Wednesday 24 August 2011

Networked Citizens power and responsibility at work by Peter Bradwell & Richard Reeves

Orange said that :"recently,the "noise" about social networking and particularly its online elements such as Facebook and Bebo and business equivalents including LinkedIn have created an extra layer to the potential opportunities for connection.The use of technology has added more richness and enabled network to become truly global and fundamentally change business models."

In the journal also mention that" the last two decades have seen a shift away towards service and knowledge-based work.*Knowledge-based services grew 177 per cent between 1995 and 2005, compared with 52 per cent for non-knowledge-based services.Between 1996 and 2006 employment in knowledge-intensive services in the UK increased from 37 per cent of all jobs to 43 per cent."

*Knowledge-based services comes from a fuller recognition of the role of knowledge and technology in economic growth.Knowledge, as embodied in human beings (as "human capital") and in technology, has always been central to economic development.

Economic nowadays are more dependent on the production,distribution and use of knowledge than before. Output and employment are expanding faster in high-technology industries, such as computer,electronics and aerospace.However, many interactions, both economic and social, involve network relationships.Many specifics of the network structure are important in determining the outcome, for example, the exchange of information. 

Modern economic growth theory also used to prove the specialization has increased as in the journal mention that modern economic growth theory is the vital role that technological progress and knowledge play in generating long-term growth.In the other words, human capital contributes increasingly to corporate and national performance. Knowledge can raise the returns on investment, which can in turn contribute to the accumulation of knowledge.It does this by stimulating more efficient methods of production organization as well as new and improved products and services.There is thus the possibility of sustained increases in investment which can lead to continuous rises in a country's growth rate.



Due to the flourishing of the network, the traditional businesses and organization tend to change their management and follow up the trend as network had become one popular media and the most highest usability for the people nowadays.Coase(1937) offers a framework that he attempted to explain why organizations exist. Williamson(1975) built on this theory and developed the current framework for understanding the rule of TCE in organizations.The premise on the individuals , in an imperfect market,will utilize hierarchy rather than the market to reduce the friction of exchange,which can better be described as transaction costs.We just need to understand the network logic changes the relationship and it can affects the people across the worlds with given large impact for co-workers.


According to Paul Worthington, in becoming a network citizen, there are three areas that will become critical:
1.Creating value by increasing and strengthening the connections between the nodes in the network.

Within the new network environments, it appears that strengthening the connections sit atop a foundation of mutual exchange.
For example: Starbucks asking customers to help them with incremental quality improvements through mystarbucksidea.com who use social channels to promote content created for the customers. 
Here is the mutual exchange of content between brand owner and brand consumer appears to both strengthen connections and increase the number of nodes on the network.



2.Creating value by contributing to the issues that people naturally build community around.

Brand think that community will be formed by their customers around them. Instead,community appears to form more densely around peoples issues of interest.
For example: rather than a community forming around Tylenol,you're much more likely to find one forming around a related issue such as acute back pain.
In this environment, brands have a tremendous opportunity to fit within the network and enable people's interest in the issue. In the case of Tylenol and acute back pain, they could  strengthen the network though providing a combination of established and emerging thought leadership on back pain and pain management.



3. Creating value by abiding by the unwritten rules of the network and being generous with its other members

Every environment within the new networks have different unwritten rules. 
For example: You don't want brands spamming on your Facebook wall or you don't want they filling your Twitter feed with needless messages about the benefits of using their products.
Being generous and fitting within the unwritten rules of a flat network is a key aspect of Network Citizenship.Already for some brands, the boundaries between brand and customer are beginning to blur as customers increasingly participate in the activities of the brand itself, creating a real-tome relationship effect with the customers.



As conclusion,network citizen has the potential to create a new generation for the brands  in the 21st century as network citizen has the potential to create significant competitive advantage, where the strength of a brands network drive both loyalty and recommendation and creates an incredibly strong emotional barrier to switching and it can cause the economic for the particular businesses or organization grow along the long-term period.

Related link :



Tuesday 23 August 2011

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow

What is Cyberspace?


According to Rabab Jaffery said:
"Cyberspace" is a place to make connections with people far and wide, from places all over the world.The interactions and behaviors observed in this virtual world are yet another interesting aspect to delve into."


How the word "Cyberspace" coined?

The word "cyberspace" was coined by the science fiction author-William Gibson. When he sought a name to describe his vision of a global computer network,linking all people, machines and sources of information in the world, and through which one could move or "navigate" as through a virtual space.

