Information and Networks

I think the network law that I agree with the most would be Sarnoff's Law, because it is the simplest and has the most concrete definition of "value" compared to the other two laws. The way the Metcalfe and Reed laws calculate value is very unclear, so I am not sure that those laws would accurately determine what "value" a station has. Sarnoff's concept takes the idea of "value" and puts it in the most basic of formulas; the more viewers you have, the more value you have.

Though I definitely think there is more to value than how many people are watching/listening to your program, the Sarnoff Law is probably has the most accurate way of calculating how much something is worth in a monetary sense. When trying to figure out how much ad time for your station during a given program, calculating the price based off of how many people are watching seems to make the most sense to me. Of course, there are other aspects that can contribute to value, such as how well the typical viewer/listener pays attention to your program, this linear approach stands as a good starting point for better laws to base themselves off of in the future.

And speaking of the future, it is difficult to predict how people will get their information then, even in five years time. The best guess that I can make is that we will (somehow) be even more connected to each other than we are now. Almost all of our technology revolves around networks in this day and age, and is becoming harder and harder to be truly independent of one another. I believe that we will soon see “Internet Everywhere,” with virtually any place having a network connection. In that same sense, I believe that nearly all of our devices will be connected to each other in some way to maximize the potential in how we can communicate with each one another. If technological innovation mirrors social media patterns in any way, then networks are going to become a major part of how we live.

Online Identity

Online Identity:

Social media is a curious thing. It's a place where we want to interact with others, talk about our likes and dislikes, and show people who we are. It's also a place where we don't want people to know we're looking through their photos, where we're afraid to post about something controversial, and where we show people who we want to be, instead of who we really are. Social media gives us a platform to show the Internet and the world either who we are or who we want to be, but it is up to us to decide which route to take.

In The Guardian's article "Online Identity," the writer debates whether online authenticity or anonymity is more important when building your online identity. It's a good question, because you can be as authentic or as anonymous as you desire to be when you're online. You can use your social media sites to post every little thing that comes to your mind (as some of my friends do), or you can use it to post only the good parts of your life, to give a false impression that your life is perfect. The majority of people tend to lean towards the latter alternative, desiring to make their friends think their life is exciting even though it may not be.

This concept is an important one, because social media plays such a huge role in building one's own identity, both online and off. In 2016, nearly every person alive has some form of social media, and in this less interactive age we live in, an individual's social media account is primarily how we form opinions of one another. Of all of my Facebook friends, I probably only see 50 to 100 of them on a regular basis. When I see these people, I rarely think about what they recently said on Twitter, I think about experiences that we had in real life. Whenever I see a friend that I mostly only "know" through Facebook, I recall past opinions and judgements I made about them based on their old posts/statuses, because I have very little else to go off of.

Social media can be a wonderful thing. It allows us to celebrate important life events with one another, such as getting married or having a baby. But it also has the capability to limit how much we can truly know one another, which is why I believe that authenticity is more important when it comes to building your identity.