Over the past ten weeks or so, I had created two hypertexts that were available for public viewing. These hypertexts required me to write essays and incorporate web design for the overall product.

Before this endeavor, I had some background with web design. I maintained a personal website (blog and information about myself and things I liked at the time) about ten years ago. I started out with basic HTML tags and formats, but eventually used Cascading Style Sheets. I even dabbled a little bit with image alterations. My main tools for image creation was Microsoft’s Paint and Jasc’s Paintshop Pro (now made by Corel). I wasn’t very talented, but I thought it was good.

Since it had been almost ten years, I completely forgot how to create CSS and HTML by hand. Thankfully, I was able to use KompoZer to create all my hypertext webpages to bring my ideas to life. The content of my webpages ranged from personal to public.

For my personal hypertext, I focused on the topic of success. I had a short essay I had written in an earlier English course that I wanted to update. I thought it would be appropriate because my ideas of success and what others would think about it pretty much sum of my educational and professional path in life. Keeping in mind that this was going to be available for anyone to view definitely changed the amount of personal details I wanted to share. Instead of successful examples being from my own life, I incorporated prominent individuals who could also be associated with the ingredients I had outlined for success. Upon reflection of this work, I feel like my essay was not the best I could have done and the webpage design was a lot plainer than I originally had hoped. I think that if I had still remembered much of my CSS and design concepts from my past, I would have created something more visually appealing. If I could change the design of this hypertext, I would use a different banner and center all the content. In regards to my essay, I felt uneasy because it wasn’t like writing any other essay. Each sub-topic of success that I wanted to write about had its own page of the hypertext. Readers can jump around and read whichever part whenever they want. So it’s harder to keep a cohesive flow going because the essay component online is not sequential. If I change the essay, I will try to incorporate more transitions that make sense in the online format so that the overall project seems more collective, but it still reflects my essay as if it were a printed document.

The difficulty I had with the transitions of my personal hypertext really influenced the way I approached my podcast hypertext where I addressed a public venue. I created a podcast audio of a tour of the Mountain View public library. Since this was completely impersonal, it was easier to create. I am pleased overall with the general design of this work because the colors are inviting and I figured out how to center the content (which I had wanted to do with my personal hypertext, but didn’t know how at the time). Since I kind of had a better understanding of webpage navigation now, I let my essay components be more independent from each other. The topics of technology, art, and community resources at the library are all common because they can be witnessed at the library, yet they are all different. I feel like my essay could use more of a focus on how these resources help maintain or improve issues in the community. Between my two hypertexts, this podcast project would be my favorite.

Currently, I am working on an analytical hypertext with a couple other Internet Culture analysts. My hope is to use my experience with the personal and podcast hypertexts to create an informative and thought provoking work focused on game addiction and Cory Doctorow‘s For The Win. Then after that, I plan to rework the above mentioned hypertexts to better reflect my writing.

I love to write – poems, short stories (not one of my faves, but I still like it), impromptu essays, and analytical essays. All these are traditional English fair and I feel like my best work isn’t shown as well on an online medium as it could be in print. I think I can only get better from here though since the Internet has been evolving. It makes logical sense to me that advances I can make with my online essays can only improve the way I also write traditionally.

Note: This is 3rd critique/discussion blog entry following FOR THE WIN part 1 and FOR THE WIN part 2

Part 3 “Ponzi” is the culmination of Cory Doctorow‘s novel For The Win. When I first started this conclusion, I was really excited to find out what happens when you have multiple characters/vignettes coming together. Matthew has just come out of jail (probably from a snafu with Boss Wing’s business, but it’s never really stated). He meets up with Lu and Jie who are running around South China. They rally up all the gamer workers (since it seems like most of the Webblie strikes happen in China).  Mala, Yasmin, and Ashok are scrambling around India setting up a “ponzi scheme” that Big Sister Nor thought up. Wei-Dong travelled across the ocean from Los Angeles to China with the tools necessary to activate the troops everyone has been involved in so that they can take over the online gaming industry (economically and by labor). Meanwhile, Cola-Cola game economist Connor Prinkkel is tracking all their moves. Amidst violence and usage of Internet anonymity AND real-life interaction, everyone (ok, not everyone because some characters die — won’t spoil that!) descends upon Mumbai (India) where there’s no concrete ending of what happens next

If you’re confused by the above paragraph, you would be confused by Doctorow’s writing in Part 3. As I was reading, I knew that things were going to get complicated because there were so many characters and locations to keep tabs with. Then Doctorow inserts pieces describing ponzi schemes and overall scams that seem to not be related to the world of gaming or the story line itself. Yet, I think it’s genius that he does that because in the big picture of things, that’s what it all was.

