I originally took this class because I thought it sounded interesting and it fit really well into my schedule.  As the course went along I became a little skeptical how some of the topics like gaming, identity online, blogging and twitter would help me in the real world.  But, as we got deeper into the topics I realized that these are some of the things I have already been talking about with friends and at work.

What shocked me the most was how interested I became in some of the topics such as identity on the internet and technology literacy.  I have younger siblings and work in youth ministry and to be able to take some of the things I have learned about identity and talk with them about it was amazing.  The teens are not that much younger than I am but technology defines a huge part of their existence and social life.  I thought it was so interesting to see the difference a few years can make in terms of technology and social life.

I was also surprised to see how little I really knew about technology.  I always thought of myself as somewhat tech savvy (on a PC mind you) but the truth was I knew almost nothing.  Society today requires that we know how to use the basic technology based equipment.  As I am saying that I think about the generation before me and how they had to learn things about computers at a much later age then myself.  Then I think about my sixteen year-old sister who can ever remember not having a computer or internet access.

There is a growing dependency on new media tools and I think that is both good and bad.  It is good in the sense that it has enabled communication on a worldwide scale that was once only a dream.   But it can also be bad when the technological means of communicating replace the genuine face-to-face communication and relationships

I believe there will always be some type of new media coming along to replace its predecessors.  Personally I love getting a chance to play with the new toys, but I also know that they can drastically change our society.  We have to be the ones to make the choice whether they can help of hinder us as a culture.

In this week’s article we take a look at copyright law.  Daphne Keller’s article made some very interesting point regarding the subject.  “Artists can now build upon prior recordings themselves, turning the fixed artifact of an earlier artist’s performance into raw material for new work.”

My question through this whole look at copyright is that if you create something completely new then how does the original owner of the pieces have claim over this new work. “Digital recording technology revolutionizes and democratizes this recycling process.”

I understand that artist should have some claims to theirs works, after all that is how they make their money.  But, it you take a small piece from one thing and a small piece from another you are creating something entirely new.

As I am writing this I can start to see the slippery slope that the previous statement could create.  Who is to say what parts and how much are alright to use?  This is where I think that copyright laws should step in.  The goal of copyright now according to Keller is “…to create the economic and legal; conditions within which science learning and culture can flourish.  In pursuit of this goal, a copyright holder is generally granted the right to stop other people from selling copies of her work or derivative works based on it.”

I do think that something should change when it comes to copyright laws.  Is that just because I am a fan of mashups and other things like it, maybe but Keller also gives her point of view on the matter. “..Digital technology allows is to interact with information an make culture in a new way.  Copyright law should respond to the cultural shift if it is to serve its constitutional “Promote the Progress” goal and the first amendment’s free expression goal.”

I have had very little personal exposure to Wow.  I did have friends in high school that would play the game nonstop.  They tried to teach me about the game but I remember very little about it.  I always thought that it was a game with no true purpose where you just went and killed everything in sight.  I knew that some people used the game as a forum for other things but I guess I didn’t realize how many people were doing that.

To enhance game play some players choose to join some type of guild.  I was really surprised to learn that 60% of guilds are formed purely for social reasons.  I was also surprised to learn that in smaller social guilds “the social interactions were extensions of real-world social bonds”.

I also had no idea that there were different types of guilds.  The article named four: social guild, player-vs-player guild, raiding guild, and role-play guilds.  They all have different structures and different way of playing the same game.

The more I read about it I started to wonder how you would go about joining a guild on the game.  With a social guild you can get a group of friends in the game or not and just make a guild.  What about the other types?  The official WoW website offers a guide on picking a guild but I found some other sites that I thought were interesting.  RecruitGamers.com has a specialized website to help WoW players join guilds. I also found classifieds on craigslist for WoW guilds.  Overall, this whole gaming universe (I don’t know if world is even large enough a word anymore) is far more complex then I first thought it was going to be.

I have to say I didn’t believe this statistic from Wagner James Au’s article “Taking New World Notes”, but the more I thought about it the more I think is has to be true.  The world of massive multiplayer online role playing games, or MMORPG, is expanding its boarders more each day.  The entirety of some people’s lives revolve around these types of games, and I myself have known several of them.

