Saturday, January 30, 2010

Personalization

This week one thing we learned about in class was  personalization. This is the use of new media technology for your own personal use. Most web pages like google or youtube become personalized based on your past web searches or web page visits. Personalization is designed to affectively customize your experience, mainly on the web, with relative material that you have recently been interested in. In other words, personalization predicts what you might like in the future. However, we also talked about what is an appropriate  level of personalization? Is it right or beneficial to let certain software make decisions for you? If this is the case some may think that personalization will incapacitate your decision making process others may believe it is a helpful tool that helps illuminate the time you waste online. 
But then we discussed personalization on a university level or a job based level. We all agreed that surrounding yourself with tools that personalize will probably not be tolerated in the work force. When you have a boss that tells you what yo do you have to complete the task the way he wants you to. When you have a job its no longer your way, you have to move out of your own comfort level sometimes and thats exactly what personalization pushes you away from. However,  an interesting point was brought up when looking at personalization regarding your university. While attending Catholic I have had to take many courses that are irrelative to my major. ( media studies) When the idea of personalizing your class schedule came up, some suggested it would be a bad idea for the simple fact you can't always have it your way and it makes you a more rounded student. Well what if these classes drag your GPA down or you are not interested in the class at all. Since you are paying for the class shouldn't you be able to choose what classes you are taking?
IN my opinion I believe people need to explore outside of their own comfort level but in some cases personalization is necessary and all around is made to benefit you.