In Closing and Summation (for now)

From what I've learned this semester in the way of social media tools and how they enable people to exist in cyberspace, I've come to realize just how advanced we've become as a culture. I believe the culture that we belong to is the one that has regular access to the Internet and who uses it regularly for both personal and business purposes. For this class, we've had to use a few different web tools that I have never used before. I've come to realize their uses and limits, and think of better ways to use them. Going one step below the practical nature of the tools, we've learned a lot about the theory behind sharing information in the public domain and I've come to realize the difference between writing for an audience and publicly sharing my work. I feel like when your share your work with everybody and everybody can form their own opinions on your opinions, then there is a dilution in the quality of critique of the work. Therefore, there is a certain responsibility that is waived once your work hits the public forums. Why should the author who pens the information be subjected to a harsher scrutiny than the people who read and comment on it? That is the nature of information once it hits the Internet: if the work is not specialized and appeals to the masses, then it should be shared in a public domain, but since it is going to be analyzed every-which-way, there ceases to be a reason for why it should be stripped of any non-confirmed reporting/non-fact-based opinion. The future of internet media is clearly publish-then-edit due to the immense potential of thought evolution that this process creates.

Now, for the specific things that I now know how to negotiate better due to this course:

**I have had much experience writing on Blogspot in the past as well as using MySpace, Facebook, etc, but now I'm beginning to see the significance of using Netvibes as a way to congregate my material on one page. I feel like we could have used Netvibes a bit more, perhaps by setting up our own pages like we did for the first Wiki assignment. I think that would also give a nice glimpse into the personalities of our peers.

**Aside from Wikipedia, I had never used a Wiki before. I did not realize how much went into the creation and development of such an immense (yet seemingly simple) project. I think where Wikipedia succeeds, our Shirky project failed a little bit. Wikipedia is dependent on people caring about the subject matter and wanting to put a stamp on the online publishing world. I think if the Shirky project was a semester-long project where we were graded on the presentation of the pages (i.e. if we paid much more attention to content instead of mainly just the process), then it would have benefited us more in the long run. As part of the generation who will be spending much of their lives revolutionizing cyberspace content, I feel that a three-month-long project working together solely through an Internet-based venture will help us tremendously in practicing the organization and planning skills that will be required of us in the future and in our professions.

**I think an Advanced level of this course would be most intriguing. I would take it this summer even though I would already have graduated, and I do not think that I'm alone in this.

I'm glad that we were able to experiment writing blogs based on whatever issue we were interested in. I hope I adequately described the conflict between MLB (the owners) and the MLBPA (the players) in regards to the methods of attributing value to salary arbitration-eligible players. Players end up becoming prisoners of the teams because of the sharp decline their value takes when they are incorrectly awarded Type A status. I feel like there is an amalgamation of interests that should be discussed during the next CBA talks after the current agreement expires on Dec 11, 2011. I was able to develop the ideas that I set forth in this blog into a paper for my graduate Sociology course on Wealth Stratification, and I have since sent that paper to a number of people on several MLB teams, in hopes that I can land a baseball operations internship for the spring. This blog was the perfect medium to begin crafting my ideas because of the promise of visibility in the public domain. While I felt no reason to be accountable for my opinions, I did want to exhibit a certain level of accuracy in order to appear as knowledgeable as I believe I am. Writing for an audience but not limiting viewership surpassed any expectations for my writing and analytical skills - and isn't personal development a key component of a revolution?