Author Archives: 0alloldusers

I went “off-line” Sunday when I knew I was going to have less things to do and thought it could be more manageable. I was honestly very surprised on how much of a change being off my phone and computer was on my life. I never before recognized how dependent I really was on them. I might even go as far to say that I am addicted to them. My phone has my schedule, contact info, pictures, reminders, and even alarm. If I wanted to know what time it was I actually had to go find a clock. If I needed to get in touch with a friend I would have to use a home phone and even then I have no idea what the phone numbers are of the people I know. If I wanted to just relax I could not just surf the web, I had to actually find something to do. I would think that it would be extremely frustrating for those with seldom computer access to try to compete in our highly technology driven world. I honestly wouldn’t know where to look for a job or housing. Perhaps the newspaper, but I bet more and more companies are going away from a paid ad in a newspaper and just putting free ones on job websites. As for homework, I feel like I would probably spend all day at the library searching for articles, definitions, facts. In addition to having to write entire essays by hand which I feel is way harder than on the computer. However, after the entire day of no technology I actually felt better not worse. I felt less distracted and felt like I had a little more control over my life. But I am definitely not giving up my technology anytime soon.

I realize I am late to the social party, but I usually am.  You might have notice that many of your friends on Facebook have replaced their profile photo with the equal sign, as a way to show support for gay marriage.  Showing your support for a cause is nothing new to Facebook, but are you really doing anything simply by changing your Facebook photo?  What social change are you really bringing about?  Susan Kohn had a most apt point when she said “Internet activism is individualistic.  It’s great for a sense of interconnectedness  but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and 70s did.  It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there… real challenges in our society… won’t politely go away with a few clicks of the mouse.”  Social media can bring about change, but there needs to be organization, and real action behind it. Swapping a photo, or signing an online petition is often meaningless, because there is little effort behind it.  Whereas when the Arab Spring burned through Egypt they used it to organize, and mobilize the opposition to the streets.  Even when the police tried to clamp down on the opposition they had no idea even how to go about it.  This media was new to them, and efforts at intimidation only backfired.  When organizers were beaten they uploaded their wounds to Facebook and Twitter, when the police beat protesters, they had their phones out to capture it and put in online.  This is the new social activism, and the way social media can help the world.

ColleenBurke85

When we look back in history, we see that some of the greatest social changes were brought about by stories. Many times it was done through novels, short stories or even film. Zandt even proposes that, “storytelling has been the most powerful building block for social change”(1). But now we have been given a new medium through which to tell our story and that medium is social media. According to Zandt, “social networking gives us unprecedented power to share our stories” (1). We have seen this truth occur over and over again. What once took getting published in a newspaper or a novel to have your ideas seen by the masses now can be done instantly through social networking. Social media offers many advantages over previous media when it comes to sharing stories. The first advantage social media has is accessibility. A blog or a Facebook group can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection which latest statistics show to be about 2.4 billion people. Even the most popular and world changing stories in the past could never be available to this many people. Social media also groups people by their interests making them more engaged in whatever story is being told. There are an endless variety of forums and groups that all specialize in a different idea or activity. So instead of only getting ideas by means of publishing houses, newspapers, or what the small amount of people we know told us, we can now go and seek out our own information and stories that perfectly match up with our interests. This is great because when people hear an idea by means of a story they like, they are more likely to actually do something to promote it. Finally, social media is a much better way of spreading a message because most of the time social networking is free to the reader, making them much more likely to read the story than if they would have had to pay money to see it.

@ColleenBurke85

Samuel Johnson famously once said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”  Well the internet is the last refuge of a racist.  It is the one place, where people feel comfortable using, language they would never use in real life.  The jokes that people are afraid to tell out in public, are given platforms and praised as funny by other online users.  It is true that if you look hard enough every group is demonized online, yet if you are a different color, religion, or even the other gender there is a likely hood you will face more abuse.  Google play had an app called make me asian, where you took take a photo of yourself and add crude asian characters to it, the same company also had a make me Irish app,   both are equally offensive, yet both stereotypes often get a pass today in America.  This app is rather tame compared to other racist apps and games.  Years ago sangent games released an incredibly racist game called “Border Patrol” where your only object was to shoot and kill Mexicans crossing the border they were either a breeder, drug dealer, or a Mexican Nationalist, you got extra points for killing the breeder.  While “Border Patrol” is an example of overt racist imagery, many mainstream games use racial stereotypes.  Almost any game can consist of racial stereotypes, and while we shouldn’t necessarily get offended by every single one we see, we must be aware of them.  Often we become desensitised to the stereotypes that surrounds us in the gaming world and in the online world, this translates to us being oblivious to racism in the real world.  If you don’t believe me, think of your favorite video game from childhood and critically list all stereotypes within them.  You would be surprised by how many there are.  To combat racial stereotypes, one needs a critical mind, as well as insight from others.