I had one particular friend in high school who would spend all of her free time on this online game where you would create an avatar that was human, animal cross breed thing.  That is really the best way I can think to describe it, I wish I remembered the name of the game but sadly I do not.  My friend would be on this game every day, she was pretty socially awkward and the game was her way to escape that.  She eventually met a boy on that game and they started virtually dating.  I thought this was crazy at the time, and she was not the only one of my friends who preferred online dating to meeting people in public. I had a strange group of friends.

Eventually my friend and her new boyfriend started meeting in real life after dating over this game for about a year.  They lived across the country from one another and when they couldn’t hop a plane to see one another they would meet on this animal game or over WoW.  I lost touch with my friend in the later years of high school mainly because I never saw her outside of school.

So the meaning behind that long winded story was that there are people who’s whole life is lived online.  MMORPG’s are creating an outlet for people to be someone different from who they are in real life.

“I’ve interviewed strippers and Catholic priests, combat veterans and peace activists, socialist utopians and midget warmongers. I’ve profiled entrepreneurs who own whole continents and earn six figure incomes from the buying and selling of virtual land, and a homeless hacker who built a virtual mansion while squatting in an abandoned building.”

I myself was never really a fan of the MMORPG.  I have played WoW and several others but I never really got the point of having an online life when you are given one that is real.  I guess I am curious about others experiences with MMO’s and what is appealing about them.

While thinking about this topic a movie came to mind, the resent release Surrogates.  It is a movie where the virtual world has merged with reality and life is experienced through surrogates.  These surrogates are ideal representations of their users and reminded me a lot of virtual avatars.  In the case of the movie and MMO’s “life” is being seen through these avatars/surrogates while the user is back at home.  What are you thoughts about the connection, or even the lack there of, between the movie and MMO’s?

While reading I thought the video sounded cute and seemed like something my mom would email me for a laugh.  I could not believe that a record company went after her for having a barely recognizable song in the background.

From what the article said the quality of the song was horrendous and all you could really tell was that there was some kind of music in the background.  What I don’t understand is why this video was considered so bad for the record company that they felt they had to threaten Ms. Lenz with a $150,000 lawsuit if she didn’t take the video off of youtube.  There are thousands of videos on youtube meant to be used to listen to a song, but that was not what this video was intended for.

Here is a link to the actually video.

I think I have to agree with Lessig when he said that something has to be changed regarding copyright laws.  The laws as they stand allow companies to sue people who post videos, like Ms. Lenz, who’s only intent was to share a cute moment with her family and friends.  What exactly should be done… well, that I am not sure about but I am open to suggestions.

For more ideas from Lawrence Lessig check out his blog.

I have changed things in Wikipedia before, but they were only minor things like spelling or grammar.  I had never totally added something before.  For some reason it was a whole lot harder then I thought it was going to be.

Figuring that since I had changed things before and knew what I was doing, I blew through the tutorial and really didn’t pay much attention to it.  Now I think I am going to go back and read it all.  The edit page was all in HTML, I think.  I am not very computer savvy and as soon as anything reaches above searching something in google I am lost.

It was a cool quote that I added and I do hope it sticks.  Mostly I hope that someone else checks its so I know that it  gets put on the page in maybe a better way.

I knew that I was brought up thinking a certain way, but really wanted to see what I believed to be right.  So I would get on my computer and look up information of different issue.  Were some of the sources credible, not always but I didn’t care.  I just wanted to get information and then sort it out for myself.  This demonstrates exactly what today’s article was saying in “society’s need for a multiplicity of points of view on our most pressing issues”

I would go to blogs and different organizations pages and read view points from both sides of an argument and then make my decision.  The internet and sites like blogs helped me to understand my own personal view points.  They also gave me an outlet to comment and raise questions along with state my views.  I was also able to find out that I am very conservative, at time even more so than my parents.

The past presidential election was the first one I was ever able to vote in and for the first time I was actually interested in the view points of the candidates.  The first thing I did was again jump on my computer and started to look up information on both men.  Once I made my decision I wanted to let others know.  I would comment on blogs but primarily I used facebook as my go to outlet.

Without the mass communication abilities that we now all have with the internet, I don’t think I would have looked into who I was voting for as much as I did.  Instead of just talking to one person and feeling like I couldn’t make a difference I had the ability to post something to the internet and have it available to potentially millions of people.

(if you are interested in how many blogs are actually out there this is a good website to look at.)

When did the word friend loss its meaning?  Many would like to point fingers at the internet and social network sites like facebook; although they may have help its decline in meaning they are not the only things to blame.  Danah Boyd gave the example: “consider when Heather says, “Meet my friend William …” and then after William leaves, “Gah, he’s so annoying.” This example points to a problem in our social structure itself.  It is considered socially acceptable to call someone a friend when you really do not like them at all.

