4. Google translate for active use in everyday life.

For people who do not have talent to study as fast other languages as others, Google translate has become a key tool for understanding foreign websites and someways communications between other nationalities. Although its lacking the full understanding of language systems and give sometimes quite funny and incorrect answers, it has proven its need and function as normal dictionaries do not allow to put together sentences. 

My idea is to apply the same application on phones for live translation to give the opportunity to communicate with people more efficiently between two people who perhaps do not share the same language. It could open the world more and make everything more easier to everybody.  This way nobody can loose themselves in translation. 

For this to work, it should need a lot more development and intreats in it. Google should focus more on languages and could hire one group of people from each country to focus on their side of the language and constantly improve it. Even when countries share the same language, then slang and everyday uses can be very different. For example, there is a big difference between Mexican spanish and Spanish spanish. Mexican one has a huge influence by American english. Also UK and US english is different as their slang differs quite a lot. 

The key functions to insure its popularity, should be that people's voice will be still the same. The application should have so called invisible translator to give it more natural feeling. Nobody would not want to listen for a robot or exchange their normal communication for talking with a machine. 

The biggest downside for this is definitely the fact that people will become more lazier to study other languages and therefor other cultures. It would narrow peoples view as for example the popular use if english has done. It is very hard to learn other languages when everybody can already share one, even though the knowledge level is very different from country to country and person to person. 

The application would bring people more together and would give opportunities for people who have not being able to learn other popular languages to discover something new. For example most of Estonian elderly people can not speak english, so therefor traveling for them can be quite difficult as they can not communicate with local people. The application would change their experience and would give them a new point of view to other cultures. 

3. Digital technology as a tool or a medium?

In a society, where having a computer and an e-mail account is almost mandatory, questions start to rise by sociologist if they are to users as a tool or a medium? Should we take the web environment something that helps us to create our tended objects or it is already a medium itself where the outcome is visible? 

Geroge Rückriem takes a closer look to this question and tries to analyze it through media and activity theory. First he is looking for and answer if those two theories are compatible as in activity theory "Tool" is one of the key concepts and "medium" is in the center of media theory. He comes to conclusion that if they are, we can benefit from it to understand better our virtual activity systems. 

In the end he comes to a conclusion that it is a tool and a medium. "The final answer to our question – is computer technology tool or medium? – runs: it is tool  and  medium. It  is simply a question  of approaching a thing reflecting it as tool or as medium. But we  have to be aware of the fact, that this change of view is a methodological potentiality of activity  theory only when reading it from the point of 

view of system theory"

I have to agree with him. No matter from what point of view to look at it, the information technology can be used as a tool and as a medium. We need software, computer, keyboard, etc. to create a content that later on will be published in various platforms in internet and therefor could not stand alone. 

For example if we would take an web environment such as Wikipedia that is a free online database system created by users for users. Anybody can write articles there about any event, definition, person and so on. Also the content is regulated and controlled by other users that the information spread in there is not false. From the aspect of activity theory, the creator (subject) is using computer (tool) and Wikipedia platform (tool) to create an article (object) based on previous references (subject) to publish it for others to read. The final outcome is for others to evaluate and control. As the article will be publish then Wikipedia has also a function as a medium. 

Although the article gives quite satisfying answers then in my opinion it starts to be a bit outdated already. It was published in 2003 and quite a lot has changed in relation to internet environments, its definitions and functions. Nowadays we can apply the same rules and etiquette for internet actions as we do it in face-to-face communication. Everything we say and do is taken with the same seriousness as we would do it in person. Also many normal activities have moved to internet. For example the key element for promotion and marketing is the use of internet by different tools and mediums that has given to us. Nobody can not have a proper promo campaign without announcing it in Facebook. Most of the marketing books published now are more focusing on the efficient use of social networks and how one can take advantage of it. 

In my opinion on what we should focus now, is the impact of this kind of usage of something so unreal as the internet is. It has reached more or less its peek. Children growing up now have a lot bigger ability to focus on different things and gaining informations. For example if we compare actions films between 2011 and 1989, then the editing is almost twice as fast as it used to be. Now we have only one question - how far we can develop with the technology?

2. Implementing activity theory.

Activity theory (AT) is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N. Leont'ev (1903-1979), and Sergei Rubinshtein (1889–1960), who sought to understand human activities as complex, socially situated phenomena and go beyond paradigms of cognition,psychoanalysis and behaviorism. (Wikipeadia)

Its based mainly on Marx theories on human and social interactions with the uses of tools provided by society. The main characteristics for activity theory are:

- subject

- object

- tools

- rules

- motive

- goal

- outcome

During the technology development scientist also started to apply the same theory with similar components to study the Human-Computer reactions as the popularity of the use of computers are formulated the same kind of virtual society what we experience in real life. It describes the environment and interactions between humans while the main tool for uses is a computer. It helps to study the complexity of behaviorism in contemporary systems as schools, libraries, etc. 

