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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

In Jane McConigal’s book, Reality is Broken she exlores a recently exploding phenomenon of online gaming anlooks at its various social impacts and implications toward the future. When many of us think of online gaming, we tend to think of some overly obsessed child sitting in their room, ignoring reality, entirely fixated on a flashing computer screen. Popular media has given us this image through shows like Southpark, and MTV Real Life stories. These programs however present a rather warped view of the online gamer in my opinion. Having been an online gamer myself, i can almost assure anyone that this is not the case for a majority of Americans.  As McConigal states in her except posted on the market place (http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/big-book/excerpt-reality-broken ) generally Americans tend to be on the lesser end of extreme gamers, with the average game player playing around 1- 2 hours a day. Although i admit that in my prime game playing era, i played for much longer periods of time than an hour or two.

In her book, McConigal makes a lot of really interesting comparisons between reality and virtual gaming environments. She starts by first making the observation that reality was not tailored for each human being, and that reality does not set up each person to succeed, nor does it care if you enjoy it. However, the difference that exists between reality and gaming is that games have been created by human beings for human beings. In games people can feel a sense of adventure, immersion and even in some instances escape. While to some escape sounds like a bad things, because it alludes to the idea of running away from reality, McConigal sees it in a different way. McConigal sees gaming environments as allowing people to exist in a world that makes them feel accomplished, providing structured activities, and allowing for new experiences that could never be experienced in the world.

Though McConigals ideas may seem to be a little bit strange to those fo us who have not looked at virtual worlds as a means for entertainment. I believe that her ideas hold some truth but only to those with willing and open minds. Some people are able to find comfort through online gaming,s some find competition, and some find achievement, who is to say whether or not virtual reality and reality are so very different.

Heres a picture of a guild found in wow, a guild is a collection of players(sometimes who do not even know each other in real life) who adventure and explore the world together .

Like my reference to the epic fantas tale The Lord of The Rings? I felt that it was rather appropriate because todays topic is dealing with fantasy MMORPGs. In specific i will be talking about the social MMO that is changing the world, Second Life . I know , i know whenever soemone mentions Second Life its easy to hear a thousand moans and the cries of sad children everywhere but why? Second Life is different. When one typically thinks about MMORPG’s they often think about stuff like the before mentioned Lord of The Ring series.  They typically detail events dealing with orcs swords and magic, but Second Life takes an entirely different approach.

The goal of Second Life is to create a Virtual world much like our own. In Second Life one is able to do nearly everything that they can do in the real world. In Second Life you can buy property, you can chat with friends, you can fly, you can swim, you can even have children. Thats right! in the world of Second Life it is possible to engage in reproductive activties with other players. Although that may be a very interesting topic we should probably spend some time talking about the use of Second Life as it pertains to this class. Earlier this morningi signed up for Second Life selected a green dragon-like character and entered the world. Connection to the game was very quick as the only files necessary to play the game totaled only 624kb, a very small amount.  After entering the game i walked around for a little bit, and tried to converse with others but many of them simply ignored me.  I played with the controls for a bit and found it quite easy to move and operate the games camera. The tutorial island did a very good job of explaining the game. Later today i plan to venture back into Second Life with my classmates.

In article posted on CNET titled “10 music-tech trends that will shape the next decade” CNet blogger Matt Rosoff details tend trends he thinks will change how we interact with audio in the future. Here i will discuss a few of these that i think are the most interesting and substantial changes that he lists.

The first of the changes that Rosoff details in his article that i though was interesting was the switch from downloads to streaming software. In the last couple of years, starting around 2005 and the founding of YouTube which effectively reinvented the home movie many Internet users began to see the switch from downloading to streaming. For many, the substantiality of this change does not seem so innovative but for those of us interested in teh inner working of technology. we understand that years of development needed to take place before our internet connection would be able to handle streaming content. A more recent explanation for this switch could probably draw a link between recent government initiatives to stop piracy.

Another interesting initiative that Rosoff believes will take place within the next ten years and has already started to become present within society is the idea of “fidelity rather than file size”.  While in the past we generally tended to upload files in their most transferable form, forgoing any concerns or aspirations for quality, in today’s technological age we are able to produce and transfer higher quality content. An example of this can be seen with YouTube yet again. One  of the trademark achievments ofthe innovators at YouTube was becoming one of the first streaming sites to allow the uploading of high quality video. Although we tend not to think of these advancements as monumental, they truly are, years of though went to creating networks strong enough to handle the high quality content we produce and want to share with others.

Rosoff also believes that where all of this high quality video and audio content is coming from is also changing.Much like the  ideas expressed by Lawrence Lessig, Rosoff believes that society is on a monumental shift in which large corporations and artists with substantial financial backing are not the only ones being able to create content anymore. He believes that a new generation of artists from the unheard masses of  consumers has emerged and is already beginning to fundamentally change the way we see music and video content. Below are some examples.

Source: CNET- 10 music-tech trands that will shape the next decade

Youtube: Battlefield 3 EPIC Real Life Battle

Madeon: Pop culture live mashup

Having been a California native, and being a Santa Clara University student i am often not amazed by my surroundings as much as i should be.  As i walk around campus i see the faces of other students of different cultures and backgrounds, i see lush green vegetation all around me and on certain days i feel the cool air. California, like many of the great states in the United States, has a rich and diverse history filled with information, some of which has been lost and some that is in the process of being preserved.

With the creation of its California Legacy Project, Santa Clara University is seeking to broaden the amount of information that is preserved about California’s past, and in doing so seeks to educate those who are uninformed of California rich cultural heritage. A link to the website for the California Legacy Project can be found here, and contains a few key publications from California’s native authors. The publications that are being created by the CLP mainly tend to focus on California’s unique historical events, its environment and key experiences in the lives of its inhabitants. The CLP website also contains podcasts and excerpts from its publication on its website.

One of such podcasts by Susie Chapney Clark speaks about the Mammoth Dome also known as the Lick Observatory, located near San Jose atop Mt. Hamilton. Clark describes the telescope as monolithic and says that it was the first telescope open to the public to ever be founded in California in 1888.  For more information on the Lick Observatory follow this link here

What is interesting to me about the California mission project is the idea that it uses technology to preserve human culture as opposed to the traditional forms of writing and oral cultures that we have used throughout the past. Do you think that the use of technology will preserve culture better? or do you think that we are taking a step in the wrong direction?