Week Two: Online Communities vs. Online Dating Sites

Week two has been all about online dating and online communities. At first glance you would think these two were the same; that is what I thought at first as well. However, these two are completely different. Was I found most interesting about this topic was that it was so hard for me to understand and come to term with the fact that I had always thought the two coincided. I’m sure I am not the only one who thought this as well.
As much as I just wanted to agree with everyone on the topic at hand I had to look around the internet myself and see if I could figure out if I could find other articles about it that I could learn more from. I decided that to learn more about the genre at hand I needed to look around on my own; this is also going to help in my knowledge and ability to write a little more clearly about my topic. Even after talking to the students in class about how they saw that these two genres could be so different when they were both used online and used to meet people I still felt like I was betraying my own feelings on the topic by just saying “OK since everyone agrees that these two topics are different I will just believe it as well.” I started to ask more questions and go in depth with my discussion posts to ask why everyone thought these topics were not as similar as I had thought. According to a book I found online titled “Psychological aspects of cyberspace: theory, research, applications by Azy Barak online dating sites and online communities are far from similar. I decided to look up more sites and more information online on my own to see if I could find the connection elsewhere.
An online community is everything I had thought it was before; social networking sites like Facebook, chat rooms, games, and much more except without the online dating sites. Online dating sites have a completely different goal than online communities according to the book by Azy Barak. According to this author online dating sites have a different objective when they use these sites as opposed to sites like Facebook. Someone using a dating site would use this to meet new people, connect, and continue to extend relationships offline. Online community sites like Facebook use the site to connect with people that they already know and don’t usually establish offline relationships with each other.
Beginning to read new articles and searching the web myself was really helpful for my learning process of this topic. I struggled trying to understand how two things I had always thought were pretty much the same thing could be so easy for everyone else to understand how different they really art. Online dating sites and online communities are both online; however, they are very different indeed. As much as I just wanted to believe what everyone in class was telling me was the truth, I needed to search and find out for myself and I think that is a very good lesson that I learned this week.

Week One: Technologies and their Eras

This week has been all about technology. Some of the most interesting aspects this week were the conversations I had with classmates about how far technology is going to go. Some people stated that they can see our generation being the "old" people, someday that have no idea what is going on in the world of technology. That is so true. Another aspect I found extremely interesting about the reading this week was the Facebook reading that we did. I got me thinking a lot about the younger generation and how they are dealing with Facebook, things they do not know about Facebook, and things they should be looking out for. 

From generation to generation, people are learning more and more, and today, although we may think that our generation is the most technology, it is more than likely the generation behind us that is going to bypass us in the next couple of years. Does that mean that everything we have learned throughout college is going to be outdated in the next couple of years? Unfortunately that is the case most of the time. Things we learn in college will more than likely be out of date in the next 5 years. Following up with the Facebook reading, I believe it is mind boggling to think that there are so many children on Facebook and other social media sites that become victims of online predators. This is a big issue right now that leads to the question, should Facebook and other social media sites be shut down, or should they just be monitored and have a age limit to even be able to log in? Would the age limit even work? There are too many sad stories about people giving out their numbers and meeting up with people they met online. I had asked the question in my post yesterday; “Do you think people could live without Facebook?” because I know a few of my friends who are unusually obsessed with the site and got a really interesting answer. Joel Steichen said “I think that we would all survive without Facebook, but I would be very interested to see if and what new platform would be constructed to fill that niche had Facebook not been created.” This brings up a very good question. Would Facebook’s idea drop off the planet? Would we need something like this technology or would something else be created in its place?

Technology is all around us, whether we want to think about it or not. There is the older generation who kind of knows about technology and some that want nothing to do with it, there is our generation who thinks they are extremely technology savvy (growing up in that era), and there is the younger generation that is learning and could become the most technology savvy of us all in the next couple of years. What is the difference between this generations and how they relate to technology. Most of the older generation is trying to learn, some do not like the technology, like the ones who think it is a good idea to shut down sites like Facebook. There is our generation who grew up in the era of Facebook and all other technological sites. Then there is the younger generation; questionable, and waiting to see what the future holds.