The main idea and focus behind this theory is to the interaction and mediated human activity through tools towards a goal that finally transforms into outcome. The tool itself can be anything used during the transformation. It can be either physical nor something used thinking. For example if a student writes an essay as a homework analyzing Marxist theories in USSR. Then the student is a subject that has previously affected by his teacher (also a subject) through interaction in a classroom. The student uses several tools for writing the paper - computer, published works, printer, etc. to work towards the object(goal) - analyze  Marxist theories as good as possible. The object is transformed to an outcome through the teachers view and judgement. This is a simple demonstration of AT in everyday life. 

The theory application becomes more complex to Human-Computer interaction as we would take the same situation, but would exclude the physical teacher as one of the subjects and would replace him with internet - both stand for social influence, but one is relatively more regulated than the other one. For example, if the same student would have to write the same essay based on independent research without any previous directing then the outcome could be very different, because internet gives you as much information as one can manage to look, without regulated if the information is false or not. The classical system for this would be user-created database Wikipedia. One should not take the information given there as the full truth while not making sure if the references given there match with the information written in the article. 

Although I understand the arguments given for and against for applying activity theory, then in a contemporary fast developing society the key elements and their functions are changing. Perhaps even faster to start applying to them previously known theories as they are not looking ahead to describe the future behaviorism. 

1. From mass media to personal media.

Research paper New Interactive environments

1. From mass media to personal media

Can You remember the time when You were a little kid and for asking Your friends out, You needed to go behind their doors or ring via home telephone that looked bigger than some of the wireless computers nowadays? And even when You got older You needed to write actual letters to keep in touch with people who were not living in the same region with You? Or it was actually unknown what Your co-students did during their summer breaks? 

In a growing technological society it is hard to remember that those times were not even 10 years ago. With uses of Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. one could easily be informed and have interactive communication while not even staying on the same continent. Also with these media tools an individual could reach the same amount of people as an audience for a smaller regional newspaper in 90s. In this way it becomes more indistinguishable the line between mass and personal media and their appearance on the same form. Is mass media dying and will be replaced with personal media? Or it is just highly personalized through increasing uses of personal media on its form? Or is it the other way around - personal media is dying as it becomes increasingly accessible for anyone and through that its content becomes depersonalized?

In order to answer these questions one should define mass media and personal media and how their definition has changed through the change of different media forms. Thompson in his book The Media and Modernity (1995) defines "mass" in mass media through the unimportance of the quantity of receivers but rather importance of  the accessibility of the product to plurality of recipients. He brings out five typical characterizations to mass media:

• technical and institutional means of production and diffusion;

• the commodification of symbolic forms;

• a structured break between the production and the reception of

symbolic forms;

• the extended availability of symbolic forms in space and time; and

• media products are available in principle to a plurality of recipients

As this theory is outdated and cannot apply to nowadays uses of mass media and personal media as their platforms and uses have changed in the last 16 years. For example in mid 90s the most common mediums for news were still television, radio and actual newspapers. Now all three could be easily accessible via internet. This accessibility has also changed mass media content and the relation between  the producer and the receiver. Many high profile mass media producers, such as CNN, BBS and many television programs, have included recipients to their content while making the production more interactive. Also as the increasing uses of social networks are applying the same characteristics of mass media to personal media. 

Certain personal media forms share characteristics that Luhmann and Thompson argue,  are typical for mass media: most significantly copying technologies are used and there are structured breaks between the production and reception of messages, which imply that expressions are detached from a shared temporal and spatial presence. Instead, the differences between mass media and personal media were discussed according to different interactional roles and network structures and users as active producers of mediated (and generally accessible) content.(Luders) A perfect case to illustrate this was a recent campaign Occupy Wall Street and the uses of social network Facebook. The beginning of the protest was not reflected in the common mass media platforms, but gained its popularity via personal media platform, making it hard to be unnoticed and creating a greater impact for the whole campaign, while reaching more people over the world than any national nor international media form could do. 

Although the border between personal media and mass media is getting thinner, the difference is still there. The article suggested a model that situates personal media and mass media differently according to two axes. On the horizontal axis,

personal media are more symmetrical, facilitating mediated interaction, whereas

mass media are more asymmetrical. On the vertical axis, personal media are

closer to the de-institutionalized or de-professionalized content pole, whereas

mass media are closer to the institutional or professional pole.(Luder) Mass media is meant to the recipients, but is not yet quite made by recipients.