Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Learning Log #6: Socializing Networks

I came across this website that listed the Top 10 Socializing Networks of 2009. It's unbelievable how many there really are. You think about the most popular ones like Facebook or Myspace, but there are ones for certain countries that are popular in those countries. I never realized how many there really are and how popular they have become in the last five years. It's crazy to think that ten years ago, people wouldn't have thought to communicate through a website, but only through e-mail or none-the-less the telephone which people think is ancient.

The top two socializing networks are Facebook and Myspace, but after that I have no idea what the networks are. I've never heard of them before. It makes me interested what they do, and it's weird that I think that because I do have a facebook and that's all I should need. There's even tons of Instant Messaging Programs, such as, AIM from AOL, MSN, Skype, OoVoo or Ichat. Why is there such a need for multiple socializing networks? Why are some better than others or why do people prefer ones over other ones? I guess depending on what their friends use is how people go. There are a lot of choices for people to choose from.

http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/

Learning Log #6: The Future of Interaction Design

The future of Interaction Design is growing fast than ever. It it crazy to think about how fast technology is developing. People do not even realize it. In the past 10 years, the internet has grown so much. People use socializing websites now to interact and converse with each other using websites, such as, Facebook and Twitter. These are new types of communication that people do not realize we are using because it becomes so common with us. We become engrossed in our portable electronic devices. Between cell phone, ipods, cameras, gps, portable dvd and tv players and many more devices, our technology has taken over on how we design things and live with these changes. The future is very unpredictable.

As for the future of design, I think instead of new socializing sites or advances in technology, there are always improvements. Inventions are re-inventions of something already made in a sense. In the book, it says that inventions of human-robot interaction will become more popular. This is a little frightening to be interacting with a robot from day to day. You see those movies that have futuristic qualities of the future where someone's house is a robot and in the end of the movie, it goes all wrong where the house is smarter than the person living in it. I kind of have that feeling that somehow that will happen. The term Semantic Web is web pages being read by machines or robots rather than humans. I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with this term. It's just covering the fact of how humans are inventing things for them to become more lazy. So the future of interaction design, is it just of cover-up for human laziness or is it improving society and the direction technology wants to go?