Gamers

This article written by Jeffrey Davis, for The Real Truth is about people using video games an an escape from reality. He begins by explaining that that people use video games as an escape from the real world, a way to not stress about deadlines and responsibility, just a way to relax. Others use it in search of social lives. It replaces board games where people would interact with others, talking to people through the game, or getting into groups of friends and playing together. Davis then goes in to talk about how they use video games for training, like the Army and Navy. Instead of putting them straight into dangerous situations, they can practice and hone their skills. People who play games often have better reaction times and are quicker on their feet. A few tests have been done that provide evidence that gamers might be smarter than non-gamers, but nothing has been proven for sure. Gamers also develop addictive personalities after playing games according to Davis.

I agree that games are addictive, and can be used as a useful tool that can help people in real life, but I also think it can be very bad for you. People get very addicted to games and lose their sense of reality. I think they can make some people more social when you are playing in a social setting, but when they only communicate to other people through the game, it can be very hurtful to their general outlook on life. I also don’t believe that gamers are smarter, but I do think they have faster reaction times because of how fast you have to react in the games.

Kristina Dell

This article, “How Second Life Affects Real Life” is written by Kristina Dell from Time Magazine. Kristina Dell is a freelance writer from New York who writes about business, education, law, and sports for Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, msnbc.com, and Reader’s Digest. Kristina talks about the first time she was on Second Life and how all she wanted to do was run away from everyone because she wasn’t sure how to use the game, and her ugly avatar made her uncomfortable to be around other people. She starts to quote studies done at Stanford University‘s Virtual Human Interactions Lab by Jeremy Bailenson. After doing experiments and running a bunch of studies, they concluded that people that had good looking avatars and had good experiences in the virtual world, have had better experiences in real life, becoming more confident and outgoing. “When we cloak ourselves in avatars, it subtly alters the manner in which we behave,” says Bailenson. “It’s about self-perception and self-confidence.”

I agree with the research that has been done. I know a lot of quiet people that play these games. They told me they play because they feel like they can be anyone and anything in the game and that gives them a lot of confidence because they may not like who they are in real life, but having people come up to them, and compliment them in the game, makes them feel better about themselves in real life. I wish I could get more into video games and virtual worlds, but I have never been very good at them and could not get into them.

Reading an article in the New York Times called “Surveillance and Accountability” made me think about the issues in Big Brother. The article talks about the Bush administration and their ability to spy on Americans without a warrant.  The article goes on to say, “Because the wiretaps are secret and no one can say for certain that their calls have been or will be monitored, no one has standing to bring suit over the surveillance.” This is an interesting point because most civilians do not like to have their private life under constant watch and would like to sue the government for doing it, but under the ruling of the Supreme Court, they aren’t allowed too. The Justice Department is currently trying to deal with people who have a problem the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which made it legal to wiretap houses without a warrant and gave the telephone companies immunity for allowing the wire tap. This Act also lowered the burden of proof needed for surveillance which means they can pretty much use any type of surveillance that they want on whoever they want, where ever they want, and whenever they want. I do not agree with this at all. I don’t think it is fair that people can because a suspect for no reason. Being Arabic, i am especially against this because I know for a fact we get racially profiled whether people mean to or not. Everytime I go on an airplane, the security guards see my name, my brother’s name(Mazen), or my dad’s name(Iyad), and they have pull one, or all three of us aside for “random” search, but no one else is line is subjected to it. I do believe that surveillance can be a good thing, and can stop a lot of bad things from happening, but there has to a reason behind it, not just a name.

The second half of this story starts out with telling about his time he was held under the DHS to a group of people who were trying to declare war on the secret police. A new movement called “dont trust anyone over 25” starts to come into the works after Marcus meet a girl named Ange who he starts to like as more than just a friend. As all this is going on, the second half of the book also shows how Marcus’s family dynamics change and that his mom is starting to take his side while his dad is still backing the DHS. As Marcus’ relationship with Ange grows she convinces him that the only way to get back at the DHS is to use his brain, not guns, and make them look stupid.

I really enjoyed this book. It was easy to read all the way through and kept me wanting more the whole time.

Little Brother is a book written by an author named Cory Doctorow. Cory is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. In his introduction he talks about how he wrote the book in only 8 weeks, day and night, in cabs and in airports, he just couldnt stop writing. I find this to be fascinating because the book is so well written and easy to read. I have never been that good of a writer, and for him to have the ideas just flowing constantly for 8 weeks straight amazes me.

This book is about four young boys(Marcus, Darryl, Jolu, and Van) who live in San Francisco(my hometown) who one day decide to skip school and go to an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). The first boy is named Marcus Yallow and while he and his friends skip class, they find themselves in the midst of a homeland security investigation on terrorism with Marcus being the main focus. The story goes on from there.

I really enjoyed reading the first 10 chapters of the book. and if i did not have so much other work to do, there is no way i would have stopped reading until it was finished. It was easy to relate and had many aspects of it that were current to todays world. i cant wait to finish reading it this weekend when i can sit down and enjoy the end.

