Monthly Archives: March 2012

As most of us have probably heard by now, there is man by the name of Kony and he is an evil dictator in Africa whom we should all hate. How did we hear about this? what gives the internet the amazing ability to turn the whole world against one person? Once again I believe that we must give all due credit to the efforts of social media.  Im sure that most of us have probably noticed that in college there is no shortage in the field of social activism, but really, how did this video get so popular.

Upon first watching the video Ill admit that I was quite shocked. I thought of Kony as an evil man who should be held accountable for his crimes. But upon further inspection and gather opinions about it from my peers I have still not reached a conclusion. Although the video offers some good evidence as to why Kony should be captured and tried for his crimes, I was confused as to “why now” and it lead me to come up with some interesting ideas as to why this video became so popular. In the United States we value the idea that everyone has an equal opportunity to reach happiness.  In the beginigng of the film, the firlsm director introduces the viewers to hsi son. This serves as a allegory into the idea that in America we live a sheltered existence that is not true for the rest of the world. Recently in the News questions as to the legitimacy of the claims made in the video have arisen.What do you think about Kony 2012?

Is the idea that the world is much worse than the way Americans image it to blame for the popularity of Kony 2012. Is there hidden racism clouding the good intentions of  the American people who are trying to save the dark others in a foreign land? Has invisible children, the company responsible for the film, made any beneficial headway in capturing Kony?

Human beings are social beings, each unique, each misunderstood, and each in desperate need of expression. If i were to go around the world and ask people what they felt was most influential to them in their daily lives, some would name an object like a television or gaming device, others would say family, some say passion and others will say music. Since the egining of time, people have been expressing themselves and connecting with the emotions of others through music.  In the United States music has always been a large part of  our nations history as well. Historians have even said that certain periods of the nations history can be better understood through the context music. In present times, this trend continues to occur, but on a much more massive scale.Although in the present day, much talk about music is done by members of the preceding generation in reference to copyright law (SOPA and PIPA)the creation of music and the emotions that they express has always been more important to me. In the present, many artists have begun to use technology to create new types of music to express emotions and influence history.

When I first began to listen to music, it was through the aid of my friend in middle school, Christopher. Having grown up in a home without a computer during my younger years, when i entered middle school and computers were a requirement I was deeply excited.  Christopher who had already spent alot of time with computers was well trained in most of their functionality and was able to download and create CDs.  So one day I asked him to create me a CD that consisted of a collection of theme songs from our favorite cartoons. The music that I listened to back then was a  mix of different instruments and vocals, and the beginnings of what we now call dubstep. Known for its “wah-wah” like sound Dubstep is bass heavy electronic music, created solely with the use of a computer. The people who create dubstep are known as producers. Producers are people who specialize in the creation of electronic music. Although producers are knwon for mainly working with artists  who supply vocal components to rap and trance music, in the modern day they are used for nearly every type of music.Popular producers such as Skrillex, Porter Robinson and the The Adventure Club generally are very young.  This is important to note because as technology advances, those who are the first to adapt to it are the young. Popular programs that these producers use are similar to Audacity that we used in class. Many famous producers use expensive programs such as Ableton Live, but there are also many amateur producers who take advantage of freeware programs like  Reaper.

Ijn Dubstep artists generally take soudns from videos or other songs and remix them in a creative way. In Skrillex’s new song “Breakin a Sweat”  he uses a snippet of an interview with lead singer of the Door’s who describes a vision of music far beyon his own, hes quoted as saying ” its not going to be a band anymore, its going to be one person witha  bunch of tapes”. This is rather ominous but has interesting implications. Do you think that music has greatly influenced history?

In todays blog im going to talk about why i enjoyed taking English 138 Internet Culture and its unique style of essay writing, the hypertext. So I, like many of the other students in the class i would suppose, chose this class thinking that  would simply fill my requirement for Advanced Writing and finish my Digital Age pathway. However after having taken the class, id say it taught me a lot more than fulfilling any requirement ever could. In this class we spent time talking about advanced topics related to technology and the internet, we looked at the effects of social media on political movements, and even explored the universe of virtual worlds with a unit on gaming. As far as content goes, this class was jam packed with interesting information that a technology person such as myself would love.

One of the most interesting things about this class however were its hypertext projects. For each hypertext project we were asked to create a simple website using a freeware program called Kompozer. We used Kompozer to edit html files, adding images and text to our websites on various topics. For our first hypertext we were to construct a Personal Hypertext that explained something about ourselves. I chose to write about what gaming has meant to me growing up through childhood and into adulthood. Id have to say that i throrughly enjoyed writing this hypertext the most because it let me work with something that i loved and research important information about it. The second hypertext we were asked to create was the Podcast hypertext where we were forced to go into our surrounding environment and into the city of Santa Clara to document one place or event that we thought was significant. I chose to visit our neighboring school San Jose State University. Although this hypertext took a long time to complete in the end i was happy with what I managed to put to together. The final hypertext we were asked to create was the Analytical Hypertext, in which we explored an aspect or theme found in the book For The Win by Cory Doctorow. This was also a good project because it allowed me to work with other students in the class in a  collaborative effort to create a website.

