While I was searching for the exigency for why Social Networking Sites are easily outdoing conventional physical communities?, I came a cross a video which, relatively, wasn’t that popular but it had an intriguing name ”The Power of Social Networking is Infinite”

I agreed with most of the scenes but intuitively I believed he was exaggerating.  Non the less this was a 2008 video,   so I thought I would check the impacts of the alleged “Power” that the author of the video believed in. I followed the same approach “Video for Video”. Most Videos were about the future characteristics of Social Networking Sites, some were about the history of it, I must say they were fascinating. I could not find an exact video that counter his argument so I thought I should first define the argument he’s making. The author believes that the more our technology in communication evolve the more it become influential, people use Social sites to express themselves or to  send a message, become famous, and other  exigencies, at the end he gives this feeling of threat that this power might be uncontrollable.

With more curiosity I re-looked at the argument with more of a rhetorical approach; who’s the attended audience? what agencies will be used to address them? how innovation could be involved in this “Conspiracy by Corporations”?. On the audience basis there millions who use this sites, they survey the net on a regular basis using different sites and they increase annually. THE WAS STATISTICALLY FAR FROM THE TRUTH

I was stunned not at the 2010 figures but on how the rapidly increased to more than triple in only one year. how facebook can control 600 million lives for one hour daily? how there are hundreds of millions of videos are being uploaded? and how changes in these sites could affect a virtual 4th biggest Courtney in the entire world.

What if Social Network Sites outdo it’s destined audience? how can any agency stop or even control an increasing  600 million individuals? US couldn’t just cut off the internet, There are no regulations to how Social Networking Sites change it theme, goal, advertising, or directions within the site. Even Mr Mark cannot just delete facebook from the Web. More Corporations are buying into Social Networking Sites.

I have long asked myself, what will the internet be without facebook?!!. How will we share photos and laugh on funny videos. About third of Youtube videos’ views comes from facebook links. More than third of Facebook users play games and applications on it. For me, Facebook is the only agency I get to interact with most of my friends I don’t meet physically, it is also a great way to keep track of all of my 400 friends “recent activates”. Facebook is also a platform to exhibit our talents and skills through various channels as personal notes, pictures, status, and videos.

however the simplicity of the answer to the question could seem inconceivably obvious, yet many did not have the exigency to even think of it; Facebook did not exist before. Apparently, there was a time where Facebook did not exist, people used to meet physically in order to interact with each others. So why we cannot relive this period? What is the innovation in Facebook that made half a trillion irresistibly attached to it? Spending an average of 3 hours on it daily. While Facebook has the advantage of coverage and reach of almost all the friends I knew, it also made me less of an outdoors kind a person, less reluctant to meet new people in the real community.

when the internet came up, we thought nothing can outdo it, Hi5 and Myspace did, we had the same mentality towards it, and Facebook emerged outdoing them; so innovation can surprise us all. For not the inexistence of Facebook is unforeseeable for a lot of its users. I believe that Social Networking Sites do increase the times we spent indoors, involuntarily reflecting back on our social skills in a bad way. The more Facebook became important the more the “Social Pressure” is placed upon us to abide by it.

The project discusses and displays how youngsters used social networking sites, mainly Facebook and Twitter, to rally thousands of young men and women to go and protest against the conditions they were living in on the 25^th of January. Communities like Facebook which was perceived by many, including the regime, as a waste of time, where users chat for fun and share funny videos which was partially correct. No one gave twitter or the tweets being cycled any horizons, thus when tweets gone out urging youth to participate in the 25^th of January, the regime did not pay them any attention. All the different media was used to show how big is this revolution, from pictures showing violence of the Central Security Forces towards peaceful protestors, to the videos showing how some lived in Tahrir square for 18 consecutive days. This project is simply a small documentary tracking what had happened in the 18 day revolt, it is for all who did not see or live the revolution to have a rough idea of the Egyptian revolution.

I will be using Prezi, web-based presentation application, to give a story line using pictures and videos that was circulated through Facebook and Twitter at that time. Also I will be showing how Facebook and twitter users responded, using status and tweets, to the violent pictures which helped to drove a lot of users to go out in the streets. I will be showing a path from day 1 to how the revolution evolved alongside the social networking sites’ own revolution.

