Musings

To satisfy those inquiring minds, I’ll attempt to post the video project on this blog. I have no idea if it’s going to work since the UMW internet moves at a glacial pace. Cross your fingers!

It’s 1:02 AM and I just finished putting the final touches on my and Kate’s “something” to put out into the void. It’s a public service announcement that I crafted using Windows Movie Maker and a trial version of CaptureWiz. I have to admit, I was terrified when I heard the parameters for the project. “Make something” – what is that about? I’ve spent my college career with professors who put 6 pages of grammar instructions for writing in the Coursepack, and handed out multi-page instruction manuals for projects. Things had to be the way they wanted it, just so or certain failure. Oddly enough, I never felt closer to failure than I did at the idea of this “something” project. There  were no bread crumbs to keep me from wandering into assignment oblivion. Before, as long as I followed the project manifesto I knew it was going to be alright. Now, what the heck was I going to do? I came to college for this? …And then I remembered. I did. Finally, in my last semester of my last year of college I was truly challenged to imagine on my own, without major limitations. The training wheels were off. So, upon the completion of my special “something,” I’d like to thank Dr. Campbell and the entire NMS class this semester. I hope my video makes you stop and think – and who knows? Maybe this video, which I’d never have made otherwise, will actually make a difference to someone, somewhere, somehow.

Turkle’s article made me think of a million different things. First, I had no idea that Space Wars was the first video game. I always thought it was Pong. Obviously, Pong was the first video game to be mass marketed, but hey, I learned something new! Second, the constant involvement of video games, while at the time unacknowledged, is obvious to me as a psychology student. Kids with ADHD have trouble focusing on things like school (slower paced) while they can sit for hours playing video games. If these games were static, there is no way a kid would sit still for that long. And now for the heart of my thoughts on gaming…I’m scared for our future. If these kids are getting involved to the point of feeling that they enter into a world more real than the tangible, what does that leave for the Earth? Meeting people in a game, destroying a monster, saving a princess cannot substitute for human interaction, facing ones demons, or falling in love. At some point, you’ve got to differentiate between the game world and the real world…or else you become Neo choosing between the red and blue pills. If everyone becomes a philosopher, who is left to do anything else?

9 people in class today. Missak wanted me to note specifically that he was here. Kate and I decided to specify what type of privacy we wanted to investigate, and decided on a head-to-head challenge between the safety of facebook and that of myspace. We’re going to post videos on each of the sites about privacy policies, issues, and concerns.

http://albumoftheday.com/facebook

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/02/facebook.myspace

http://www.myspace.com/Modules/ContentManagement/Pages/page.aspx?placement=privacy_settings

http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Pages/Privacy.aspx

Myspace’s email for questions on privacy: privacy@myspace.com

http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/security/dmorrill/archives/myspace-and-privacy-there-is-none-11218

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1181725536838

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=553348&in_page_id=1770

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azIW1xjSTCo&feature=related  – This guy looks creepy. ~ Kate

Today, Kate and I met along with the other 4 people that showed up in class. We converted our idea about viral media to privacy issues on the internet. We decided that internet privacy encompassed viral media and other topics. How does a video become seen by the masses, known or unknown to the creator? Our project idea: a video of our friends and information we found about them on the internet. More to come…

Sources thus far:

badjocks.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2003/07/59757

http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs18-cyb.htm

http://epic.org/reports/surfer-beware.html

privacy policies for: facebook, myspace, second life, twitter, umwblogs, flickr, youtube

http://www.100hot.com/

http://www.100hot.com/webmkt.hot100/uncensored_top_100_popular_searches.htm   (*highly amusing*)

http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy/results.htm?fci=1&filter=0&qcat=web

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/03/24/financial/f173945D00.DTL&type=tech

