About My Term Project

My research paper is about the role of new media in the financial markets. Initially I was going to focus only on twitter and how it influences investors and traders, but as the semester went on, I decided to also cover other new media technologies, such as blogs, wikis and the new phenomenon of social investing.

I choose this topic because I’m interested in financial markets and their close relationship with technology. My research is based of scholarly papers, books and online newspaper articles.

In my paper I discuss how the financial industry has always been one of the early adopters of new technologies.What started  as a bunch of guys standing and shouting at each other outdoors on the street in the 1790’s, is now a highly sophisticated industry fully dependant on technology and computing power. Financial markets have always been shaped by technology. When the telegraph was first introduced traders quickly adopted it and in 1867 the ticker tape was born, a little device that allowed the transmission of information from very long distances instantly.

Getting back to the present, new media has made a huge impact in the financial markets. I discuss how knowledge is being shared through blogging, wikis and online videos. There are many approaches to understanding the markets and the financial blogosphere is a good representation of such views. There are many blogs on fundamental analysis talking about financial statements and company performance, others discuss technical analysis and the behavior of a security’s price, and other blogs deal with the topic in a more quantitative and systematic approach. I also discuss how micro blogging, specially twitter, is a good platform from information sharing.

I explore social investing websites such as Covestor and Kaching, which allow average investors to mimic trades from more advanced investors. And also talk about how fully automated trading systems can be used by average investors who can subscribe to specific trading strategies through websites such as collective2.com and strategyrunner.com.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Every now and then I hear about people getting fired over what they posts or do in Facebook. The problem I see is a lack of common sense and users not doing their due diligence in protecting their private information.

Social Networking sites, such as Facebook have their own privacy mechanisms that allow users to hide certain information from certain groups of people. Most of the time, users don’t bother to check their privacy settings and leave everything to be easily accessible by everyone. It seems people are blinded by a false sense of privacy given by the individuality of using a computer while updating their profiles. People say and do things online, they wouldn’t do in real life, for example telling their new boss how boring the job is.

However, not all responsibility lies within the end users. Social networking sites are not known to be very secure in regards of protecting your personal information from external threats. Glitches and bugs can create security holes that expose your personal data. Last spring one of these glitches allowed anyone to access private pictures in Facebook profiles and this summer Twitter was hacked. These websites quickly fixed the security problems, but not all development teams respond adequately and on time when such security holes appear – and that is something users should take into consideration when joining a social network.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I signed up for the tasks of layout editor and graphic editor for Baruch New Media’s wiki. These tasks involve working in all content pages in the wiki, mainly dealing with the visual representation of the content.

I have added graphical elements to many articles and edited existing images. Many articles suffer from huge pictures which need resizing, other articles contain too many images, which don’t really add much value to the content. I call this the MySpace effect, in which users want to personalize the pages they are working in, sometimes in detriment of the overall look and feel of the Wiki.

before	after

 

There are many articles where the heading of a section is a link to another article. For example the How New Media are used in Business article has an introduction section with content introducing the subject, but the heading links to another article that also introduces the topic. This confuses not only users, but also people collaborating, since they add new content to a section already explained in the main article page. In such cases what I do is try to merge content or indicate there’s another article that expands on the topic.

Main article	New page with different content and same subject

There were other articles such as New Media in Transportation where the article page contained links to new pages with very few content – two or three paragraphs. In this case I combined all separate pages into one main article.

before	after

Overall, I have been making small changes across all pages, formatting text, taking away unnecessary visual elements, fixing external links… and so on. My goal is to keep a usable Wiki with a constant visual layout.

I have not created any new page, but I plan to do so with content from my term research project within the next three weeks as the semester approaches its end.

The Next New Thing

CBS 60 minutes ran a segment of “Neuronal Decoding,” which talks about research being done in reading neuronal activity and deciphering what a person is thinking.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

In 1997 Bill Gates said:

“I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence. All the neurons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion. We can someday replicate that on a machine.”

If we assume that the human brain operates in a similar fashion to a computer, then we can perform I/O operations, such as reading and writing data. There are many possible applications that could derive from neuronal decoding and encoding.

In the last discussion on blackboard I read many interesting ideas about virtual reality and its uses. An idea that caught my attention is how virtual reality allows people to do things that are impossible to do in real life, such as flying. Imagine experiencing flying with all your senses, picture yourself as Emperor of Rome in a simulated environment or your favorite book’s main character.

Current technology has its limitations in providing  immersive experiences. Advances in neuronal decoding and encoding could help bringing more reality into virtual reality. I might be getting ahead of myself, but I believe that in a not-so-distant future, we will be able to share manufactured – or even real life – experiences and thoughts in a more profound way.