My paper would have the same idea but on a greater scale, I will be showing how, from now on, these sites will affect the politics in the country. How it will be used to support a candidate, or what role will they play in the upcoming parliament elections, and how many will try to demolish its effect for their own benefits. Social networking sites are a virtual community of its own, yet with millions of users it reflects back on the real community of the country so it must be perceived as a power with great influence on the political life.

 

When it comes to choosing your own virtual character, for instance in second life, users do not only consider clothes or hair styles but the environment they are about to enter is simply another sequence of physical and mental experiences known as a virtual life. Virtual sites as Second life provides an alternating being for a user to seek adventures, to meet new people, to make money and to fall in love.

upon engaging in a new life for, example living in a new country, a person tend to think not only of his appearance but of his attitude as well, the same happens with virtual identity; a person start reviewing his real character his height his weight his attitude and leave the good things he posses and let go of the defects. If a person is funny but fat he will represent himself as this tall bodybuilder yet funny person and that what the virtual identity provides. “A person can be whatever he chooses to be” a used to motto for IMVU (Instant Messaging Virtual Universe) which attracted about a hundred million users by making users from all around the world talking to each others’ virtual characters.

The great thing about Second Life is the privilege of changing anything about you at any time, this property outdo the realistic being of life making users tend to interact in Second Life maybe more than interactions in real life. Users in the Second Life undergo an adventurous life of going to different places and meeting new people with your virtual character at anytime. Some people started making money from their Virtual characters in Second Life, others met their partners on second life and married them in the real life, others just preferred being married on Second Life.

Second Life and major virtual sites became so talented and skilled in attracting users by various techniques, one of them is the 3D enhancement that been applied to the site. Second Life main objective is to make this experience as realistic as possible, they created a virtual Earth, virtual cities, homes, schools, work places and social obligations. In Second Life you have a home, brothers, if you choose, a job, a car and whatever you wished to accomplish something real life realistically failed to meet. That where some considered actually feared that users will spend more time interacting in this virtual life than what they describe to be a real existing life. So the question is what will become a real life?

Blogs rose to fame at the end of the 20^th century specially when blog sites as Open Diary came up, which unprecedentedly allowed users to comment on the diaries and for the author to start commenting back. But Blogs had larger potential it flourished to a higher fame, because it no longer counted on diaries and Journals; it now addressed issues related to politics, social sciences, literature, and even advertising.

Making a blog now a days is conceived by others to be easier then having a hardcopy diary, it certainly has more advantages.

You can upload as many images, videos, and voice records as you want, imbedding a flash player or a funny video is not provided by the hardcopy type of diaries. And still people can comment on it and the author can comment back instantly creating a community focused around his blog itself.

Millions of blogs have intuitively created an interactive community between themselves known for the bloggers as the Blogosphere. Inside this virtual society blogs get differentiated by various forms either by type (Personal, interactive, social) or by genre (travel blogs, awareness blogs, classical music blogs). And there is also websites how rate blogs, which count how many of them are real, there is a SearchBlogs sites which allow you to find the specific type of blogs you want.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid452319854?bctid=16632882001

As the blogs attracted more, new forms of it emerged to the surface, one of them is Twitter which I believe to be an instant form of blogging. Twitter amazingly attracted hundreds of millions to use it on an hour basis for some, and it raised the famous question “If you’re not Twittering, you’re just not cool?” Blogs companies seeing the success made by blogs started proving gadgets  and Apps to fit in mobiles and Tablets, the even made up a international number that you can call and leave a message and it gets tweeted (simply sent), and this was very helpful in the Egyptian revolution to sent Messages of those where trapped in Tahrir square where there was no internet access.