The word "cyber" referring to the science of *cybernetic, as it derives from the Greek verb "Kubernao", which means " to steer" and which is the root of our present word " to govern"/It connotes both the idea of navigation through a space of electronic data, and of control which is achieved by manipulating those data.
For example: in one of his novels Gibson describes how someone, by entering cyberspace, could steer computer-controlled helicopters to a different target. Gibson's cyberspace is thus not a space of passive data,such as a libray: its communication channels connect to the real world.

Cybernetics defines as a science of information and communication, and cyberspace's substrate is precisely the joint network of all existing communication channels and information stores connecting people and machines.

In Gibson word's:
The word "space" connotes to 3 aspects which are:
1. A space has a virtually infinite extension, including many things that they can never be grasped all at once. This is a existing collections of electronic data, such as Internet.
2. It is a space that connotes the idea of free movement, of being able to visit a variety of states or places.
3.A space has some kind of a geometry, implying concepts such as distance,direction and dimension.
How cyberspace related to cyber communication?


Cyber communication is a mental process that occur during the communications that take place in cyberspace. Cyber communication overrules real life communication with some of its unique features: the ease of all-day access. the wide range and diversity of communications possible (all in one time), and the option of keeping one's identity anonymous are some of its attractions. A great advantages that interaction in cyberspace has is that it is unrestricted by a time frame, hence giving the time and opportunity to think and restructure thoughts before they are sent out as words.So, cyberspace becomes a great field for socialization and meeting people that are probably hard to come across in real life. 



Influences Cyber-communication on today's youth
  • Influences in the personal Domain
Positive
It provides opportunities for valued learning, responsibility, and independence.Students can learn to manage time and resources effectively, master the art of accessing and processing skills gained in a meaningful context and communicate this information clearly to the intended audience.Integrating the Internet with communication allows students to share personal perspectives,knowledge, and experiences and structure discussions for debate.

Negative 
Access to personal information. Just a press of a button, the personal information such as address,phone number even directions to someone's house can be find out.It is becoming increasingly hard to protect children from unsafe access to their personal information.


  • Influences in the Social Domain
Positive
Expanded the social circle.Youth are actively using Internet as an important form of social interaction.Young people find that online chat is an important form of communication and there is no longer restraint on the limitation of geographic locations.Cyber communication helps children who might not to confident to communicate to do so quite well over the Internet.

Negative

Jokes for a rest:
A father sitting in front the computer and using Facebook sending a message to his son
My dear son, Ken,
Long time no see, how are you recently?
Daddy and Mummy miss you so much.
and your sister already grow taller and taller.
For concern, please don't online everyday.
You must have enough sports, or if you are free.....
Please shut down your computer,
and come downstairs and have dinner with us, is it ok with it?


So, this is the cons of cyber communication as less direct human contact thus social isolation for adolescents and the impact on family relations .Besides that, there are no repercussions personally and causes cyber-bullying,cyber-stalking,cyber-harassment conversations,or"flaming", a public personal attack, where people demonstrate verbal aggression.



  • Influences in the Emotional Domain
Positive
Used as a vehicle for youth to express themselves. Many students access healthy resources like suicide hot-lines, support groups, information on medical conditions and contact with appropriate organizations. This interaction helps to give them a support system outside of their immediate environment to assist in dealing with emotional issues.

Negative
The ability of finding resources regarding the emotional domain can be harmful.There are hemlock(suicide) societies online.There is information on how to build bombs, self-mutilate,be sexually active.participate in drug use and many other illegal and illicit activities .(Payne,2006) Children expose to these unhealthy emotional ideas and outlets that they otherwise would not be aware of until a more mature age normally.


In the article by John Perry Barlow,

It said that Cyberspace is a space that have no elected government and sovereignty.This space is building by naturally independent and it won't exist any tyrannies and  government derive. This cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of the communications.I like this sentences he describe for the freedom in cyberspace :" Cyberspace is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live". It means that they have no sovereignty and influences the freedom of speech , writing and thinking and it is a precincts for people to share their perspective , knowledge ,experiences and structure discussions of debate. In the cyberspace world, people can express his or her beliefs , no matter how singular,without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

As conclusion, I think that the author shouldn't be so subjective as the cyberspace without rules and regulation will create many social problems too. Everything has it goods and bad , just in what angle we view on the thing.Cyberspace with freedom of speech can let people express and sharing their mind or thought freely but there are some bad thinking people will use the advantages to do some illegal activities. If the future generation influence by them, there will create a big and unsolvable problem for the society. So, we should smart use for the freedom resources that provide by the cyberspace.