What’s the difference between reality and the world of gaming? Depending on the direction you’re looking, everything and nothing. Psychologists still haven’t been able to determine exactly what consciousness is.  Where is it in the brain? We don’t know. How do we know the difference between wakefulness and being asleep? Last night, I don’t know that I slept. I felt like I was awake the whole time, but I know I must have slept because I dreamt of something that I know hasn’t happened. As a psychologist, I feel like I should be able to explain how I know the difference between the dream world and being awake. What’s different between being in bed and being in class, apart from the comfort level? If I dream of being in class, can I learn? Or is it that wakefulness is a state in which new information can be learned, while in sleeping one can know only what they went to sleep knowing? Then any realization upon waking is simply information we knew in “reality” falling together during sleep. Today, in any event, I’m somewhere in between wakefulness and sleep. I’ll call it limbo – and maybe in limbo I can get the best of both worlds. Maybe things, thoughts, ideas will fall into place easier by being able to learn new things and put them together in ways I couldn’t access in full wakefulness (due to a lack of ability to abstract from the concrete). Or maybe I’ll just start snoring. Who knows?

Also, never forget. Life is hazardous. – Thanks for that Dr. Campbell!

            As a group, Kate, Andy and I have considered working with Second Life. Kate and I have both created persons in this program and have done a small bit of exploring. There is a monetary cost to create places in Second Life, which would be negligible. However, due to Mary Washington’s inconsistent internet connection, it has become extremely difficult to access Second Life for any substantial amount of time. This has led our group to reconsider our medium of study.

            We are currently undecided on what to base our project. Kate recommended viral media, such as the “Charlie Bit Me” YouTube video. Updates will follow soon, as we make a final decision. This time, we will take into consideration the Mary Washington internet connection in our efforts to work with and construct media.

Kay and Goldberg envisioned the laptop I’m typing on right now. They envisioned a way for me to store papers, music, pictures/artwork, and much more in a way that can be easily cataloged and found later. I’m amazed again by the forethought of individuals to see into the technological future and predict what the advancements of that time could not yet create. Specific sentences always stop me in reading as well. I was reminded of dial-up internet (remember the dial up sound?) when they stated, “If the ‘medium is the message’ then the message of low-bandwith timesharing is ‘blah,’”(394).  Just a few years ago, dial-up was an amazing advancement to bring internet to the masses. Now, it has become so outdated that anything barring instant connectivity is ‘blah’ (or worse, the curse of the Mary Washington internet!)  The other  quote that caught in my brain was, “It need not be treated as a simulated paper book since this is a new medium with new properties,” (395). This was in reference to reading a book through the computer. We spend a lot of time trying to mimic the processes of the world in computer form. E-books are books. We have buttons designed to flip “pages” (look at any amazon.com page selection from a novel). Maybe we could further our vision if we let related things in the real world and the virtual world be separate. An e-book and a book, for example, give the same information. However, if we can separate them in our minds as different entities, we may find that there is more freedom to manipulate information and design. And now I must stop and wonder if I’m making any sense at all…

My group is considering working on a project in Second Life. I’ve been researching it a bit and I had no idea how extensive it is! Individuals buy and sell real world money in trade for Linden dollars and vice versa. Basically, money can be made and lost in Second Life. I read a report from Vodafone, a phone company in Britain, that plans to disconnect all their real-world phones and go completely into Second Life. For a person who hasn’t kept up with this type of technological advancement, I’ve been completely flabbergasted by the reading I’ve done. I signed up for a Second Life account today. There are over 100 last names to choose from, and one can make their own first name. I’ve yet to play around in the world, but if you’d like to find and befriend me, I am Amita Destiny.

Englebart’s video presentation from the 1960s both surprised and disappointed. It was difficult to get myself to focus at first, with the television on silent and colors all around me. The black and white video with incredibly fuzzy screens of text took surprising energy to watch. At first, showing lists of groceries and stops on the way home seemed a simple task possibly more easily handled by old-fashioned pen and paper. However, Englebart made a good point when he reached some editing of organization. The way in which we think really is much better served through computing. We can edit in seconds with the click of a mouse. Overall, I was amazed at how we’ve progressed since this video. Editing techniques from the video and beyond are found today in basic versions of Word. But think of how many people know about ways to view and edit things simultaneously? True, there is sending copies via email, but what Englebart had, it seems to me, was a basic version of GoogleDocs or the like. That part of his technology hasn’t become as widespread as Microsoft Word, obviously. The more I study the topic, it seems like technology grows unevenly, with ideas developing at faster or slower rates depending on how far the current technological abilities can take us and what we need the most.