A manifesto is a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer. I would say that the intentions of the Hacker Manifesto were to show that not all hackers are criminals but that most of them actually just want to break things down, see how they work and share that information with others. Because when you share information with other people, they can take that information and go farther with it and hopefully create something new. I think this idea is best stated when the Manifesto states, “We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals”.

On the other hand the Cyborg Manifesto is more about the accepting of technology in our lives and how technology could create a better world and society. Haraway talks about how socialists and feminists seem to be against technology when she says, “One of my premises is that most American socialists and feminists see deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formula-tions, and physical artefacts associated with ‘high technology’ and scientific culture”. She then goes on to present her idea about how cyborgs could lead to a better world when she states, “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints”.

My manifesto is about the gamer culture.

Track games.

Field games.

Sports games.

Board games.

Out of all of the games in existence why do people have such a negative view on video games?

Video games require concentration.

Video games require cooperation.

Video games require creativity.

Out of the many things a young person could be doing why would we encourage them not to partake in an activity that require them to think and expand their minds.

Video games are new.

Video games are different.

Video game can be scary.

But new, different, and scary are usually good things for society.

If we took a step back and gave the gamer culture a chance, perhaps we would see how it is not a culture of wasted time, laziness or worthlessness but one of awareness, teamwork and imagination.

I think social media is turning people into a bunch of narcissists, people are losing their identity with this new technology, and often times their morals.  People are more concerned with documenting and sharing whatever they doing in the moment with the world, no matter how trivial and abhorrent.  In the chapter “What is an Avatar?”  Coleman mentions writer Kevin Kelly “the augmented self as a symbiotic relationship with technology.”  In his assessment, technology has domesticated us.  Kelly does not indicate that we are enslaved, but rather, that we are “co-evolving”.” I’m not sure I share their inherent optimism, I feel that we are devolving with social media, and the instant gratification that is the Internet.   Much of the info we feed and read via social media is useless, it not only clouds the brain, but also changes wiring.  Some people argue that this new technology allows us to multi-task, but in general human beings lack the ability to to do more than two things effectively.  So while we updating our status, sending tweets, emailing, and writing a research paper, we are usually doing a bad job at at-least one of those.  Younger generations seem to view the Internet like air, they cannot imagine not having it.  They use social media, but some do not understand social mores.  Take the case in Steubenville Ohio, a girl was passed out and abused, and instead of her peers intervening they took video, and pictures, then posted it online.  There were tweets, youtube videos, and facebook updates of her humiliation.  The only regret many of these kids seem to have is that they posted it online, and that was only because it was evidence of their horrible behavior.  It is true that the very social media they used to humiliate this girl, was turned against them by the hacktivist group Anonymous, but even they can’t be everywhere at once.  As we “co-evolve” with social media, we must be cautious of our own exploitation and the exploitation of others with this new form of technology.

@ObergJustin

I definitely feel that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can change and influence the people that use them. I agree with Coleman’s statement, “Media use changes the user. With each shift in automation, simulation, and transmission, we discover not only new technologies but also new facets of ourselves.” I look at my Facebook page and I see photos of myself and of my friends, updates about what are going on in my friends’ lives, relationships forming, relationships falling apart and of course advertisements for a variety of different products that somehow are applicable to me. Because I was able to communicate with my friends more easily and more frequently through social networking sites, I definitely feel that I became a more social person in my teenage years. It was through Facebook my friends and I arranged parties and had conversations about our lives and got to know each other better. However, there is another side to social networks that can change users for the worse. Coleman also talks about how these new realities allow someone “to be cooler than in life”. Many people abuse these sites from innocently training themselves so that they can only communicate with people from behind a computer screen to overtly deceiving people about who they are and what their motives are. As long as people use these sites in moderation and in conjunction with their lives and not as a replacement for socializing in the real world, I think Facebook and Twitter will have a positive effect on the user using them.

@ObergJustin

I found Donna Leishman’s work, “Redridinghood” very entertaining. Being able to take a familiar story and make it new and exciting is not easy. However, the ability to utilize a new medium to present the story gives you the opportunity to experiment with more facets of the story than you could with traditional print. In Marshall McLuhan’s book, “Medium is the Massage” he states that, “Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratio of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act – the way we perceive the world” (41). Because Leishman was able to use electronic literature and the computer screen to present her story, she was able to evoke different kinds of senses in the reader. For instance, instead of letting us interpret the visuals of the scene, she provides us with how things look through animation. Being able to play with colors and movement is something you cannot do with print but is very important to “Redridinghood”. A lot of the feelings that I got from the story came from the colors and animation and not necessarily the words on the screen.  Also, instead of it being an entirely linear story, we are allowed to make choices that effect the direction of the story. There were also some optional “easter eggs” that I found you could click on that give you more information to the story, which made me feel more immersed and made me feel that I was personalized with the story.