I have always thought of video games as a waste of time. I grew up with an older brother who in my opinion I considered a video game addict. I saw how video games became a distraction and took over much of his time.  Today there are over 174 million gamers in the United States and it continues to grow with each generation. The average young American in the United States spends thousands of hours by the time they reach 21 years of age. Jane McGonigal, a known game designer, shows that video games do in fact have the power to improve the daily lives of many in his book Reality is Broken. He states that they have the power of fixing problems such as depression, obesity, and social problems.  The reason why video games are so addicting is because they satisfy the needs of many. They give us a feeling of success, progress, pride, and social connections with other people who play the game.

There are so many games out there that people are not aware of. Not all games evolve around violence and war; many are about topics that involve learning new things and becoming optimistic. These games make us want to work hard and try our best to beat the obstacles we are faced with. Since gaming is so influential it is out hands to create video games that can change the world. Some games that McGonigal introduces involve games the focus on several problems the world faces today such as poverty and climate change. These games help us brainstorm and think of how we can solve these problems.

Based off a past reading we had by Dr. Ian Bogost,I believe he would have a lot of similar opinions as McConigal regarding video games. He believed that even though many people disagree with video games because they can be addicted and “just a game”, video games are important because they give us another view of what the real world is like. Video games puts us in situations that we may not experience in the world. This is a way of preparing someone for what is out there.

According to McGonigal the future belongs to the people that play, understand, and design video games. These are the people that overcome challenges and are great at problem solving. People who don’t play games in her opinion are at a huge disadvantage. I don’t completely agree with this; however, I do support video gamers a lot more than before. Gaming has become one of the largest entertainment businesses in the world and has made a change in the lives of many. I do believe that McGonial’s ideas are very wise and can help reform the educational system. We could possibly integrate gaming into our education by having an hour of video gaming a day. This would help build all the great benefits that come from gaming.

I will always remember my childhood education when my class and I would take trips to the library. A few times out of the year, my teacher would assign us to rent out an autobiography book and write a paper on the person. We obviously assumed all of the information was accurate based on the fact that it was an autobiography. Now the world wide web provides us with the opportunity for people to publish stories about themselves online. This has increased sensitivity to the multimodal nature of storytelling. Dr. Ruth Page, a lecturer at the University of Leicester, wrote the essay “Stories of the Self on and off the Screen” which focused on how personal narratives have been emerging through the web. Stories are now told on “discussion boards, personal blogs, as part of community projects, contributed to historical archives, created as digital stories not to mention literary forms of autobiography which may (or may not) present themselves as fictional.”

This essay focuses on three narratives available in electronic form via the internet and describes their use in pedagogic contexts. All three are autobiographies but formatted in different ways. These include a written memoir in which the reader navigates through the narrator’s life by clicking on illustrations of the body, another involves the viewer to navigate through the narrator’s life by clicking on a deck of cards that represents a story, and the last one is a blog written by women with cancer. Dr. Ruth mentions how these autobiographies do a great job of attracting audiences emotionally. The bad thing is that we cannot rely on the web because we don’t know exactly how much of this information is accurate. There have been several instances in which people have claimed to be writing about their life but turns out all of it was a lie.  “The tensions between role play and authenticity in relation to online identity thus draw fresh attention to the medium-specific reader expectations involved in constructing mental profiles of characters in personal narratives.” It  has become difficult to know when an electronic text is actually ‘natural’ storytelling

With the improvement of technology there is now an  influence of sound, image and movement within these stories. Adding in photos gives the reader a feeling of what the character is actually like. Even though this is added, it is not reliable. A man once claimed to write about his life as a young girl with cancer. Photos were included and he had many readers who had sympathy and compassion for this young girl. Sadly, all of the information was false. It is important that us as readers always remember that not everything online is real. If people lie about themselves in reality, what makes you think they wont online?

Games have always been a great alternative to learning something. I remember being a young child and enjoying learning something through the process of playing a game rather than reading about the subject. Not only was it interactive but also very entertaining. Today video games have become an alternative way of learning real life experiences and dilemmas. I personally am not a video gamer, but I have seen several people who are close to me learn many real life situations through this. It’s surprising to know that something animated and unreal can be so real and influential to another.

