Strand 4 Topics: 3,4 and 9

Topic 3: Organizational Communication in CMC

One issue that has come up in the world of CMC is the use and misuse of the technologies given to you while at work.  While the advances in technology have led to a much quicker working environment with people being able to work at home and still attend meetings, it has also led to people misusing the technologies afforded to them by their employers.  There have been many cases involving employees using their email for private uses.  One story involved a lawyer sending on a private email, which was sent from a woman he had went out on a date with the night before, on to a group of people.  The email made it all the way to New Zealand and he faced being fired from his law firm. Most employees use the internet at their work for non-work activity.  One survey done by Vault 90 percent of the people surveyed had used the internet to look at recreational websites.   Technology has also been beneficial to the workplace as well.  The ability to teleconference makes it possible to communicate with people worldwide and telecommute to work. 

Topic 4: Health Communication in CMC

Health is another topic that has been affected by the changes in CMC.  There have been several health related communication advances that have changed healthcare, some for the better and others for the worse.  One of the first systems for health communication was in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.  The goal of the system was to keep physicians in touch efficiently instead of wasting time sending people running, or hoping the other person was at a phone.   One of the features of this system that was very innovative was ‘Doc in the Box’.  This system allowed people to communicate with a real physician from home instead of having to go to a doctor all of the time.  One of the concerns with Health communication on the internet is that anybody can post something on the internet.   This causes problems because someone could seem very reputable but actually be lying or providing bad information to people.  Also this could lead to a lot of people just consulting the internet instead of going to see a doctor. 

Topic 9: New media Developments in CMC

The future of technology is often unclear and things that everyone thinks would catch on, often do not.  One of the trends that has caught on are wireless internet connections (Wi-Fi).  Wi-Fi is now the standard in internet connections and just about everyone has a phone that connects to Wi-Fi.  Another thing that caught on was web logs (blogs).  A blog is a series of postings arranged by first posting on a website.  Anybody can have a blog and there are several different sites to have one including blogger.com.  Wiki’s have also caught on.  A wiki allows a group of people to create a web page.  The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, which many people use daily for looking up things quickly.  One technology that never caught on was ubiquitous computing (UbiComp).  UbiComp is basically computer hardware on clothes.  Some things catch on while others don’t and Wi-Fi will certainly be involved in the future in some way.