Doctorow’s writing style and themes made it easy for me (and possibly any other reader) to get lost in it all – online community, real life events, and schemes.

As I read, I found it most interesting that perhaps the events in For The Win really do happen in real life so that it’s not just fiction. If you think about it, Dateline NBC always airs specials of the Nigerian con artist who steals money from innocent people simply because he sent them an e-mail enticing them with riches. Yet, our American law enforcement and banking systems can’t track these people and help repair the lives of those who lost the money? How hard is it to track people’s activity on the Internet?

Doctorow does an incredible job describing how gamers and hackers use networks and scrambling techniques to hide their physical location. On the flip side, he writes about Prinkkel’s ability to track the characters’ moves in a game!

Overall, although it was a tedious read because it was 475 pages… it was worth it. I’m not an online gamer, but I’m an avid Internet user. Most of my time is spent on studying chemistry and biology, so it was refreshing to read about a world that is way different from one that I experience on a daily basis. It was definitely like a movie, but I could pace out how fast I thought everything went because I was reading it rather than watching it. Plus, situations regarding online communities, adolescent transformation, economics, and social/political change was thought provoking for me because it helps me to look at Internet culture and its numerous facets in a different light. The possibilities are endless when it comes to interacting online and through technology.

I am very aware that this is going to be my 4th blog post within the past 24 hours. I had no intention to be blogging this much today, but I’ve read For The Win and come across a really interesting article about Facebook privacy and employment.

I saw this video on my Facebook news feed last night. I didn’t watch it. In the past 24 hours, 5 additional people shared it there. I still didn’t watch it. Four hours ago, I heard my husband watching the video over my shoulder. I didn’t walk over there to see what it was about. An hour ago, I checked my sister’s Twitter and #StopKony was what I saw first. So I gave in and watched the video. It was approximately 30 minutes long and at first I was bothered because I’m not really the political activist type, but at the 10-minute mark, I was engaged.

Joseph Kony is a rebel Ugandan leader of The Lord’s Resistance Army. For the past 26 years, he’s kidnapped and forced children of Africa to mutilate and kill others against their will. Thousands of children have been taken from their loving families and instructed to do harm. It’s a humanitarian shame. Kony has gotten away with this because no one in the world knew how to capture him. U.S. forces are in Africa helping the Sudan army find him, but they can only stay there if we let our government know that this is an important issue for us, the people.

I’m posting this to help spread the word, if you haven’t seen it already. Or if you were like me and it took 24 hours to actually watch it. I was amazed at the fact this video was uploaded on March 5, 2012 and two days later (today, March 7, 2012 at 9:40pm) has 11,624,969 views. I really liked that this movement is time sensitive. With the upcoming event on April 20, 2012 I think many, many more people will hear about it and it will lead to Joseph Kony’s capture.

Please watch this because this is a true testament of what Web 2.0 has become. We are able to connect with cultural influences (Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah, Ellen, Tim Tebow, etc),  political influences (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, etc), and people all around the world to shed light on one issue. We are shaping history every time we share this video and tweet/status update about it.

I saw this article, Govt. agencies, colleges demand applicants’ Facebook passwords by Bob Sullivan, on my NBC Bay Area app for iPhone. The article originated in MSNBC’s The Redtape Chronicles – a series about corporations, government, and technology. I really don’t like to read things off of MSNBC (just because I feel like there are more thoughtful sources online – I only use the NBC Bay Area app for local quirky news), but the issue at hand spoke to me. Plus, Sullivan is a technology writer (specializing in identity theft online) and since this blog is about technology and the Internet, I think it fits. I believe the issue at hand correlates with balancing ethics and privacy on the Internet.

The article describes potential employers and academic looking through applicants’ social network profiles. Employers have been asking applicants to provide their log-in information so they can snoop through things the applicant would normally deem private. Thankfully, that was ruled a blatant invasion of privacy so now employers can only look over an applicant’s shoulder during the interview. Employers’ requests are not required, but it challenges one’s ethics and integrity. As an applicant, you don’t have to show what you’re doing on the Internet, but you might want to still show that you’re a willing person. What if there’s something you don’t want to disclose or something you think is perfectly innocent is deemed inappropriate by the interviewer? What if the interviewer wanted to cross the line and dig into your personal information? The pressure of wanting to get a job, especially one that you want, can lead a person to FEEL coerced into showing what they do online. I think ethically you’re selling yourself short as an applicant. As an interviewer, I think there could potentially be conflicts of interest and bouts of wrong judgement.