Here is a link to my website:http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/Mreed/

Having recently ended our  fourth unit of Internet Culture on Gaming and Virtual Worlds, I thought it would be imperative to discuss some of my prior experience with online gaming, including some of the sites that i use to keep up with information on MMORPG and other games that i enjoy playing.

First I wanted to start by explaining what an MMORPG is to those of you who have not been reading this blog. An MMORPG is a massively multiplayer online role playing game, its a game where thousands of users all pretended to be some type of character in a virtual world can interact and play with one another in real time through the internet. I know what your thinking, “wow why on ear would anyone ever want to do that?.. when they could just go outside and enjoy the real world!” My answer to this question as a kid was, the real world is boring. This was because in the real world i was limited, i could only stray so far from the watchful eye of my parents. It was for my safety, yes, however when kids are growing up they seek new environment and experience in order to learn. Thus i began to manifest myself in online gaming as “blinddagger” in the online game Runescape online.  A link to runescapes official site can be found here at Runescape.com .Inearly 2004 runescape was still in its classic version meaning that it was a 3d game taht used 2d sprites made using the JAVA program made by Sun Microsystems. Runescape was a fantasy world in which you palyed as either a knight a mage an archer, or even all three. You fought monsters such as goblins, dragons and evil dwarves for items and gold to one day obtain the strongest armor in the game, Rune. While i enjoyed Runescape for its subtleties one day i found that i had been playing for too long and needed a new experience so left it behind.

One i entered highschool i began to use an MMORPG news site to keep me more informed at the games i loved. Massively.com established in November 2007 is a collection of experts in the filed of MMORPG and PC Gaming News coverage. They provide links to updates that games all around the world provide as well as share interesting stories submitted by players worldwide about there experiences in MMORPGs.

In the second part of Cory Doctorow’s book For the Win he begins with the story of Big Sister Nor. Big Sister Nor is a teenage girl from Singapore who works at one of the largest gold farming conglomerates in all of Asia, but is fed up with the poor conditions that she is forced to work under. In countries like Singapore and China, people among lower social status, especially youths have hard times trying to survive. Doctorow describes the nights in Singapore as riddled with crime and other illegal activities. Judging from Doctorow’s description many of us not from China or Singapore would think that being a  gold farmer then was pretty good profession. However, this is not the truth at all.

After doing some research on the conditions that gold farmers are subjected to, i found that there are an estimated 100,000 gold farmers in China today and that while earnings for virtual items in games are estimated at 900 million, the average gold farmer only makes 145 usd a month (http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/documents/di_wp32.pdf).  Unlike many of the gold farmers that Big Sister Nor works with, she has an education and seeks to use it as a  means to better her situation as well as the situation of the other gold farmers forced to deal with horrible working conditions all across Asia. With the rise in popularity of a Mar themed MMORPG in Brazil, Nor sees an opportunity to finally take charge of her situation.  Inspired by the first ever workers union the IWW (Industrial World Workers Union), Big Sister Nor decides to name the workers union for gold farmers the IWWWW ( International Workers of the World Wide Web). Doctorow states that after Nor established the union is quickly gained nearly 20,000 members and qucikly became a force to be reckoned with.

After establishing a strike that was facilitated through the use of the online games the workers used to make a living ( they collaborated through online gaming chat functions). Big Sister Nor created the idea that if workers were united against their corrupt bosses, they could actually achieve something beneficial to creating more fair and equitable gold farming practices world wide.  This would allow workers to make a decent wage as well as not forcing them to work for excruciatingly long hours, and making sure that the conditions in which they work as suitable.

Before there was ever  a written culture or a digital culture human beings communicated through much less technological means. Generally when people has thoughts, feelings, stories, histories and even poems, they were forced to rely upon their own memories and word of mouth to sustain the authenticity of their content.This content was passed down from generation to generation through face to face contact, creating what we would today call an oral culture.

While in present times we tend to think of writing as a very low-tech process, constrained by the compulsory need for pen and paper it is my belief along with other technologists that this is in a process of great change. Being raised in the 1990’s  m school systems integration with computers was just beginning as i reached middle school. During class we only  used computers for heavily structure projects that involved creating websites and learning excel spreadsheet commands. However in my middle school computer class we never really thought about computers or technology as being a tool for writing, or at least the idea was never really introduced.It wasn’t until the end of high school and the beginning of college that i began to see the world around me become so fixated on the idea of user created writing, covering an unprecedented amount of topics.

As sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and personalized blogs like Xanga became more popular I realized that writing could be done anywhere and by anyone with the aid of technology. It was for this reason that i was excited about venturing to a local area and documenting what i was there in my Podcast Hypertext.

For my Podcast Hypertext i decided to venture out past the SCU campus and record what it was like on a different college campus, so i chose to observe SJSU ( San Jose State University). At first i as a little confused about what types of observations the assignment was looking for but once i got there i was overwhelmed by the amount of readily available observations i could make. SJSU’s campus was bustling with students talking with friends, heading to class, and people walking their dogs much like on SCU’s campus. There were so many observations that i could have made that it felt as though when i was editing the podcast i was losing a lot of valuable information. However once i finished editing the podcast i felt that the observations i did make were very easy to write about and that all in all i had done a good job on learning to write in the field.

My project:http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/Mreed/podcasthyperhome.html