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.

Here is my Wii-ized Steven Seagal.

Visual Essays

This week we have focused on visual composition, specifically the visual essay. According to Wikipedia, a visual essay is a set or series of photographs that are intended to tell a story or evoke a series of emotions in the viewer. A photo essay will often address a certain issue or attempt to capture the character of a place, event, or process. A photo essay can be comprised solely of photos, it can be a series of photos accompanied by text captions or notes, or it can be a long text based essay accompanied by photos to help convey the point of the essay. Photo essays do not necessarily have to be arranged so that they must be viewed in a particular order. They can be arranged so that their meaning is clear in any order, or they can be arranged so that they must be viewed in an order to present the intended point most effectively.
It is important to recognize that all photo essays are collections of photos, but not all collections of photos are photo essays. For example, a slide show showing pictures of a war torn country would be an example of a photo essay meant to evoke emotions in the viewers and might not need to be viewed in a particular order to get its point across. A photo essay meant to describe a process like how to play baseball would be an example of a photo essay telling a story, and would probably need to be viewed in some order to make sense to its viewers.
In class we were supposed to come up with our own photo essay. We were split into groups of four and given the opportunity to choose our own topics. My group decided to make a photo essay of a process with mild humor. We picked ultimate Frisbee, a sport similar to football, as our topic. We decided that we wanted to show that the sport is easy to learn, and then show some photos of a game in progress. Since there were only four group members, one of which had to take the pictures, it was somewhat difficult to depict an actual game, but we did it as best we could. Before we actually took the pictures we brainstormed on what images that we needed to include in our essay. Then we went out and took the pictures. Finally we uploaded the photos onto Flickr, arranged them, and added captions.
Overall, think that visual essays are superior to essays comprised solely of text since they contain images. I have already discussed they differences, advantages, and disadvantages of images and text in previous posts.

Blogs Revisited

I want to share a little more information about blogs with whoever may read this. I have already talked about the history of the blog and how blogs have changed over time. I mentioned that the first blogs were usually lists of links followed by some sort of commentary, whether it is a response or critique, of the information contained in the related link. I mentioned how there are many, many different kinds of blogs today with many different formats as a result of the incredible ease in which a person can create a blog today. For example, many blogs follow the original format of links with some commentary about the ideas presented in the links, but still more blogs are simply online journals where bloggers can spill their guts. They can write anything that they want.
These two examples of modern blogs may seem quite different at first, but they share a commonality. They both likely contain links to sites of other blogs. In fact, this property of blogs that was so common in early blogs remains a staple of the blog today. The fact that blogs are usually obscure and difficult to find using a search engine further exaggerates the importance of the link as a tool for discovery in the blogging world today.
Links are how most blogs are discovered. They are the currency of the blogging community. The easiest way to find interesting blogs is usually to find a poplar blog and explore its links. Little known bloggers strive to get links to their blog onto popular blogs, and for good reason. Getting a link to your blog onto a popular blog is almost guaranteed to increase the number of hits that your blog will receive. Not only because of the number of visitors to the popular blog, but because of the reputation of the popular blogger. In general, blogs may be more similar to a spider’s web than THE Web itself since they are navigated largely by passing from blog to blog using links. What if popular blogs or archives charged a fee to post a link to blogs?
Another characteristic of today’s blogs is their tendency to form social alliances. This simply means that often bloggers will post links to other blogs in exchange for a link to their blog being placed on that blog. It makes sense because it benefits both bloggers. Both gain from any traffic that the other blog receives.

History of Blogs

Hello again. Well, the first essay is over and our focus in class this week has been on blogs. Our reading assignment dealt with the origins and history of the weblog, and outlined the different types of weblogs as well as some common uses for blogs. In this week’s installment I will try to summarize the history of weblogs and give some information about what weblogs are commonly used for, and why they are a noteworthy form of new media.
In late 1997 there were only a few sites on the web that we would define as blogs today. These sites were not linked, and they were largely unknown to the average internet browser. The start of the blog revolution can be traced back to Jesse James Garrett, who began compiling a list of sites that were similar to his (sites that consisted of links to a site or article and commentary). Jesse sent his list to a friend named Cameron Barrett who published the list of links on his own website, CamWorld. This list contained the 23 blogs known to exist as of 1999.
More and more people found out about blogging and began their own blogs. Soon there were thousands of blogs on the internet. As blogging became more and more popular, naturally, tools to make it easier and more available were created. In 1999, Pitas launched the first free build-your-own weblog site, which made it possible for anyone to maintain a blog. Shortly after that many other similar sites were created, including blogger, the site used for this blog. The first blogs were what we would consider link-driven blogs. They almost always consisted of a link to some web page accompanied by some sort of commentary about the page. Usually these were pages that the blogger wanted to bring to the attention of anyone who happened to read the blog.
The other form of weblog that has become quite popular today is the journal style blog. Blogger was a pioneer in proliferation of this style of blog. Whereas some of the first blog making tools required a link to accompany any commentary, in a journal style blog the blogger posts a thought, often without any links but often with, which can be about anything. Some bloggers make posts about things that they happen to notice on their way to work or about their favorite recipes, for instance.
It is easy to see how blogs can be useful sources of information, or just fun. In fact no-one really knows what the future of blogging has in store. But it seems that blogging has caught on with the mainstream public. I think that it is safe to say that blogging will be with us for a while.