Blogs even took it further, as CNN newscaster said “Blogs help saved lives when the Tsunami struck Japan.” In Japan, two days ago when the 30 foot tall waves struck the northern part of the Japan, mobile connections were extremely jammed, that the only way families and people in the north could know where to go is  by viewing blogs, and tweets from other people living in Japan. So basically Blogs surpassed being just a trend it’s now considered to be a lifestyle a community with millions of people around the world, it also became a genuine way to get news, fashion ideas, comments on a football match, and a place to be happy, to seek comfort and to feel, for some, home.

 

 

19 years old Kaycee Swenson suffering from fatal leukemia attracted thousands of followers on her blog, sharing her hard life and her struggle with this disease as a young teenage girl, yet she never existed. Debbie Swenson (creator of Kaycee) with greatly influenced by what was happening to her mother that she had to create a replica of that same situation on order to receive and absorb comfort her relief life character did not get. It is not a matter of right and wrong, it is not also a matter of debating the real uses of internet whether virtual identities is allowed to cohabitate as a separate life in a separate space; Cyberspace, the real question is that does the real living character and the virtual one affect each other regularly and strongly.

In a debate with my friends, some predicted that if their lives were in fact, relatively to the Kaycee case, trouble-less they simply would not get the desire to live another life in a virtual world. They believed that escaping to a different world has to emerge from logical reasons; for example the Kaycee case, they said she probably having no friends tried to seek comfort that humans need to get over a hard phase like the sickness if your beloved ones. So is it the desire in you to experience another type life an initially flawless one of your mistakes that makes you use an excuse (sickness for example) to jumpstart a virtual community of your own, or is it the hard time you are going through that requires you and actually pushes you to acquire more comfort, more console that you did not receive or maybe was deprived from in the real world?

It is not only sickness or hard times that drive a person to create a virtual identity and try to get the “love” from a virtual community; it very much depends on the community his real character is living in. A good friend of mine started writing lyrics when he was in his 10^th grade, he was not good at it when he began but it was clear he had passion towards it, in private lessons (Tutoring) we used to walk for about 2 kilometers where every time when he used to bring me a new song or a improved version of the old one, received well by my he sought others for criticism as well, he received non, some friends, family, and even some music instructors in our schools were not thrilled at all of him, actually any student, at his age focusing on such a future-less time wasting habit as writing lyrics in English. This friend had to get other opinions had to be debated more, had to know whether he is good or am I just complimenting him, he googled his way to find a “share your lyrics” site, where he submitted his lyrics in an anonymous form and within a day he started getting feedbacks, my friend eventually was not good at all but the desire to know and the rejection of the rejection made him go that way. So a religious community, a politically active family, or being a brother having too many sisters all might drive a person to live another life in a virtual world.

Virtual being not only began with an incident in his real life but it is also regularly affected by events occurring in the real life. “Returning back from college, I was very furious; the doctor had a quiz and I solved nothing, I opened my virtual identity and found that a Norwegian friend has left a comment about the debate we had last day, which reminded me why I did not study for the quiz, I almost deleted him” a virtual friend of mine said. So yes current events you go by in real life has a great influence not only on the interactions you have in the virtual community but whether you use it or not, I mean does it stick for longer even if the initial problem that made me start a virtual identity has been solved. A friend of mine answers saying, “In school I was famous, I was in the Football team, if you may call it, I didn’t had in close interactions with girls, so I started a virtual identity and it was fun, I met lots of virtual girls, but now I am in college I have a beautiful girlfriend why do I need to resume relations with people they might not exist in the first place” another virtual friend of mine. And he unknowingly answered himself; it is the independent relations you make during satisfying your initial desire, it is the friends you gain who made you surpass your hard time, till know I believe it is not that hard to differentiate between virtual but existing beings, and bots or fake identities. My friends “existing ones” however believe it is very dangerous to have close relations with people you interact with in your virtual community because it will reach a period where it is not anymore your real life events that will affect the virtual one but it is the virtual events that will affects the real one, and that is extremely dangerous so as they say.

 

From the comments I have read and my personal opinion, Brian Christian described the human demeanor in digital online chats and how Machines or Artificial mind imitators try to impersonate an average chatting mind.