Dr. Ian Bogost, a designer and media philosopher, has written several books regarding the topic of video games. Even though many people disagree with video games because they can be addicted and “just a game”, Bogost thinks video games are important because they give us another view of what the real world is like. Video games puts us in situations that we may not experience in the world. This is a way of preparing someone for what is out there. Bogost saw that even his son faced a real world dilemma while playing video games and he learned how to overcome this problem. Video games have the power to help us “make arguments, to persuade, and to express ideas” (The Rhetoric of Video Games, 137).Not all video games involve violence and racing cars, they come in a variety of different genres. Many of these games can be as influential and inspiring one to do something similar in the future. It is important the children get the support from their parents and teachers to help them critique the game and apply it to real life issues.

I agree with Bogost to a certain extent. Even though video games can teach a valuable lesson, sometimes people get too obsessed with the idea of gaming. They are so hooked to these games that they treat real life situations as just a game. In video games you either win or lose but if you lose you have the power of going back and trying again. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to real life situations.

Being a college student I am constantly given assignments to write a paper on a certain topic that I may have never even heard about. Rather than worrying, my first reaction is to Google the term. This does not only apply to me, but to most college students. Thankfully, everything is found on the web today. Even though it is easy to access this information, I do not believe the work is authentic.

John Pedro Schwartz, a professor at the American University of Beirut and Olin Bjork, a professor at Santa Clara University wrote the article “ Writing in the Wild: A Paradigm for Mobile Composition” which suggests how ones writing is much more authentic when in a different setting other than the usual (dorm room, library,  coffee shop).  With the advancements in technology such as laptops, iPod’s, and smartphones, people are writing their assignments in their room or the library and being influenced by second sources off the web. Schwartz and Bjork suggest that students should research in a new way that involves experience and setting.

Recently in one of my classes I was given the assignment to write about the famous Mexican holiday Dia De los Muertos. I have never celebrated this holiday and so I was relying on researching it online to gather most of my information. A day before the paper was due and I had already finished writing it I was given the opportunity to celebrate the holiday on campus. I took a printout of my paper and wrote down extra information of my experience. I ended up rewriting my paper while being at the event and experiencing it live.  Doing this gave me a different experience rather than writing it in my room and being influence by other sources. I definitely agree with the argument in the article that,

“students can better perceive and learn to challenge their social, cultural, and historical locations when they research, write, and even publish on location.”

It would be a wonderful idea of more students followed this advice and changed their setting when writing a paper.Writing in the usual place such as your room or the library lacks creativity.  Being able to write in a different location gives one the opportunity to write thought a different lens.

Today, written texts are one of the most popular ways of communicating with others. It can be seen in emails, texts, letters, or simply through the social media. Written texts range from formal texts, informational texts, or through statuses in the social media. The use of the internet continues to grow each day. More people are becoming obsessed with updating people about their lives as well as using the web to expand their knowledge. Through the web people are able to communicate with millions of others through websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.

The internet is filled with millions of articles, electronic texts, books, etc. These are several of the different forms of texts that we are offered online which have become very helpful to the vast majority of people. Professor of English Language and Linguistics, Svenja Adolph’s, wrote Introducing Electronic Text Analysis  to present the study of text and discourse carried out with the use of computers. She explains how we use computers to analyze electronic texts through the language used. Technology continues to improve and we are introduced with many resources that can help make this possible by analyzing texts and the languages used. Analyzing texts can also be referred as corpus linguistics which is an important part of research projects as well as the different types of languages people use when communicating. She explains,

“access to computer resources and electronic texts has led to a considerable change in the way in which research in the arts and humanities and in the social sciences had been conducted over the past two decades” (9)

Corpus linguistics helps one understand the information and use of language available to us. It amazes me how the web consists of so much data that cannot be analyzed by a human being but rather through a software program. These programs find trends, word frequencies, patterns, and word lists that are commonly used. Many of these subtexts have personal meanings behind the words used.