I feel that since technology and Web 2.0 has been changing so fast in the past decade it is difficult for people to maintain a certain set of guidelines in how one would want to be portrayed and how one would want to behave. In a previous post about social identity, I’ve said that if you don’t have a presence on the Internet then you don’t exist. That’s a scary fact. Ten years ago, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn didn’t even exist. MySpace and LinkedIn launched in 2003; Facebook launched in 2004. Yet their full potential of social networking hadn’t really been reached until a couple years ago. At first these outlets were for people to meet others and have online ties to friends you have in real life. LinkedIn was a way for organizations to post their ads for employment. Nowadays, Facebook is for spreading news among friends and LinkedIn is where you put your resume for employment. You have to sell yourself, but at what cost?

I think it would be extremely scary if it is deemed legal for the government and your employer to have access to your social life. I understand that they already have the information to steal your identity (social security number, address, birth date, legal names, etc), but to control your personal life is definitely pushing it. So I think the technologies and means of communication that we are experiencing are great, but they ought to still require the same amount of ethics, integrity, and respect we had for others in the past. We’re not just online personas, we’re people who think, feel, and do.

(Note: This is an addition to my blog post FOR THE WIN part 1)

Cory Doctorow‘s novel, For The Win, continues with part 2 . His science fiction story still mentions Matthew, Wei-Dong, and Mala but switches focus to secondary characters – Big Sister Nor (labor organizer), Connor Prikkel (Stanford Doctorate drop-out turned gamer economist), Yasmin (Mala’s trusted lieutenant), Ashok (Bollywood celebrity turned union advocate), and Jie (Chinese webbie star who also is a union advocate). With the addition of all these characters, the lives of the initial three become more complicated and intertwined mainly through labor organization and economics.  I think the most interesting theme in part 2 though is how social media allows the virtual gaming world transcend into the physical real world.

Big Sister Nor uses Twitter (not explicitly mentioned, but since Doctorow uses “tweets” I feel it is inferred) to send out information to Webblies (gamer union members) when a factory of gamers are striking. Yasmin (who is part of Big Sister Nor’s inner-Webblies) was Mala’s trusted lieutenant until she sided with Big Sister Nor. Yasmin also uses Twitter and a social network site, Minerva, to see what happens to a Webblie physical strike after an ambush on Mushroom Kingdom (another online game which people around the world play for fun and work). These two fictional events parallel what had happened in Tunisia and Egypt – an issue I had previously blogged about. Big Sister Nor and Yasmin utilize the Internet and its means of communication to bring issues to the forefront. By tweeting/sharing tweets, status updates, pictures, and video clips of these union strikes that initially started online and ended up in the real world is such a sign of the times that the Internet is much more than what it initially started out as. It is really interesting to see from a technological viewpoint how people in a fictional story AND real life can unionize and bring knowledge to the people.

Jie also brings knowledge to the people when she creates her online radio shows/message board communications. She broadcasts online and radio to worker girls all over the world who experience work injustice. This is an interesting storyline that reminds me of podcasts and social change. The revolution will be tweeted, shared, and online!

I recently created a podcast for people to Experience the Mountain View Public Library. This was my first podcast creation and the whole process was very daunting, but after reflecting on the whole experience made me want to do it all over again.

I chose my local public library because I felt like perhaps people are not utilizing library resources as much as they should since practically everything can be accessed on the Internet. So I did a sound scene tour of the surrounding area near the Mountain View Public Library. I recorded my voice with a digital audio recording device. That was neat because you could pick up on cars driving past me, birds chirping above me, a train coming through downtown Mountain View, and people murmuring at the library. I did feel awkward as I recorded what I saw walking through a library where you’re supposed to be quiet, but I got more comfortable in asking library employees about facets of the library.

