Blog Assignment 2

1. With which one of the network laws do you most agree? Why?
All of the network laws were obviously created by knowledgeable individuals and make sense.  However, Sarnoff's Law makes the most sense to me and is the easiest to understand.  With Sarnoff's Law, the value of the network is being measured through the number of people on it.  This applies to television and radio.  Therefore, the larger number of people that are viewing or listening to a program, the more valuable it is because it's more popular.

I also understood Metcalfe's Law but it had too many critiques.  We learned that Metcalfe's Law measures the number of possible cross-connections that grow as the number of computers in the network increases.  According to this law, the more connected people, the more valuable the network.  However, there has been critics that say this term "value" is not clearly defined.  In Sarnoff's Law, television and radio's worth can really only be measured by how many people view or listen to the program.  It makes sense that if few people are watching the show, it must not be as valued by the people.  But when it comes to telecommunications and the Metcalfe's Law, "value" could mean many different things.  This law also assumes that connections in the network are all equal when some connections could be weaker, making the network less valuable.

Lastly, Reed's Law focuses on social media (or web 2.0) and claims that the usefulness of a network increases exponentially with the size of the network.  This law focuses on how powerful social media is with the many interactions a person can encounter.  Apparently, in order to measure a network's usefulness, you should raise 2 to the "nth" power ("n" being the number of members). Though this is fairly simple to understand, I tend to get confused easily when it comes to math so I still feel that Sarnoff's Law is the simplest and makes the most sense.

2. How do you think people might get their information 5 years from now?
The way that our society and technology is moving, I feel that we will become even more of an Internet-based society.  Television shows are being streamed online using Hulu or Netflix, the radio is being listened to online using Pandora or Spotify, newspapers are being published online as well as magazines.  We are becoming an Internet-based society and in 5 years I believe most everything will be only found on the Internet.  That is where we will turn for information with laptops, cellphones, tablets, etc. being our gateway to this other world.  Due to the hectic world we live in, we will only turn to places on the web that give us information fast and to the point.  We will most likely turn to social media before we read an article from an online newspaper.

Why We Blog

People blog for many reasons: to feel like they have a voice, to think out their issues, to share their journey in life, and to give others advice.  I've honestly always been critical of blogs because I feel that a lot of the time bloggers are very self-involved.  They want their voice to be heard and some will post on Facebook about their blog, practically begging people to read it.  Sometimes it comes across as desperate and like people are recording too much of their lives, like what sandwich they ate that day.  Most people don't really care about all of the details of others' lives because everyone somewhat self-absorbed.  Yet, I'm here recording my thoughts on this blog being hypocritical, though this is for class.  The article, "Why We Blog" addresses these issues and helped me to understand that not all bloggers act this way.

A man, Don, mentioned in the article, utilized a blog to track the progress of his wife's illness and treatment.  This, to me, is something that should be recorded, especially for family members or friends who want to know what's going on and desire to help in some way without being an annoyance.  Evan, a graduate student, posted his comments on diseases and science education.  Though some might find his blog a hard read, they are intellectual responses that teach others of these issues while bringing to light some of his ideas that have stemmed from his research.  Both of these uses for blogs are definitely appropriate, but what about blogs that serve as "catharsis".

I enjoyed the quote from Max, mentioned in the article, that blogging "endorses [are] laziness and cowardice".  I guess that's why blogging as "catharsis" aggravates me.  We should not hide behind a screen to share our opinions, beliefs, ideas.  We should act on them and live out what we feel strongly about.  But this is just my take in my biased rant in my cathartic blog.

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