Christian thrivingly hooked me, rhetorically and intellectually, into believing that I was reading a very smart robot’s post, written to make-belief that AI robots can easily connect with humans on a chatting basis. The author started by out-viewing the history of “Turning Test” and how it evolved to this sophisticated and intellectually-pure status, and how program “Eliza” creatively opened new medical horizons. Eliza then provide a script called “DOCTOR” which is simply a therapy program that uses medically used techniques to imitate human-interaction and gather more information about the patient and maybe actually help him.

But just as any program, the amount of responses available depends on how many scripts the programmer has plugged in, that is why the author believed that programs tried to drag the chat  away from topics they are weak in. The article for example showed how some programs repeated sentences to try avoiding going into selected topics, but I believe they are differentiable depending on the way they drag a human out  from a topic he intentionally want to discus.

Christian then reviled his experience in the Turning Test as a participant and how he interacted with robots and judges. I agree with author that the robot is simply a replica of its creator’s way of thinking, for instance If an old man wrote scripts it would probably use specific scientific words, and it would be straight forward, while a young man’s program would, obviously, use up to date slang terms, and it would be a little aggressive.

So yes, I could be tricked on believing that I might be talking to a program, now being addressed as a bot, without knowing he isn’t a human. Time of the chat, topics covered, and language used are all factors contributing into believing whether a program can functionally impersonate a human in chatting. Not only in a chat wise, now for examples there are lots of bots being used in online games, social networking sites, and even service sites and frankly they assist people in a great way.

 

The article kicks off by stating the main purpose of rhetoric which is to persuade the audience using Aristotle notions (Ethos, pathos, and logos).  Zappen then debates whether database programs like Lotus Marketplace breach personal privacy or not. Lotus Marketplace was to be released in two editions (business and households) while it may be true that the households edition do conflict with personal privacy by reviling to the users phone numbers and addresses but it is also true that the business edition only offers information that users can access through the companies’ websites. The author afterwards displays Barbra Warnick’s belief that “traditional print media” is no longer appealing to girls and it has lost its power of persuasion to the “Web-based alternatives to mainstream media” like e-zines offering interactivity on a wider range. The author was dead right in claiming than digital rhetoric is becoming more influentially and persuasive more than the normal print media giving proof that presidential campaigns and multinational companies is now relying mainly on the internet to convey their messages.

The article then moves to describe the main attractive characteristics that the Digital rhetoric possesses, viewing its merits and drawbacks. Starting with speed which is the property to connect with others in no time, relatively, the author however believes it helps “redundant and repetitive postings” while that may be true I believe that print media transmit also repetitive postings but using different terminologies and languages. Reach doesn’t only mean coverage of an area but reaching multiple ages, classes, variety of counties and both genders, Zappen sees that this massive transmission of tons information without gatekeeping might cause problems which I totally agree with but Gatekeeping undermines the intelligence of internet users by choosing what posts to pass and what to block. Anonymity on the other hand is, to me, the freedom to choose whether to identify yourself or not, though the author fears “flaming” but logically users have the choice to view anonymous articles or not. The article viewed the merits interactivity which is the ability to feedback, but the cons the author reviled is outdated in my point of view, most social networks provide a great deal of privacy to the users.

By using Digital rhetoric you can write whatever you think to whoever you want, if he excepted, to any place instantly. I do believe that Zappen came close to theorize digital rhetoric but to theorize a concept almost every country in the world every society, every city use is hard to put together.

 

1- How carbon dioxide impact Global warming?

2- AcademicDisciplines: Earth Sciences – Chemistry – Environmental Studies and Forestry

3- Majors: Biology - Chemistry - Petroleum and Energy Engineering

Minors: Chemistry – Environmental Science

4-Database: Environment Complete (EBSCOhost) - GreenFILE (EBSCOhost)

The Website: http://www.ipcc.ch/

IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Web. 16 Jan. 2011. <http://www.ipcc.ch/>.

Reasons:

1- It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which both is considered to be authoritative and credible

2- Currently 194 countries are members of the IPCC. Governments participate in the review process and the plenary Sessions. so it has a great and massive Coverage.

3- Since 2007 it had carried out lost of reports and projects by known scientists. received  2007 Nobel Peace Prize.