Editing the audio was very complicated for me. I used Audacity. The program itself was easy to use, but the process of editing was challenging. I re-listened to everything I recorded and tried to put together all the audio pieces I felt flowed in a logical sequence (like an essay). There were some aspects that I enjoyed listening to (a description of Pioneer Park), but decided to cut out because it didn’t feel truly relevant to my topic of the library itself. In retrospect, I feel that I could have improved my audio with music. Everything is just me speaking and some people I heard/spoke to at the library.

There is a hypertext component to my podcast. I wrote about technology, art, and seminars at Mountain View’s library because I thought they were informative and touched upon the ideas that there’s so much more information that can be accessed at a brick-and-mortar library than can be through the Internet. The process of writing these ideas was kind of like “a fish out of water.” I know that I wanted to make these topics into a research/issue-based writing piece, but since it is an online entity I didn’t feel like I could approach it like a traditional essay.

I believe I am a strong writer when it comes to impromptu essays, research, argumentative, etc. That being said I’m actually disappointed in what I created mainly because I don’t feel the hypertext ended up flowing the way I had originally envisioned.

This overall process has barely scratched the surface of a portion of my brain. This realm (creating podcasts/tackling real world issues) isn’t something that I’ve really ever looked into, but I’m intrigued. It was fun and I would do it again. Maybe my next topic could be on something like a rally in Sacramento that would lobby for California’s politicians to keep Cal Grant funding in tact.

Why Mainstream Social Networks Complicate Our Identities, an article on mashable.com (online news site focusing on digital culture, social media and technology) by Jaime Beckland in September 2011 brings light to social media and identity. Beckland is a “Digital and Social Media Strategist” and in doing that he helps companies utilize social media in their businesses. This is ideal in today’s society and Web 2.0. When the Internet was first created, people thought it was primarily going to be used for information and personal web pages. When Web 2.0 hit the world, the focus shifted to what we primarily use the Internet for – social networking/media. If you’re not online, you’re not important … you don’t exist.

Beckland’s article brings up two key points.

#1 You can have different personas for each different social media outlet you use. This stems from the thought that you have a different facet of yourself when you’re at work, school, with friends, with family, and strangers. The way Beckland addressed it though, made me feel like I could potentially have split personalities like how Nicki Minaj raps as different characters. Does this make us better people or make us even more psychologically and maybe even sociologically challenged? We don’t feel like being the family-man today, so I’m gonna tweet as a swinger. Of course, most people who utilize social media probably don’t have multiple personalities to that extreme, but if you’re friends on Facebook with your classmates, co-workers, and family members what if there are things you want to post as your status that might offend one of those groups. I think it all the time… I want to post ” I HATE WORKING ON GROUP PROJECTS,” but I can’t because I’m friends with those people who are pissing me off and what kind of person are they going to think of me now? I used to think that social media was the coolest thing because it is a mix of having your own personal web page with your own ideas and thoughts mixed in with the social aspects of friends.. now I feel like I have to watch what I say because you never know who is reading what you write.

#2 Beckland brings up a good point about social baggage and interpersonal relationships. Oddly enough, this morning I was thinking of a friend of mine in Toluca Lake/Burbank (Southern CA even though I live in Northern CA now). He’s a 19-year-old friend that I made while working at Starbucks. We’re friends on Facebook, but when ever am I going to see or talk to him again? I hope he’s doing well because he and his boyfriend are the sweetest couple in the world, but why are we still friends on FB? Just to keep in contact I suppose, but many of the people we network with these days are people you wouldn’t normally talk to if you saw them on the street. I’m totally guilty of that. I go to church and see one or two of my FB friends, but I’m not going to go out of my way to physically say “hi.” It’s like social media allows us to be people hoarders.

This reading blog has really changed my thinking of how Internet culture affects my thinking and relationship with others. It even makes me wonder about the whole world and where it is going based on technology and sociology.

Cory Doctorow‘s For The Win is a science fiction novel that introduces three main characters Matthew Fong (from China), Wei-Dong “Leonard” (from Anaheim, CA), and Mala (from India) who all play three different online video games, but all have similar struggles. They all become addicted to playing their games and end up getting opportunities to make actual money by doing so. Part I of Doctorow’s novel sets the stage of the game addiction, but also a couple interesting themes of economic and ethical challenges.

