Advantages and Disadvanatges of New Media

For this assignment I choose Antonia’s and Sergio’s articles. These two articles actually portray both sides of new media, mostly an advantage and a disadvantage. Antonia found and article about Telemedicine and Sergio a study that found that children are losing their ability to identify non-verbal emotions.

Telemedicine clinics make inroad into primary care by Don Fluckinger talks about a new technology that might be incorporated in clinics for the sole use of medicine. If a patients attends a general doctor and he believes this patient needs a specialist, he would be able to reach one in a click or two via computer, were they could discuss and have a fast and efficient attention. Maybe this would not sound as wow as you could expect, but hey, how can amazing it can be to find both doctors in one appointment or urgency, and not having to wait for the specialist to come back or whatever, I find it pretty interesting and unique.

The New York Times have been into the new media topic recently, they had this article Hey Kids, Look at me when we´re talking who would talk about children losing the ability to interpret non-verbal emotions and acts. They sustain this is because when you are texting you are not being able to see the face of the other person, you can only sense their feeling towards emoji’s or the writing, so, when they face someone, it becomes difficult to sense disapproval or exciting towards the topic being spoken. Also, they argument that in school, they now see screens instead of teachers, which is a step more towards loosing real-live connection. This might be pretty real, and I do agree we might be losing more than an ability to sense emotions but lots of other things.

Looking throughout both articles, I can only say one thing, new media and technology is what you make of it, and how you use it. If you are someone using right and not in excess, you are preparing for the future but not letting the past just as a history research. It’s true, technology is the future but to get to point where you hang out with your friends and everyone is on their phone, is pretty boring. What happened with the street games and dancing parties, well, I think we can mix both technology and interaction, both meant to remain people connected, why not enjoy sufficiently but not in excess and have a better and natural life. Think of your life without a cellphone…boring, obviously, now thing aobut life without friends and only with cellphone…way more boring right? Why not combine both and have a perfect mix?