Response to Essay 1

Our first essay is over whether or not we agree with Mitchell Stephens’ assessment of the future of internet video. In his book The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word Stephens asserts that in the future internet video will provide us with a greater perspective of the world. We have been asked to agree or disagree with this assertion and provide specific examples to back up our claim.
I agree with Mitchell Stephens’ claim that internet video will provide greater perspectives on the world. I think that because of the rise of Web 2.0 it is inevitable for greater representation to come about simply because of the ease in which a person can upload video to sites like YouTube. As these sites become even more popular and accessible around the world the greater variety video that will be posted will definitely broaden our global perspectives.
Another reason for this perspective broadening stems from the inherent superiority of images and therefore video in conveying emotions in simple fashion. Even though written accounts of events are very good at describing things, seeing a video of an event can show things that would have gone unnoticed in a written account. For example, when we read an author’s account of something he believes in we get the idea that he is trying to convey, but do we see the look on his face when he is talking about something he believes in. The answer is no. The truth is that sometimes video can have the effect of revealing things about something that the written word cannot.
This fact seems clear when we consider just what exactly images and words are. Images are usually representations of something else. In the case of a photograph or a video, they are exact replicates of something that is or has been real. But they can also be representations of abstract ideas or things that are not real at all. In the case of words, they are merely characters that represent another form of code, the language. Therefore it becomes more clear as to why images, and therefore video, can be more truthful and elemental representations of an event.
Of course, one could argue that the future of internet video is bleak as well for any number of reasons. Maybe the corporate conglomerates who will undoubtedly come to control the industry will limit the uploading process. Maybe the sites will become so saturated with ads and distracting features that the sites will merely lose popularity. The truth is that only time will tell.

Week 3

Our class discussions and reading assignments this week have dealt with images and text and their relationship with each other, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. For example, there are many ways to describe an airplane. One could write a description of an airplane, a history of airplanes, a description of how a jet functions, or any number of things that give information about planes. One could also show how airplanes fly using an image or diagram. The point is that both written words and images can be effective ways to represent an idea.
Sometimes words are more effective in communicating an idea than images. For example, it would be difficult to describe ideas like those in the Declaration of Independence using images alone. Imagine the confusion that the King of England would have experienced had the Founding Fathers sent a picture book to say that they wanted to emancipate themselves from the British Empire. Clearly this is a case in which words are far more effective than any image or number of images can be.
On the other hand, sometimes an image is far more descriptive than words in communication an idea. The old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” is often the case. For example, graphs are common ways that people use images to understand something more quickly and effectively. A line graph showing a company’s earnings is much easier to understand than a written or oral expression of the figures would be. This stems from the fact that humans are visual thinkers. The proportions of the graphs allow us to simultaneously process and compare a lot of information at once.
We must keep in mind, though, that an image can have any number of meanings depending on things like point of view. For example the period is used in the English number system to represent a decimal point, and the comma is used to separate groups of three digits like hundreds, thousands, millions, and so on. However, in many other countries the roles of these two images are reversed. Another example would be that of the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting can mean many different things to many different people.
In my opinion, words and images aren’t as different from one another as they may seem. Are written letters not simply a type of picture/image? The important thing to realize is that words and images are simply tools that we can use to effectively express our ideas. We must understand that each has its advantages and disadvantages, and instead of trying to use one or the other exclusively we should instead seek a middle ground where we can use a combination of both to effectively express our ideas.

Fire in the Hole

We have been asked to discuss our feelings regarding the “Fire in the Hole,” prank that seems to be sweeping the country at the moment. The prank involves pulling up to a drive-thru window and tossing either the ordered beverage or a pre-made mixture of pepper sauce and alcohol at the worker in the window. The lack of ethics involved here is disturbing. This may have started as a harmless prank, but it seems to have escalated into something that is legitimately dangerous. Police consider this an act of harassment. In addition, the pranks are often recorded and posted on the internet which only serves to garner attention and further humiliate the worker involved.
Things like this are only giving the media a tool to disrepute our generation and posting these pranks on sites like YouTube is really about the immaturity of the pranksters. But, when we look for a bad guy we needn’t look farther than the media that spreads the word on “pop” pranks like this. If there was no coverage of this then it would be far less widespread. Stories like this should be shown once with a clear warning and never again. However I think that it is not right for the media to associate our entire generation with something like this prank.