Truly it is easier to call someone a friend rather then risk the complications of calling someone an acquaintance or just some person I know.  Being someone’s friend implies a degree of knowing and trust that you have with a person. However, by denying someone that title you are admitting that there is not that level of know or trust, and with that could come hurt feelings or way more drama then you planned for.   This doesn’t just apply itself to the physical world but the cyber world as well.

Danah Boyd stated that people accept friend requests because it is easier than saying no, so we end up with all these friends who we may not even know.  Hal Niedzviecki tried to change no knowing his facebook friends by throwing a party.  He invited everyone he was friends with on facebook, which was around 700, but when the day of the party came only one person showed up.

I almost cried reading this because I felt so bad for this guy.  He was lonely and tried to make new friends from people he was already suppose to know.  For a minute I though that if I were to throw a party like that things would be totally different.  But then I stopped and actually went of facebook and looked at my friend list.  There were a number of actually friends that I hang out with on a regular basis but then there had to be at least 50 people who I have never actually spent any social time with.

Why did I ‘friend’ them if I really didn’t consider then to be my friends.  After some thought I came to the conclusion it was for the very reason the Danah Boyd said, it was easier to say yes then to say no.

There are two different way of organizing information: the first is putting it into categories.  The definition of categories is the organizing of a collection into related groups. This was the main way of organization in libraries, however people have been freaking out about how things will change with the digital world.

Shirky states that we can not just shovel our old ways of thinking to the electronic world because information can belong in two different categories.  How do we tell where the information belongs?  Do we create a new category or just file the information someplace.  There is a good example of this in the movie Wall-e.  He collects things to try and make sense of the world but when he finds something new, a spork, it doesn’t fit into any preset categories so he must make a new one. (Movie clip – skip to 7:10 to see just the spork part) However, he does keep the new item close to the old ones to show that they are related to each other.

This then leads to the next type of organization links and tags.  This is free form labeling that we all have a part in.  This helps to solve the problem of strict categorization, by providing a way to show what information is related.

Shirky talks about the notion that “There is no shelf”.  Information goes from being organized based on the old system of doing things, mainly organizing information based on the number of books and how much space it takes up on a shelf to actual content.

Organization of information is also important when designing technology.  Donald A. Norman in his article “The Psychopathology of Everyday Things” says that there are three main points to designing: visibility, mapping and feedback.

Probably the biggest part of design is visibility. Users need to be able to see things in order to use them.  He also talks about affordances which are things that give strong clues about the operations of things.  These do not have to be inhearently known, they are learned over time.

The next part of design is mapping, this is where a designer plans out the how or what you want to do and what appears possible. This is where they take in to considerations the relationship between controls and their movement, and the result in this world.  There is a way of taking advantage of physical relationships and cultural standard to lead to immediate understanding; this is known as natural mapping.

The last but just as important part of design is feedback.  This is the sending back to the user information about what action has been done and what result has been accomplished.  Nothing cam be accomplished without feedback.

Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, who hasn’t had a page on at least one of these social networks.  I myself have been a victim of Facebook addition.  But, do we really know who is looking at our pages, what proof do we have that who you think you are talking to is really that person?

Alice E. Marwick discuses in her article “To Catch a Predator? The MySpace Moral Panic” the notion that panic and wide spread fear can be breed from the media.  She points out specifically a scare involving MySpace and how predators would use this site to find their victims.

I remember this well because the scare hit its peak right around the time I really started using MySpace to keep in touch with friends.  My Mother would always want to know who I was talking to and how I really knew that it was who I thought it was.  She also insisted that I changed my privacy settings so that only certain people could see my page.  In hindsight it was a really good idea.

When I first got a Facebook page I didn’t change any of the privacy settings, and after a little while I started to receive messages from people I didn’t know wanting to become friends.  I soon changed my settings so that people could only see my page if I first approved them.

The MySpace predator scare didn’t magically appear one day; it was based in reality and actual events.  However, the media did turn it from something to inform the people about into a full fledged scare.

The truth is that there are millions of people on social network sites everyday and there is a very high chance that some of them do not have you best intentions in mind.  Do you really think you are able to trust that everyone of your MySpace or Facebook friends are really who they say they are? Or, have you ever friended a person even though you didn’t know who they were?