There are billions of sites on the Internet, but how many of them actually get read? Many sites are set up poorly, written badly, or just not interesting, so poeple have done studies to determine what can be done about this. This Alertbox by Jakob Nielsen on Useit.com discusses many ways to make your site much more readable and user friendly. I like How he talks about getting rid of the “blah-blah” text. This is a problem I have when I turn in papers that I have written. A lot of teachers tell me to cut the fluff and write with a purpose. I found an another article from UX Booth about How fluff is driving away your viewers. Not only does this explain more about why fluff is bad, but it has no fluff itself in its writing. The author, David Legget, has clear heading for each section, puts the important things in bold texts and doesn’t put anything extra that you dont need to read. An example of a poorly written and designed website is timecube.com. The font for this website is unneccessarily large, so it makes you scroll much more than anyone would want to. It also has a lot of fluff and just unncessary writing, and on top of all that fluff, it is just poorly written. The only plus i can see for this site is that it doesnt have too many words on each line, but that is only because the font size is so large. I know that i would personally never read this whole site just because of the way it was laid out.  People may not think about these writing tips very often, but after seeing the facts and thinking about how I have been viewing websites in the past, i think that we should be more careful and more concise wiith how and what we write.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoZV-BtJjXw[/youtube]Henry Jenkins, the writer of this blog is an American Media Scholar and is currently teachin at USC. He writes this blog to express his veiws on the media and social media networks. This particular article is about youtube and the direction in which he believes it is heading. Since this blog article is over five years old, it is a little easier to comment on it and tell if hhis predictions were right. He gives 9 propositions as to what direction he thinks YouTube is heading. Along with each proposition he breifly explains what he means by that and the reasons for it. The two reasons i  like are numbers are numbers 4 and 5 because i find tem to be kinda simililar. In these two points he talks about how YouTube is going to be shared through other social media sites to get the videos seen by more people. I know from experience that facebook is a very easy way to share and upload videos so that all of your friends can see it. Many people wouldnt come across the same thing on YouTube as you, but if you find a video and share it, many more people would be likely to see it because it would show up on their news feed. In his fifth point he talks about how many things wouldnt be seen if people didnt have cameras phones and werent able to upload them to sites like YouTube. Then these videos get shared through sites like Facebook and get seen by many more people than they would have.

Reading this exceprt from Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal made me think about the world and people around me.  The author talks about how video games are increasing in popularity and people are finding what they need in video games in stead of the world around them. she says,

“The truth is this: in today’s society, computer and video games are fulfilling
genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy. Games
are providing rewards that reality is not. They are teaching and inspiring and
engaging us in ways that reality is not. They are bringing us together in ways
that reality is not.”

This statement upsets me because as much as i dont want to believe it, as every day passes, this becomes more and more true. I have never been into video games for a couple reasons, one of which being that i just am not good at video games. A better reason though, is that  i have spent pretty much my entire life outdoors. Between spending weekends at Lake Berryessa, going camping, and playing sports like soccer and rowing. I love being outside in the sun, enjoying the fresh air. I learned a valuable lesson when i was younger and an uncle of mine passed away way too young, and that is that life is too short to be wasting your time inside sitting on the couch watching tv and playing video games. As you can see in the quote above, the author talks about how people are fulfilling their needs with video games in fake realities. I think people like this are just scared to face real reality, being outside interacting with the people around them. I have a lot of friends that play videos games but none of them use it to escape the reality around them. There are 2 types of gamers in my opinion, the ones that let it take over their life and uses it as an escape, and the ones that play every once in a while to take a break from the fast paced world we live in. Video games are fun, but in no way do i think people should be saying it’s fulfilling their needs because there is an entire world out there and they could get whatever they needed if they just walked outside and tried.

Architecture has fascinated me my entire life. I have always wanted to be an architect and people able to create beautiful things. The idea of simple architecture is really interesting and the fact that it relates so well to the internet today makes it even better. The author explains just how houses and building are always changes and expanding, so is our internet. The world around us is quickly changing and becoming more advanced, so the things we use every day, like the internet, need to be changing as well.

I enjoyed this reading, and the way the book was laid out. The ease with which i was able to read it kept me interested and wanting to continue reading. I am really interested in the rest of the book and hope that at some point soon i can finish the rest of it.

“Reading” Cybercultures comes from a professor that teaches at the University of Hyderabad in Hyderabad, India. This Professor’s name is Pramod K. Nayar who teaches a lot of writing classes at the University. In this reading, Nayar talks about how people are communicating through a web based world. In this reading, Nayar goes on to give the Encyclopedia of New Media definition of Cybercultures which is “cultures formed in or associated with online social spaces” (Kendall 2007). He then goes on to state that in order to understand cybercultures you must first ubderstand technoculture. Kayar says,

“While cultures determine what forms of technologies develop, these technologies, in turn, shape cultures. Technology, in other words, is not merely an effect or cause of culture but is both: it determines and is determined by the culture in which it develops.”

I agree with what he says because as culture changes so does our tehcnology and forms of communication through the web.  But it can go the other way too, where technology can change the culture.