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A screenshot tour of my Minecraft base, partly built as a project for my Comm 170 class. DISCLAIMER: I noticed, after taking all the screenshots, that my character was holding a Dirt Block the entire time. So, you'll notice a brown cube in the lower-right corner of every photo. Please disregard it.

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Commentary on Social Networks

I find Facebook to be, by far, the most useful tool for social networking and collaboration. It allows you to interact with a huge number of people in a natural and customizable way. For instance: you can share hundreds of photos of your recent class trip to the lake with your old friends from high school, your parents, etc… Your friends then can comment on these photos, “like” them, or share them with others. All of these are simple and easy to do. As for customization, you can create lists/categories within your friends, and limit what these groups can or cannot see. For instance: you can make sure your parents can’t see all the pictures you just uploaded from the wild party last weekend, but all your friends can. Or maybe you want to keep your relationship status hidden from just your ex; you can do that too. All the social behaviors and boundaries you would normally see in the real world have a Facebook equivalent.

I dislike Myspace the most, primarily because it is outdated, feels too simple and immature (as a website), and is limited in the interactions/customization it allows. Most importantly, however, is the fact that it is socially deserted. Everyone has moved over to Facebook. No one is left on Myspace. No one uses it. Therefore, trying to use it as a social networking tool is ineffective and foolhardy.

I have not had any particularly meaningful or useful electronic interactions with other members of the class. I am discounting social interactions I have with friends who happen to be in the class as well, as these were not inspired by or relevant to the class in any way. However, if the class had made a Facebook group, I feel that this could have been a useful tool. Everyone is already using Facebook all the time anyway, and so putting the class into that already-thriving social atmosphere could create a more collaborative, interactive experience.

While I love social networking sites, they are, in many ways, just another electronic distraction. True social interaction happens in the real world, face-to-face, and too much “Facebooking” tricks us into thinking that commenting on someone’s Wall or “liking” their posts counts as real friendship and real social behavior. Social networking is useful, but we need to keep it in perspective. It is an extension to real-world society, not a replacement for it.

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Commentary on Commenting

There’s nothing quite as disappointing and isolating as being the only person commenting on a given forum on the Internet. Therefore, I made a point of trying to comment on posts that already had comments on them. This way, it felt more like an active conversation between myself, the blogger, and the other commenter, as opposed to a single awkward attempt at interaction, most likely lost in the void. Unfortunately, other commenters were few and far between. For the most part, the class blogs I perused were barren of activity, both on the author’s part and on the part of their readers. Therefore, (to more directly answer the question): 2 out of the 3 comments I made were the only comments on that particular post.

I commented on 3 different blogs: Alex Geyster’s blog, Rose Ellen’s blog, and Isaac Zarsky’s blog.

Yes; Alex and Isaac I knew well already, and I had met Rose a few times outside of class (mostly in conjunction with Isaac). As would be expected, I purposefully commented on these people’s blogs for several reasons: a) I knew them, and I felt more comfortable commenting on their blogs as opposed to the blogs of complete strangers, and b) all of their blogs were Wordpress blogs. Commenting on Wordpress was simple and easy. Tumblr blogs have no commenting system, which made it impossible to use many of the class blogs for this assignment.

I do not believe that blogs and commenting are an effective way to communicate in a class setting. As I’ve already pointed out, many blogs do not have a way to comment, which poses a pretty substantial problem. Secondly, and more importantly, discussions on forums/blogs/commenting systems will inevitably fail due to their nature. Several crucial elements of a good, hearty discussion simply cannot take place online, in text form. Discussions online are staggered, which is to say, you have to wait for someone to type out their response before you can read it; you don’t receive it real-time. In person, discussions involve quick thinking, quick responses, and the ability to interject or add in at any point. If you’re just exchanging huge chucks of text back and forth, it feels artificial and stunted. Sitting and waiting, alone, staring at a computer screen, waiting for the next essay of a reply to appear is boring and doesn’t inspire academic or intellectual interaction. Even more frustrating is the “invisible timer” when typing out a response on a forum. Let’s assume you’re participating in a discussion online, and let’s assume you have a really great point to make. You sit there, taking the time to articulately type out your response, correct typos, look it over for mistakes, etc… Then, once you’re ready to post it, you see that several other people have commented in the meantime, and your point is no longer relevant, or someone else has made it, or the conversation has moved past the topic you were responding to. There was a window of opportunity for your comment, but that window had an invisible timer, and (sadly, as it often does in these situations) it ran out before you had your chance. In the real world, this problem doesn’t happen. Maybe the conversation will change, or move on, or render your point irrelevant, but it won’t be a surprise. You will be involved, real-time, in the conversation’s progression.