 Before reading the first three chapters of Adolph’s book, I never really knew so much work went behind the language used in electronic texts. It is an interesting subject that I hope to learn much more of.  

Richard A. Lanham, author of The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information, explains how society has gone from a materialistic society to a more informative one. Lanham’s main point in his first chapter is that we are not living in an information economy, but rather in an attention economy. Today many people in society are lacking attention, for, attention is the resource needed to fully understand all the available information. Lanham characterizes the information economy by “stuff” or substance and the attention economy by “fluff” or style. Stuff and fluff have undergone a “figure/ground shift”. Style has become much more important than substance as time progresses. Both play an important role for communication in any media; however, style is what captures people’s attention. Since the internet, people have been able to access so much information and the problem is not knowing how much of it is actually trustworthy.

Attention economy is beginning to form new business techniques in advertising, media, and design. The best way to grab ones attention it through communication. Entertainment alone grabs our attention. We see this in journalists, politicians and most importantly professors.  What exactly is it that grabs our attention? The answer is rhetoric. There are various kinds of rhetoric but some work better than others. Lanham explained,

“My own way here will follow my own discipline, the history of human expression, oral and literate— ‘rhetoric.’ It has traditionally been defined as the art of persuasion. It might as well, though, have been called the economics of attention. I argue here that, in a society where information and stuff have changed places, it proves useful to think of rhetoric precisely as such, as a new economics. How could it be otherwise? If information is now our basic ‘stuff,’ must not our thinking about human communication become economic thinking?”

Back then, Greek and Roman orators used rhetoric by using their memory and voice to be heard. They had to appeal their audiences and convince them that what they spoke of was true. However, today many things have changed because it takes very little to persuade somebody. It can be obtained with simply a good design. A design of a website for example can catch the viewers’ attention quickly. This is honestly very sad to realize because people can easily believe something and in the end be dissatisfied with their outcome. If society continues to carry this mentality who knows what the future has in store for us.

Quintilianus, a Roman rhetorician, wrote the twelve- volume textbook concerning rhetoric known as  Institute of Oratory. His work primarily deals with the theory and practice of rhetoric. He defines rhetoric as “a good man in speaking”. He doesn’t refer to rhetoric as something that only serves for the purpose of politics and persuasion for the truth but rather sees it as an art. He believed “no man, unless he be good, can ever be an orator.” However, there are many situations in which someone can be using rhetoric, yet one might disagree in the point they are trying to communicate. Even though one is not persuaded, one can still acknowledge that the person used great rhetoric skills. Adolf Hitler was far from truthful but was still considered one of the greatest orators in history. Unfortunately, when it all boils down, oratory is an unrestricted art that will always be used by others to gain power or advantage of others in society.  In a perfect world only good people would be the ones to persuade others.

Cicero wrote De Oratore to describe the ideal orator and imagine him as a moral guide of the state. He understood that the power of persuasion was the ability to manipulate others in critical political decisions. One man’s powerful words can be so influential and can affect a community as a whole with solely persuasion. He believed that a perfect orator should have moral principles as well as being an expert of rhetorical technique and knowledge. This is similar to Quintilian’s belief that moral and ethical development is the most important aspect of oratory and rhetorical skill.

 Quintilian viewed Cicero as the “perfect orator” even though others disagreed. In the Second Oration Cicero gave a speech to the Romans about Lucias Sergius Caralina’s plot of overthrowing the Roman government. He wanted justice and was willing to do whatever it took to protect the people even if it took speaking against the government to protect his nation. During his second oration, he tells the Romans to fight against the evil. He knew that he could “fix and heal” these people, but only if they wish to hear him through his speech. Cicero was a wise man because he spoke to the people in a way that would benefit them. By appealing to their emotions, he persuaded many people to believe in him. At one point in his speech, he bent the truth in order to attract the people’s attention and gain their support. This supports Quintilian belief of,  

 “Reason may find cause to justify even that which appears objectionable when first stated—that a good man, in defending a cause, may sometimes incline to withhold the truth from the judge. If anyone feels surprised that I advance this opinion (though this is not mine in particular, but that of those whom antiquity acknowledged as the greatest masters of wisdom), let him consider that there are many things which are rendered honorable or dishonorable, not by their own nature, but by the causes which give rise to them.”

