone who is interested in social networking. You'll learn how to conduct a social network analysis, identifying each role players and their importance, and how to overcome certain myths. I hoped you enjoyed reading Tricia's Thoughts and I look forward to seeing you again.

Trish's Introduction

Hi, my name is Patricia Wilburg. I am a senior at American University, majoring in Business Administration and Information Systems & Technology. I am a new blogger for my ITEC 335 Class at Kogod School of Business.

For the purpose of AU's academic integrity pledge: On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own.