Imagine the entertaining industry moving from producing films and games to creating virtual experiences. Instead of a passive evening watching a movie, you could actually experience what the protagonist does using all your senses.

Advice to Baruch College

I believe Baruch College is doing a good job by leveraging the power of social media through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Blogs. On the school’s website there is a list of social networks and other resources – the list can be accessed here. However, there are few things that can be improved.

Recorded Lectures 

Ilona on her blog post addressed the benefits that podcasting classroom lectures would bring to students. I agree with her views. UC Berkeley has podcasts and webcasts for some of their undergrad courses available here. Yale also has some courses available here. Baruch already has an iTunes page and a YouTube page that contain videos from special events, such as Executives on Campus, but it would be great to have  recorded lectures of the most popular courses. I think it would greatly benefit students, since current students would be able to review the lectures and prospective students could explore the topics covered in courses they are interested in.

Enhanced Courses

Baruch has certain courses designated CIC (Communication Intensive Courses), I believe these courses could accomplish their goals by requiring students to Blog frequently as extension of other communication intensive in-class activities.

There are other courses that require heavy team-work, these classes could be greatly improved by assigning wikis to students to collaborate within their groups. In one of my courses we collaborate mostly through email, and keeping track of the conversation and deliverables is not easy. I went in search of online collaborative applications and found few wikis (pbworks.com & wikispaces.com) that fit the mold, however, the new issue was getting everyone familiar with wikis. A way to solve this, would be to require students to complete a new media seminar before getting into Zicklin School or advanced courses.

EBook Readers

It would be environmentally friendly to have a special program that lends EBook readers to eligible students, say those with a GPA greater than 3. This would require professors to use books from publishers that provide EBook versions of their printed works.

My New Media Class - So Far

New media comprises many technologies that have radically change the way we communicate and exchange information.

Online publishing technologies such as blogs skyrocketed few years ago with the emergence of publishing platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger, MovableType and others , bringing new ways for people to disseminate their ideas. Recently new technologies, such as Twitter and Tumblr, have brought micro-blogging to the mix, allowing faster and concise methods to spread information.

Wikis make possible online collaboration, by allowing its users to edit content, bringing dynamism to the way content is created and allowing it to evolve and stay updated. Wiki technologies make online encyclopedias such as the Wikipedia possible, but since everyone can edit content, critics demand mechanisms and rules to prevent vandalism and maintain accuracy, as noted in this article on CNN.com.

Social networking technologies have emerge as preferred venues for social interaction online. Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow people to befriend each other and form online groups. Instant online communities and social networks can be set up quickly with services like Ning. Virtual worlds allow users to interact in 3-D worlds and perform many activities that mimic real life, such as going to a club and assisting to concerts.

The internet is the preferred venue for new media, without it many technologies that are changing and replacing old ways of communication, wouldn’t exist. Old media such as Newspapers and TV are making their way into new media by employing the use of online newspapers and streaming TV online respectively. 

Ubiquitous access to the internet and the convergence of new media and geolocation technologies, bring new online services such as loopt, which allows users to find friends wherever they are. 

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds offer a virtual representation of any imaginable world. The most known virtual environment is Second Life, which allows users to hang out and interact in a 3-D world through the internet. Users are represented by personalized avatars and are able to assist to virtual gatherings and do other activities that imitate real life.

Activities such as visiting a club and enjoy musical performance are possible thanks to virtual worlds. Companies, such as MTV Networks, are seeing the potential in building their brand through online virtual worlds. According to The New York Times, in its article I’ve Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life, In 2006 MTV started to build a virtual representation of the Southern Californian beach community from one of its reality shows, among with other virtual properties with the goal to create virtual social networks and platforms to discover artists.

Virtual worlds can facilitate meetings and reduce travelling costs, which is beneficial when the attendees reside in different geographical zones. Last year the Congress broadcasted a hearing with some attendees logged from a virtual room in Second Life, as noted in this article from The Washington Post.

There are many applications to virtual worlds and the possibilities are endless, however, similar to social networking, they present some disadvantages and negative side effects. Biologically our bodies are not designed to inhabit in virtual worlds, hence we cannot properly experience the full benefits of real life social interactions.

In the future I see virtual reality gaining more prominence and becoming a huge part in our lives. As computing power increases and manufacturing processes bring prices down, a better and more realistic virtual representation of the world could be possible. Avatars would no longer be pixelated and could better display a  bigger array of human expressions. Full immersion would be possible with advances in haptic technology, which allow the use of the sense of touch. Eventually, as technology would be able to replicate even in more detail the real world, the appeal of virtual worlds would also increase.