In my opinion, a perfect orator should always speak with the truth because if one is not honest the truth will eventually come out and people will lose your trust. Unfortunately, sometimes one must lie a minor lie in order to sound appealing to others especially when you have competition. Socrates believed that good rhetoric involves connecting with your audience and having knowledge in what it is you will be speaking about. I agree with him because if you plan on persuading others about something and you are not knowledgeable on that subject, you will look like foolish.

Socrates, a philosopher of Athens, is considered to be one of the wisest men of all time.  Today most of his teachings come from the dialogues of his most famous pupil, Plato.  The Phaedrus, written by Plato, is a dialogue between the main protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus. One day Lysius, a renowned orator, gave a speech about love as he was walking through Athens. Phaedrus heard this speech and shared it with Socrates who critiqued and rejected it.  They began to converse about love but immediately went off tangent to discuss the art of rhetoric and how it should be practiced.

Socrates, the philosopher, was constantly questioning things and knew very well how to persuade others with his wisdom. As he spoke to Phaedrus about rhetoric he persuaded him to think just as he did. Phaedrus at first admired Lysius’ speech about love but once Socrates pointed out the defects it contained he had changed his mind. Socrates made it very clear that one should always speak of the truth especially when persuading others. Unfortunately, the true nature consists of evil and lies. The art of rhetoric should always be truthful. Lythsias’ speech had many rhetorical errors such as not distinguishing between classes. He should have started his speech with defining love but instead stated it in the end. Socrates thought it was important for speeches to answer questions clearly and believed that oratory was a gift from nature which comes from philosophy. He referred to rhetoric as medicine because medicine defines the nature of body and rhetoric of the soul which should give an exact description of the nature of the soul.

“The art of enchanting the soul, and therefore the orator must learn the differences of human souls by reflection and experience—they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man. Having proceeded thus far in his analysis, he will next divide speeches into their different classes: “Such and such persons,” he will say, “are affected by this or that kind of speech in this or that way,” and he will tell you why. The pupil must have a good theoretical notion of them first, and then he must have experience of them in actual life, and be able to follow them with all his senses about him, or he will never get beyond the precepts of his masters.” https://dl.dropbox.com/u/25004836/Phaedrus.pdf

Another article which focused on the art of rhetoric is Aristotle’s Rhetoric, also known as a Greek treatise on the art of persuasion. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, defines rhetoric as the counterpart of dialect and mentions that all men attempt to discuss statements but in order to maintain them they must defend themselves and attack others. In order to persuade others one must be able to demonstrate why they are correct. Even if one is not 100% sure of their answer they must always go with their natural instinct and be able prove to others that they are correct.  This differs from Socrates’ point of view that poets, orators, and legislators compositions must always be based on the truth. Aristotle states that the things that are true and things that are better are, by their nature, practically always easier to prove and easier to believe in. He introduces the term enthymeme, an informally stated syllogism with an unstated assumption that must be true for the premises to lead to the conclusion. Here the argument is missing because it is assumed.

Danah Boyd, the author of “A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium” defines blog from a variety of perspectives. A blog can be defined in numerous ways which makes it difficult to understand the actual meaning since it has been conceptualized by the media, researchers, tool developers, and practitioners. She interviewed a total of sixteen bloggers from a diverse set of backgrounds to learn what their definition of blogging was. Blogging is not just an online journal to them but somethng more personal.  Boyd explains that a blog is not another a form of communication but rather a medium through which communication occurs. She explains in her article, “In the context of communication, a medium is the channel through which people can communicate or extend their expressions to others. Examples of mediums include paper, radio, and television. In McLuhan’s terms (1964) a medium is an “extension of man” that allows people to express themselves. Blogs are precisely this; they allow people to extend themselves into a networked digital environment that is often though to be disembodying. The blog becomes both the digital body as well as the medium through which bloggers express themselves.”

Danah Boyd speaking at ETech

http://reconstruction.eserver.org/064/boyd.shtml