HW 6: Semester Long Research Paper

The three social computing technologies that I am interested right now are, social networking services, instant messaging, and text chat. I find social networking services a fun way to talk to your friends, things like facebook and myspace are almost like e-mail and instant messaging except it's more fun because you can look at your friends pictures and see what they have been up to. If you have not seen a friend in a long time because they went away for the summer or went to college or moved these services are a fun way to see what they have been up to and how they are doing. Instant messaging is an easy way to talk to friends and family without costing money or taking up a lot of time. People can talk online while they do something else, it's hard to be on the phone or talking to someone in person while you are writing a paper because you have to answer back immediatly and forget what you were going to write down. On instant messaging you do not have to answer back immediatly but you can also just talk to them whenever you want. Text messaging is a big thing with teenagers today because we like to be in constant contact with our friends incase something funny or serious happens that we need to tell them but we cannot talk to them on the phone or in person because they may be in class or at work or just doing something where it is not okay to be on the phone at that time.

For empowerment of marginalized groups I am most interested in overcoming racism and overcoming sexism. I am interested in overcoming racism because I grew up in Framingham, MA which is a very diverse town, however other towns may not be as diverse so when they do come to a town like Framingham they sometimes have a different attitude towards people of other races because they are not used to being in such a diverse region. Sexism is an issue although it is not as big of an issue as it used to be. Sexism still exists today but in different ways that people do not notice as much but it does still exist.

I think I will start looking at the US and North America to find out about the technologies because both countries are very technologically advanced.