 See above.

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Building Something

The application I used to build/create was Minecraft. Unfortunately for this class, Minecraft is a world one must pay to enter. Purchasing a Minecraft account (in other words: purchasing the game) costs around $27 now. Back in my day, when it was still in beta, it cost less. This does mean class members cannot experience my project first-hand. However, through the magic of screenshots, I can upload some pictures and give you all a general idea.

What you see in the pictures below is the result of several solid hours of “work”, and a decent amount of trial-and-error, revision, and planning. Beyond the actual building of the structures, there was (of course) the gathering of the raw building materials. This added an additional several hours of searching and mining. Of course, this “effort” was not particularly strenuous for me. As Minecraft is a game, and a game I thoroughly enjoy, the time I spent on this project was not boring or tedious by any means.

I do like what I have made. This particular “house” is one of my favorites. It is roomy and attractive on the inside, with plenty of room for future expansion in every direction. It contains everything that is essential to success in the game (i.e. a safe bedroom for sleeping through the nights, a room for crafting and item storage, a farm for food production), and many things that are simply fun to create and have (i.e. a fireplace, a minecart rail system, a room for tamed wolves). As is the nature of many artistic endeavors, and as is the nature of Minecraft, this creation is not finished. It is a continual work in progress, and I will continue to play and improve as time goes on. [Screenshots have been added in a separate post, above. Click on each to enlarge the photo and see the explanatory captions]

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Attending a Virtual Event: MINECRAFT

The “event” I attended was a Minecraft Building Party, hosted by a friend on a private online server. A small group of friends and I agreed to all “meet up” online at a specific time and build up a new Minecraft server together. For ease of communication and coordination, we all joined a Skype conference call beforehand. This way, we could instantly communicate with each other, hands free, without disrupting our Minecraft play. Once the Skype call was set up, we all logged into the server at the same time. For the duration of the build party, we worked on various tasks together, such as constructing a shared base, acquiring necessary resources, exploring the environment, scouting for enemies or dangers, and just goofing around.

By the end of the designated time, we had jointly constructed a sizeable fortress, hollowed out many rich mines, and even discovered a pet wolf. All in all, it was a successful beginning to our new server. However… several problems did crop up along the way. There were both technical problems and human problems. The technical problems were, for the most part, expected. We encountered issues such as occasional server lag, unstable Internet connection (for some of us), and overheated computers, which led to individual player lag (for some of us). Despite these problems being irritating, they were par for the course, and we overcame them quickly and with ease. The human problems, on the other hand, were trickier because they were unexpected, and there were no “standard procedures” for fixing them. The first problem we ran into was that Max (the friend who was to host the server itself) had overslept, and wasn’t ready by the designated time. We had to call him several times to wake him up, and then (none too gently) coerce him into getting the server running as quickly as possible. We ended up getting started nearly 45 minutes late. Another human problem we had to face was lack of universal cooperation. On a multiplayer Minecraft server, it’s difficult to gather the necessary resources and complete certain tasks in time if everyone doesn’t help out a bit. Some players decided to go off on their own, gather their own resources for themselves, and build their own separate bases away from the main group. Though this isn’t exactly a “problem”, per say, it is an interesting dynamic that we had to adjust for.

All in all, the experience was very enjoyable. I always recommend that other people try out playing Minecraft, especially on a multiplayer server. To me, Minecraft is a highly satisfying, creative game, and it’s always more fun to share that experience with my friends in a cooperative way.

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Macroassignment 1. Perspectives

[I apologize in advance for the massive amount of text here. I can only hope it will end up formatting properly and be readable.]

Since the earliest dawn of Homo sapiens, humans have been creatures of innovation and adaptation. Over the millennia, we have been confronted by a plethora of challenges, and an unforgiving ultimatum: adapt or fail. Those who successfully navigated the rising tide of change prospered tremendously, whereas those who could not suffered the consequences. In centuries past, when these challenges related directly to survival, the penalty for this failure was often death.

            These days, the consequences of failing to adapt are less dramatic, but equally worthy of our concern. We face not mortal peril, but a cultural peril of our own making. We are generating new technological advancements faster than the global society can adapt to them. In effect, humanity is lagging behind its own inventions. Business models, educational systems, and cultural behaviors are becoming increasingly outdated and ineffective in the rapidly changing world we have created. There’s no doubt that a revolutionary paradigm shift will need to occur, and soon. The only questions that remain are what, and how. Three modern authors (Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams, and Lawrence Lessig) think they know the answers.

            Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, a book co-authored by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, discusses how our technologically advancing world is forcing the realm of business to adapt in unexpected ways. One of these adaptations is specifically referred to in the title itself; forward-thinking companies are beginning to realize the immense value of mass collaboration via the Internet.

            Nowadays, every person and their grandmother can use a computer and the Internet. Just twenty short years ago, this wasn’t true at all. Back then, the Internet was a dull, stuffy, read-only network utilized by a relatively small portion of the population. Nothing exciting or innovative happened on the ‘Net. Now, a vast living, breathing, interconnected community exists on the web, filled with billions of people and all the collective knowledge they possess. It is interactive, it is creative, it is collaborative. And, best of all, it is free and fully accessible to anyone who wants to use it. For a tech-savvy business, tapping into that network is like hitting the jackpot. This is partially because Internet collaboration nearly eliminates an age-old business problem: size constraints.

            Businesses have always been limited by size; regardless of wealth, a company can only expand so far, manage so many processes, and employ so many people. The enormous majority of the human population (and its talent) will always remain outside the company. Logically, this also means that a majority of highly qualified individuals will always remain out there, undiscovered by the companies that could use them. Before the age of the Internet, these individuals might never be found. The cost associated with seeking them out would be tremendous, and no company in their right mind would bother scouring the globe for a few diamonds in the rough. Now, however, the Internet has changed the rules. Even if an individual is physically located halfway around the world, they’re barely a few clicks away on a computer. It’s possible (and supremely advantageous) to collaborate on a massive scale, with anyone and everyone. Companies can crowd-source for creative ideas or solutions to complex problems on a global scale. They can finally tap into the talent of the billions that remain outside their employment, for little to no cost at all.

            One might think that every company worth their salt would be busily establishing strong collaboration networks via the Internet. After all, when presented with the opportunity to easily and cheaply harness the full potential of the human race, why would you even hesitate? Many companies, however, are reluctant to abandon the old ways. They’re sticking with the traditional closed-off, hierarchical “walled garden” business model, and they are suffering because of it.

            As far as Tapscott and Williams are concerned, this strategy of mass collaboration is absolutely necessary for survival in the new, technologically advanced world of business. If a company isn’t using the Internet for collaborative purposes, their competitors certainly will be, and they will be left woefully behind. It’s do or die; either embrace the newest technologies or sink into obscurity. Adapt or fail.

            Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology [to] Control Creativity, has a similar stance. He preaches that understanding the newest technology is vital to success, and not just in a business environment. It’s key to artistic and cultural survival as well.

            As previously discussed, the Internet allows for an incredible degree of global interaction. People can (and do) share anything and everything through the web: ideas, stories, photos, songs, videos, and more. These materials are then enjoyed (and sometimes improved upon) by others. Unfortunately, more often than not, the material isn’t legally theirs to share. “Piracy” is used to describe the common, albeit illegal, practice of openly sharing copyrighted material through the Internet. Most common is the sharing and downloading of copyrighted songs and music files. Innumerable websites and software products (Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, to name a famous few) have cropped up over the years to serve this very purpose.

          The music industry has raged against this “new” piracy crisis, filing lawsuits left and right, and claiming that their profits have suffered considerably as a result of all this free sharing and downloading. They seem to believe that music piracy is one of the worst things that could happen to our society. Lessig has a different opinion on the matter.

            Lessig begins by pointing out that, contrary to the claims of “Big Media”, piracy is nothing new. In fact, piracy has been instrumental to the development and vitality of all major entertainment industries from the start. The film industry moved to California and founded Hollywood specifically to escape persecution for copyright and royalty infringement! Even Walt Disney, beloved storyteller and movie animator, blatantly stole his material from other artists without crediting or rewarding them in any way. The characters and stories that made him so famous were never his to produce, but I think we would all agree the world is better off for Disney having made them. The “piracy” big production companies so detest is really just a form of widespread sharing and collaboration. And, strangely enough, this sharing rarely (if ever) detracts from mainstream sales. In fact, it tends to bolster them. Freely sharing information through the Internet allows it to reach infinitely more people, and many of those people will financially support the industry itself. Some entertainment industries, realizing this, are actually supportive of so-called piracy. Japan’s manga industry is one of them.

