Topic 2 - Is email dead?

Lecture

This week's lecture was called Is Email Dead? We discussed certain disadvantages regarding email- like spam (junk email.) Most of the class had received some sort of email about penis enlargements, competition entries to win the new Apple iphone and the ever-popular Nigerian money scam where con artists take you for all you've got. We then looked at the results of the survey we took in class and discovered that 65.5% off people said email has it's place and that 0% of people never used email. We decided that email was indeed not dead and despite all the junk sent to us, email definitely has a huge impact on our lives. We also watched an excerpt from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show that discussed Internet bloggers and whether or not they were real journalists. While funny, it made a good point which also tied in with our readings for the week.

Readings

When people blog they can say whatever they like and can have an opinion on anything. They are there to inform the masses of people on the Internet yet they are not necessarily bound by the ethical journalistic laws that the people in the "real" media are. The readings questioned whether or not bloggers should be recognised for their work. In my opinion, I prefer it when people just say what they want, when they want, rather than have something manipulated by editors and government officials. You get the real news from the people on the street, experiencing the things they write about, rather than have someone on the sideline trying to give an objective viewpoint to please the powers that be. As long as no one is inciting hate or falsely accusing people, I say go for it.

Tutorial

After discussing all this, it seems only right that we would set up a blog of our own. We logged on to blogger.com and set up accounts. Each week I'll post a summary of my lectures and tutorials, for assessments purposes (I obviously don't want to fail!) but also it's just a really good way of organising your work (as well as feelings, ideas and opinions). It's quick, easy and painless and while the content of my blog may not be as riveting as those writing about politics or celebrity gossip, it serves it's purpose. I'm informing the masses of people on the Internet all about New Communication Technologies. :)