First of all, the part of the story where these characters actually make money by playing intrigues me. Is that for real? Can people really make money by just playing video games? It seems legit, but it ultimately brings the characters trouble and long nights of constant playing. I suppose we can just rule out the idea entirely since this story is fiction. It can’t be that easy to make money on a computer. Matthew gets paid by Boss Wing to play games, but also funnels money out of playing Svartalfheim Warriors after-hours. Wei-Dong plays with a group of players in China in a guild. They charge other players in Savage Wonderland for help in leveling up (It’s like paying real money to make your crops grow faster on FarmVille). Mala initially spends her wages from factory work to play Zombie Mecha. She gets so good that she ultimately gets an offer from a man to beat up other players on the game. These situations would be these characters’ ideal situations, until external force shake it up where they have to make ethical/life-or-death choices.

Secondly, I found it interesting that in a turn of events, all three characters get “boxed in.” Matthew gets bullied by Boss Wing’s henchmen and have to either lose everything he’s worked for or become a franchisee. Wei-Dong gets confronted by his parents that he’s addicted to video games. He gets to escape being sent to boarding school, but since he’s just 16, it’ll be difficult for him to start his own life. Mala gets physically attacked by her internet cafe’s night manager and is accused of putting herself out there. Her reputation and job opportunity are put in jeopardy. In all these instances, Doctorow did a good job in making it feel like the characters had to choose between losing all their passion in gaming and surviving the real world. They all seem to have made bargains that allow them to still game at the expense of some sort of freedom in reality.

I wouldn’t have thought I would be interested in this type of novel, but it’s shaping out well. I really like the fact that this book is available in different forms – PDF, e-text, audio book, and a traditional book. I opted to check out the novel from my local library because the whole book is 475 pages. I just can’t see myself reading from an iPad or my computer screen for hundreds of pages at a time.

In 2009, Dr. Ian Bogost wrote an article, The Proceduralist Style, as part of his series Persuasive Games on Gamasutra.com (website about “the art and business of making games”). Bogost is a videogame designer and professor in digital media.  He begins his article with the question “Are games art?” I thought this was interesting because although I play some video games, I don’t really see the appeal of the gamer lifestyle. I would have never thought there could be art in videogames. In his article, he compares the art of videogames to the art expressionism movement. His focus is on the process intensive games where players ought to reflect on themes of the games.

I thought that was kind of profound and lofty, but I guess you could compare the process to watching a movie like Inception. You experience the movie/game and are taken away to an alternate realm. You’re processing the situations and try to figure out how the movie/game is designed to run at the same time as considering what you would do if you were in that situation. Once the experience is over, you might ponder about it or tell a friend. Bogost’s article makes me reflect on why I would play a video game. Honestly, I only play games once in a blue moon to get away (take a brain break) and zone out for an hour or two. I play the Lego Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean, Puzzle Fighter, Mario Party, and Pixel Junk Shooters. These aren’t games that really make me want to think subjectively, but after reading Bogost’s article I can see that games are more than a means to tune out.

Comparatively, an excerpt from Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken (2011) shares a similar idea that videogames can be more than what mainstream society has made it out to be. She finds that approximately half a billion people in our world plays videogames. She describes these gamers as people who are fulfilling human needs that they cannot attain in reality. I thought that was so strange. These people want more out of life, so they play games?! I did enjoy and appreciate that McGonigal writes about Lydians who historically played games to take their minds off of an 18-year hunger issue. So she doesn’t write of games to be an art that can be subjectively experienced, but a vehicle that can help make the real world a better place. Just as games can take one’s mind off a pressing issue, they can be used to improve society and the way things work.

I would have never thought that videogames had more to them than time consumption, graphics, and noise. I’m not gonna take a break from my homework to play a game write now in hopes that I have an epiphany about life, but I am interested to see what gaming can bring to our society and its future.

Second Life is a virtual world where people across the globe can become different people and/or meet others. One can become humans, animals, or objects. There are various styles of an avatar that can be customized – hair, clothes, etc.

My avatar in Second Life is named BonquishaJones. Although she is caucasian in appearance, she is a black woman on the inside. She likes cheetos and long walks on the beach. Bonquisha is originally from Compton, CA and currently resides in New York City. She works at a retail store in a mall. Her main interest is music.

The set up of this virtual world reminds me of The Sims (computer life simulator). I remember playing with that for hours on end, but when it got complicated with extra packs and different versions I tuned out. That’s how I feel about my initial experience with Second Life. I felt like there was too much going on. I understand that one can play games and just explore different environments so that may be why there’s so much to do.

I can definitely see how one could also spend hours on playing on Second Life. You can use it as an escape from the regular world, but how much time do people really have these days?