1) What is the author's understanding of convergence culture?

He says that, "Convergence is a word that manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural, and social changes depending on who’s speaking and what they think they are talking about."

2) What is your understanding of convergence culture? What can we learn from the media history?

My understanding is that cultural convergence is thats its basically saying that old and new things from across different cultures come together to make something new. Like the OBEY symbol using an image of Andre the giant. In specifically media convergence we can see how a lot of old tech ideas are coming back because we can now actually build them. Like Apples smart watch or Marty McFly's hoverboard that's had people baffled for years. 

3) How are the participators engaging? 

They're engaging over new means of media and technology, however some have a greater advantage in that they don't all have access to the same tech.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paullamkin/2015/06/19/apple-watch-2-details-emerge-as-huge-sales-are-reported-for-original/

I recommend this article because it shows just how fast technology and communication are growing. The Apple watch just came out and they're already talking about the 2nd model coming out and what all will be added to it. It also deals with how we are now communicating with each other, smart phones are no longer enough, we now need smart watches.

Personalization and Privacy

This article talks about websites personalizing their websites for their customers. The big site this article talks about is Amazon. Before this article I never gave much thought to just how much websites like Amazon or Facebook, or any other website knows about me. For example, I see things I look at on Amazon showing up not only on Amazon suggestion lists but also on sites like YouTube. The article talks about how these sites use algorithms to track exactly what a user is looking at and for how long. With these algorithms they can personalize every other site you go on. It brings up the question though of how much information is too much when they are gathering all of this data? I feel like websites taking all of this information could be helpful but only when I'm looking at that information on the appropriate site. I think a real problem occurs when information starts spilling over into other sites. The article does go on to talk about the Platform for Privacy Preferences project, which is designed to be integrated into browsers to let users easily manage relationships with each of them and identify what types of information they are willing to share with each. So with this you could make it so only certain pieces of information are gathered by websites. Using this could help keep what you want private out of the algorithm equations. Overall I think websites using personalization has the potential to be quite useful, however there does come a point where its just creepy to see things show up that you looked up on multiple websites.

5 years from now

Five years ago smartphones had just started to become a societal norm and practically a necessity. Because of smartphones I get everything I need to know from my phone, I have google at my fingertips, all of my emails come to my phone, not to mention all of the different apps that give news from all over. All of that has just happened within such a short period of time, the next five years I think everything will grow even faster. Right now we're on the brink of virtual reality with the oculus rift and that realm of technology. Also we're getting to a point where information can be projected on various surfaces. I predict that that we will get to a point where we will see news and information being projected on things like house windows and car windows, even glasses. I think that we will also find new devices and apps that will have new capabilities to deliver us information. I do have this fear that because of all the new technology that could deliver us news and information it will create something terrible. I think about the fat, sloth like people in the floating chairs, and that's kind of what I imagine the future possibly leading to if we don't get a handle on how we rely on just technology to get our news and information. I think that we still need to put some work into seeking out news and information. I still think there will be new ways of receiving news and information but it will be up to us to keep all of the new tech in check.