Final Post

This week, for our final post, we are to comment on two classmate's blogs. I can't believe how fast the semester went by. I also can't believe that I am almost a second semester senior. Ah!

Anyways, the first entry that looked interesting to me was Brittany's blog post on experimental research. In this entry, she wrote on flash mobs and what they are all about. Interestingly enough, there is an actual definition for a flash mob. According to Google, it is "a large group of people who assemble suddenly into a public place, perform and unusual and pointless act for a brief time, and then quickly disperse." It seems as if they are done in order to raise awareness about a specific topic or issue. This seems like such a cool thing. Also, these have been taking place all over the country at various college campuses and at other locations, like train stations.

Brittany then connected this to research because she mentioned that these all started as a means of social networking experiment. Brittany goes on to explain that this man, Bill, created this first idea by inviting his friends to some type of show, just something to do. But, it turns out that the main point of Bill's experiment was to see how many people he could get to come a show expecting one thing, that would turn into something completely different, a flash mob. His idea is that the people themselves, would become the show. What a cool idea! I had no clue this kind of stuff was going on.

I liked the way Brittany connected this to research by then mentioning that they use both observation and content analysis as a means of evaluating how "successful" the flash mob was in attracting attention or media coverage.

The next blog I read was Rachel's blog. I read her entry on a new experiment that Google is conducting. It seems like such a cool experiment. According to Rachel's entry, Google plans to "build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks" in a few "trial locations" across the country. The corporation is interested in having a trial period for delivering internet at speeds 100 times faster (than most Americans have access to) to "at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people." The goal is to "experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone."

This seems so cool. I wonder how they will go about choosing which Americans they plan to test this on? The fact that Google even has the ability to do this, to just make the Internet faster, is crazy!