Related link:

Barlow, J. P. (1996, February 8th). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace 

Heylighen, F. ( 1994, October 17). Cyberspace 

JAFFERY, R. (2009, January 19th). Psychology of Cyber Communication. Retrieved August 23th, 2011, from Islamic Insights: 

Marie A. Wakefield, M. a. (2008). The Impact of Cyber-Communication on Today's Youth.

Saturday 20 August 2011

The nature of network

What is network?
Network is a concrete pattern of relationships among entities in a social space. Network can differentiate in formal or informal ways." Formal network" contractual relationships among organizations such as strategic alliances,buyer-supplier contracts, and joint ventures. However, "Informal network" is the inter-organizational relationships flow through people, for example, director interlocks, employee mobility, social networks that cross organizational boundaries.

According to the article, the digital media in the network builds an integrated environment based on the flows of information.However, the elements that build the environments aren't the atoms of the nature like soil,houses or any other but the flows of the information  produces by and processed through media as information use to communicate among people, to control processes across time and distances,to check and re-evaluate existing information,and to produce more new information that can arise the nodes.
I agree to  information in the network use to communicate with the peoples in the world as people nowadays use social networking service to communicate among people such as share interests and activities through the network.Besides that, social networking sites allow users to share ideas,activities, interests and their personal status within their individual network.
In the article, there are four basic dimensions form the information ecology:
1. Interdependence  

Information is not objective data, however,information is the relation which arises within the environment,and it is the difference that makes difference.
2.Change

In the article said that a bridge does not simply couple two independent village across a river but it creates a new city.I totally agree with this it is like take the useless or old elements that will effect the progression and create a new flow in the way of adding in new element which can change the nodes become different so that the nodes can stand up among others to let the nodes grow.The flows of information are infinitely malleable.

 3.Time-boundaries 

In the article said that in an environment where information flows very quickly, at the speed of light thorough computer networks, and the new interrelation are born as fast as old connections die time is a supreme factor. As i am a mass communication student, i had learned that the punctuality is very important to us as time is money. In the mass communication like journalism, they need to fight with the time and get the most interesting and fresh news to met the closing time of that day. Due to the reason we are media student, so we need to get the new update information in different fields to improve our knowledge to keep us away from eliminate from the world.




4.differentiation

The information help nodes survive as long as they can.The different of information and not exist similarity with others to make them stand out among others,so, add more features to make it unique.I agree with the differentiation is the reduction of complexity as if the new connections establish, it will not mix with the old connection and it won't continue expand from the old connection to make the old connection become complex and make people confuse. So, differentiation is very important to some specific area.




As conclusion, to keep up in the time and fulfill the users need, the network or nodes should be keep changing to made the idea fresh and attracting enough to draw the users attention, or else it will be forgotten by the users.

Friday 12 August 2011

Network Society by Manuel Castells

Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society by Manuel Castells state that :"the network society is the social structure characteristic of the information age, as tentatively identified by empirical,cross-cultural investigation.The social structures are organized around the relationships of the production or consumption, power, and experience, whose spatio-temporal configurations constitute cultures."


I know that the network society sprang up like mushrooms and expands in the global with a short period of time and it had influenced most of us nowadays after the hit of social networking programming.In the journal state that " networks know no boundaries.If there is a material communication infrastructure (such as the internet or an air transportation network) societies become interconnected throughout the world on the basis of multidimensional networks". This is the reason i said that the network society grew and expand very fast in the global.

The reason i had understand in the journal as the way the network society can grew and expand fast like the mushrooms are because the structure and the forms of the organization. With a good and planned structure, the organization can co-operate with the network in extreme saturation. Nowadays,many business organization 
use network to expand their business to let them more globalization.

Besides that, the internet also shown as an important medium in the networking society as internet had offered  using the forms of video, radio, print media, music and also video games spread all the information through all the communication medium. So, all the information will be boundaries and share to the world.The huge power of the networking can be seen in these way.

Network is a very powerful programming that is not easy can be change because there had been form in a structure that cannot be separate with our life.Network can change the knowledge of the person and making effective communication among each other. It can also decided the successful path of the company or organization in the way of creating awareness through the globalization network.So, the network are very useful tool and it has already been indispensable part in our society.