here is a link to the salon.com article on 43 things http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2005/02/08/43/index.html

Final Essay Inroduction

Our final essay assignment is supposed to deal with some problem created by an aspect of online culture. Obviously, this is a very broad topic that can be taken in many different directions since newly developed technologies have caused significant problems to society. Whether it be peer to peer networking entities pirating music, video, and every other type of media illegally, or people being arrested for comments on their blogs, new technology has created significant problems for society.
I have chosen to address the problem created by the extensive connectivity that the internet has provided to online gaming. Basically, the problem is that people are getting addicted to the online games that they are playing especially MMORGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. Addiction to these games has caused severe consequences for gamers in many cases. Often, addicted gamers will lose touch with reality and spend all of their time playing the game. Addicted gamers have been known to play for days on end neglecting to sleep or eat. Addicted gamers have lost their jobs because they simply could not stop playing an online game. Students have lost entire semesters of college and high school to online gaming. In some cases gamers have died as a result of sleep and food and water deprivation because they were playing an online role-playing game.
You might think that this type of occupation would be limited to young people who have grown up with the internet and the rise of video games, but this type of addiction is also quite common in adults.
The big question with online gaming addiction is whether it is a legitimate addiction or not. Some people argue that addiction requires some sort of substance that in ingested or introduced into the body by some other physical means. These people argue that online gaming addiction cannot be considered a true addiction because there is no obvious physical dependence. However, I think that we have to consider online gaming addiction to be a true addiction because clearly people are getting addicted to online games. This means that we need to re-evaluate our current definition of the word addiction, in my opinion. After all, the symptoms of online gaming addiction are very similar to those of a physical dependency in that they both cause the addict to crave increased exposure to whatever they are addicted to.
I think that instead of saying that online gaming addiction is not a true addiction because it doesn’t fit the current definition we should instead adapt our understanding of addiction to include this new type of addiction.

Problems

We read a couple of interesting new media articles this week. They both deal with aspects of new media that have caused changes or backlash due to their increased popularity. Basically, both articles deal with problems that have arisen due to some unforeseen technological development concerning new media. Neither of the selections are about peer to peer networking and the problems that it has caused, but they do talk about some similar situations in that the problems arose because no one could have anticipated that these new forms of communication would come to compete with established mediums much less ever be created in the first place.
The first selection is an article on Wired.com called You Tube versus Boob Tube. As you can probably surmise the article talks about how visual entertainment has become popular on the internet through sites like YouTube. It also delves into the problem caused by this development. That problem is that sites like YouTube have begun incorporating advertisements into their sites’ format. Why is this a problem, you ask? It isn’t really a problem for you or me directly, but it does put the television broadcasting companies in an interesting situation. With the increased popularity of sites like YouTube advertisers are much more likely to shift their ads from TV to the internet. Basically, this is another example, like peer to peer networks, of the problems caused by new media that have come about because no one anticipated their arrival. I really liked this article, and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in new media, or just likes to visit YouTube.
The second article is also available from Wired.com. It is called “The Secret World of Lonely Girl.” It is about a show that was started on YouTube. The show consists of a girl who is meant to be high school aged who posts on YouTube regularly. Basically, the show could easily be mistaken for reality and was mistaken by many people. The show was uploaded to the internet via webcam, and was actually recorded in the creator’s bedroom. The star is actually an actress. I really liked the fact that the writer whose room the show was being recorded in actually stopped putting away the stuffed animals, posters, bed sheets, and various other girly things after a while. The problem presented here was whether deceiving people like this via the internet was legal, or not.
Both of these situations are good examples of the problems that new media presents. Maybe problems is the wrong word, though. I think that these simply reflect the evolution of culture and society with time. Although some aspects of new media like peer to peer networks are clearly wrong I think that ultimately we cannot say that all of new media is bad. Instead we have to judge each separate situation on its own.

Blog Assignment Week 9

In his book, Free Culture Lessig defines piracy that is just plain wrong as taking another person’s copyrighted material, copying it, and selling it. He mentions that there is no truly accurate way to condone this type of piracy, though there are a few arguments that could be made for it. The first that he mentions is the fact that the United States did not honor foreign copyrights, but this doesn’t really work since technically our law only dealt with American copyrights. Next he says that this piracy might be condoned since it does little harm to the industry, but this isn’t true in all cases. Finally Lessig shows how this piracy can often have a positive effect on the industry. He gives an example using Microsoft Windows. If a bunch of Chinese acquire Windows through piracy and use it then later on when those people actually buy software then they are more likely to buy Windows than any other software. In the end it is clear that these attempted justifications for piracy just do not work. In the end Lessig points out that this is still piracy, and it is wrong.
Lessig thinks that peer to peer sharing is a completely different case, though. First, he points out that peer to peer sharing is a means to escape the recording industry which has a monopoly on recorded material. He also explains that it is another exploitation of a new technology, and that one major difference is that the material being shared is not actually being sold. I do not necessarily agree with this because although the material is not sold directly sharers are usually required to pay some fee to use the file sharing software.
Finally, Lessig warns that we must decide how much peer to peer file sharing hurts the artist before we decide how to regulate it.

Flash Mobbing?

Our discussions for the past few weeks have concerned memes. If you have forgotten a meme is a theoretical unit of cultural information according to Wikipedia. Generally memes are like viruses in the way that they spread. That is, they spread from person to person seemingly unknowingly. Memes have been around since the dawn of man, and they continue to come about and propagate themselves today.
A specific type of meme that we have been focusing on recently is the flash mob. A flash mob is defined as a group of people who gather in a usually predetermined location, perform some usually brief action, and then disperse according to Word Spy. The first flash mob was organized by a man named Bill Wasik, who claims to work in the culture industry, in a Macy’s department store in downtown Manhattan. He claims that he got the idea for the flash mob from theatre. He was interested in why people got to see performing arts and he wanted to see what would happen if the performances were taken out of the equation. A truly deep question. Wow, Bill, is that the best thing that you have to do with your time?
I must admit I do not fully understand flash mobs, their participants, their reasons, or their implications. I am decidedly biased. I do not understand why they exist or continue to exist beyond my understandings of social interaction. Thus I do not know everything about them , and some people may think that my opinion is narrow.
Here are a few possible reasons for the popularity of flash mobbing. First, maybe it is a result of our society’s descent into autonomy. Is it possible that people are so bored with their everyday lives that they resort to flash mobbing to liven up their day. Maybe people are just so used to entertainment and aesthetic pleasure today that we seek out new ways to find amusement for ourselves. Maybe people do this because they are trying to feel included socially, when their work and everyday life may leave them with a feeling of isolation or exclusion.
One thing is for sure there does not seem to be any clear benefit to the participants of flash mobbing. This seems to lead us to believe that the last possible cause of flash mobbing is the best choice. After all, it is the only scenario that offers some sort of benefit or gain to the participants.
I do not know. In fact, I do not understand the phenomenon much. I am only offering some possible causes.