Blog Week 2

This week the class was presented with an image by Barbara Kruger which is untitled, but is referred to as “questions.” You can easily find this image through Google’s image search. The image consists of an American flag with the phrase, “look for the moment when pride becomes contempt,” replacing the stars, and questions like, “who is free to choose,” “who is beyond the law,” and” who is housed,” replacing the stripes. Our task was to decide whether the words compliment the image, or vice-versa. I responded by saying that the image magnifies the meaning of the words. I think this because while these questions have a lot of meaning behind them, the presence of the flag broadens the viewers understanding of the topic. In other words the image addresses the feeling that our government has taken pride to an extreme to the point that we think that it is our responsibility and our right to police the rest of the world, and make all of the decisions because we see ourselves as better than the rest of the world. In other words, our pride has led us to contempt as the image hints at.
I do not necessarily believe that the government is making the wrong moves, but I think that we are causing a lot unnecessary animosity to be directed toward us because of the way we have handled some situations. More importantly, I think that we need to focus more on protecting America itself instead of trying to targeting everyone who dislikes our country. After all, this strategy doesn’t seem to be working (the group responsible for 9/11 has yet to be brought to justice). My point is that we will never be able to make it so that everyone thinks that America is the greatest place in the world, but we can make sure that everyone in the United States loves America by giving them a reason to.
On a lighter note, we were supposed to read the online article, “Taking the You out of YouTube,” which is about the recent sale of the new media monster YouTube to Google. The article’s main topic is what will happen to these Web 2.0 companies as they are assimilated into the giant corporations like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Basically, the article presents two possible outcomes of these buyouts. One is that the corporations will take the “you” out of these online places and overflow the sites with ads. An alternative is that the vast networking power of these conglomerates will actually improve the quality of the site. Only time will tell.

Blog Week 1

I recently read the short story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” written by Jorge Luis Borges. In it Borges describes a reality in which all possible outcomes of every possible action can, and do exist in some alternate reality. This was the beginning of the hypertext novel, although it is not a hypertext novel in itself. The idea is that of a character in the story named Ts’ui Pen. This character was said to devote thirteen years of his life to the creation of a novel and a maze. Eventually, the protagonist realizes that the novel and the labyrinth are one in the same. This is the main idea behind the hypertext novel. A novel with no real end, but instead a never-ending circular path of cause and effect. This idea is important, in my opinion, because it introduces the idea of divergent reality, and cause and effect.
I think that the author’s point was that every cause entails at least one, and in his reality infinitely many, effects. A philosopher would have a field day with this work because of the broad ideas contained within, but its real contributions may be the ideas themselves and their connections to modern technology, like the game Zork, created by the Programming Technology Division of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. I am not proposing a connection, but the ideas are similar. The obvious difference is that the game Zork relies on specific inputs and outputs, whereas Borges’ reality was said to contain infinitely many convergent and divergent paths like a very large garden. Overall, I thought that “The Garden of Forking Paths” was interesting and insightful.
I have also read an excerpt from the first chapter of Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a Traveler,” which was a difficult read. Although its connection to the other selections is obvious it lacks the depth that “The Garden of Forking Paths” had. Though, to be fair I must say that I only read an excerpt from the first chapter, and it is unfair to judge it based solely on that. In this excerpt the author describes the most likely scenarios that led the reader to seek out and buy the book. This book is very unorthodox in this way because instead of a traditional third person narrative, the author interacts with the reader, which makes it interesting. The author’s purpose seems to be to get the reader to think about what a book should be. He proves that a traditional novel is not the only way a book can be organized. It is similar to “The Garden of Forking Paths,” because the author presents several possible reasons for a particular action which shows the convergence idea of Borges’ short story.

Hi again, I have clarified the purpose of this blog. I will be postion weekly in response to course readings and discussion questions in my Engl 108 class at Purdue. I am really excited about this because it is my first blog. The focus of the class, and by extension this blog, is "new media" and the role this technology plays in todays world. New media basically refers to all of the new forms of communication and expression that have appeared as technology has evolved.
Here is a little information about me. I am a freshman at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. I am from a small town near Terre Haute, Indiana. My high School had less than 400 students total, and less than 100 in my graduating class. I love playing guitar in my free time as well as fishing, bicycling, and playing video games.
Well, that's about it for now. I will update soon.

Welcome

Hello to all. I have started this blog for my English 108 class at Purdue University. I don't know exactly what this blog will consist of yet, but i will make a new post soon.