Lecture 3:Theories of Knowledge and Cognition, Social Tasks

This lecture is about how our mind is engaged in social networking environments, and how should we design social environments.

In my opinion, the most interesting area is hierarchy of cognition. It has three levels: cognition, metacognition, epistemic cognition. I think every body is the comprehensive of these three level. But there  will be difference in different scenes. And this is not easy to standardized. So it is impossible for someone to deal all the things in different scenes by only one strategy. I think that is why there are so many social networks worldwide.

Another interesting area is relationship mapping and mining.  In my experience, I think these social networks focus on relationship and then make every effort to solve the problem of mapping and mining. But when they emphasis the feature of relationship, the feature of search is weakened in some degree. And to improve the user experience, recommendation is emphasized. To end user, the difference is that search needs more information from users and it is a initiative process, while recommendation needs less information from users and it is a passive process. I don't understanding all the meanings of there differences, but I think it is really interesting. And to see search system and recommendation system in same level will let me gain better understanding.

Lecture 2: Various Cognitive & Social Theory

This lecture is about details of various cognitive & social theory. Divided into three part to illustrate: Social experience, cognitive processing and memory, and social nature of human activity. And I think the social experience model is very helpful to understand the social experience. And according the model described we can divide social networks to different type. And based on the analysis we can know what we can do to improve the service. After the class, I have a question. Can we build a website to face all the needs  these websites focus on? That means the comprehensive advantages of diversity websites.  I think this is not so easy. And better and deeper understanding of cognition is essential.

Lecture 1:Social Media & Social Networking

This lecture is very interesting and it enables me to think in a different way about social and technology.

1. The top 5 most popular social networking website  are all built in America. 

I think this is interesting. And I don't think the culture of innovation of American is the only reason. Yes, the technology of American is much more advanced than many other countries. But other advanced countries such Japan and Germany don't grasp such a chance to build the business. And after some analysis I have to look for other ways to explain. In same condition, bigger country has extra needs to build a better relationship than smaller country.  And this demand, in turn, stimulate people to solve it. Of course, preparation of technology is a very important and good resource to solve such a problem.

China is also a big country with great cluture.Why she does not have a website of the top 5? I think this is because there is still a gap between the culture, especially traditional culture, and advanced technology. And this is also the reason why Chinese have less original innovation and so many cottage. But this situation is changing very  fast from many aspects. And Chinese culture is very different from American. So I think there is great chance for China.

2. By understanding the difference of social networking and traditional website, the difference of data, information, knowledge, and the difference of social media, social networking, social computing, cloud computing and so on,  we can know that cognition types and tools are changing the style and speed of knowledge created. And I think this is not the ending, but the beginning. 

3.Social Media & Social Networking are the service style and platform of relationship. In a broad sense the range of Social Media lagger than Social Networking. In a narrow sense,  the focus of the two are different. Social Media focus on media, that means focus on tools and style, while Social Networking focus on relationship. 

Social Networking

There are so many discussions to illustrate what social networking is.  A new way to build relationships, a new way to make money, a new way to manage society etc. But I think the most important thing may be that it gives us a better chance to re-understanding ourselves, re-understanding ourselves as human beings, re-understanding our planet as a whole entity with civilization. And it give ordinary people a better chance to join the history to find out the position of human being in the universe.