            In Japan, “manga” (the Japanese word for “comic”) is an incredibly popular form of entertainment. Hundreds of mainstream manga series exist, each with a devoted following of paying fans. Each year, the manga market brings in over 406 billion yen (or the equivalent of 3.6 billion US dollars). This massive industry is also extensively and blatantly pirated on an enormous scale. Dōjinshi, a non-mainstream branch of manga, is based entirely on parodies or alternate storylines of popular mainstream series. They use the exact same characters and plots as all the big brands, just with the individual artist’s own unique twists or ideas added in. Essentially, they are manga fan-fiction. These dōjinshi books are produced and sold en masse (in 2007, the dōjinshi industry made 28 billion yen, or 245 million US dollars).

You’d think that mainstream manga producers would stop at nothing to squash this “competing” market, to crush these “pirates” that rip off their characters and stories for profit. In actuality, neither private companies nor the Japanese government itself makes any move against the dōjinshi artists. They don’t care, because they know that manga sales are not diminished by dōjinshi, and these alternate versions only increase interest (and purchase) of the genuine article.

Both the example of Japan’s dōjinshi empire and our own American “pirate” Walt Disney show that piracy is not nearly as bad as big producers like to think. Most of the time, it’s a neutral (if not beneficial) force. Lessig knows this, and encourages modern copyright lawyers to realize the same. If we try to shut down all “piratical” artistic and cultural sharing to protect against a nonexistent danger, we risk shutting down art and culture itself. Advancing technology is not a tool of destruction that needs to be stopped, but a tool for creation that should be encouraged and supported.

Ultimately, that is how I feel about technology and the Internet in general. Whether from a business perspective, or from an artistic & cultural perspective, technology is not something to fear and avoid, but something to embrace and understand. Human nature, the way we interact with one another, and the problems we face have not changed. Only the mechanisms through which these constants are expressed have changed. Piracy is not new; collaboration is not new. The Internet and other modern inventions simply allow for these familiar behaviors to occur on a much larger scale, and more quickly than ever before. The “problem” we face today is learning how to operate in a virtual global society that is always moving, always changing, and always growing. The solution is learning how to collaborate with a global network of peers, share information and ideas openly with all, and readily adapt to what will (inevitably) continue to be a rapidly advancing technological landscape.

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Commentary on Twitter

Twitterer? Tweeter? Sharer of innumerable mundane thoughts through-out my day? Whatever the label is for people who use Twitter, it now applies to me, as well. I joined the hoards of Twitter under the pseudonym “QuestionBear”. The story behind this name is somewhat long and difficult to explain, but it boils down to this: it’s a unique name that some might call clever or amusing, and so I chose it. It also had the benefit of not already being a Twitter username.

That was the only difficulty I ran into while setting up my Twitter account: choosing a name. A website as wildly popular as Twitter has, as one would expect, a phenomenal number of user accounts, and therefore many of the standard usernames I use online were already taken. This is less of a “difficulty”, per say, than an inconvenience for being behind the times. Other than that, setting up a Twitter was incredibly easy.

And now, the Tweetstorm has begun. Thusfar, I have only used the Twitter website itself for tweeting. My mobile phone’s web browser is completely dysfunctional, so I haven’t tried the mobile Twitter application. I also haven’t tried Tweetdeck, since it doesn’t strike me as particularly necessary. I don’t Twitter enough to warrant bothering to set it up. In fact, I barely Twitter at all. Despite all the hype and craze about Twitter, I still don’t really “get” it. It strikes me as an overwhelming jumble of unnecessary information. Since Twitter posts are restricted to 140 characters or fewer, there is very little room for profound or fascinating commentary. Actual blogging sites are more interesting, in my opinion. People don’t have to limit themselves to meet length requirements; they don’t fuss around with hashtags and @mentions. There’s legitimate, thoughtful things to read on blogs. Tweets come across as self-indulgent and meaningless. “@somebody I’m down at the cafeteria, pizza is great! #yumyum” Thrilling.

I can understand the contexts in which Twitter can be useful (public figures or celebrities keeping up with their fans, event updates, quick jokes or comments), but it just doesn’t feel worth my time, personally.

There is definitely a lot of room for social interaction, which is, I suppose, what makes it so appealing to so many. Through @mentions and hashtags, you can be connected with anyone and everyone. You can find legions of communities, conversations, and comrades if you just do a little digging. However, as I said before, this “connection” feels superficial to me. This is perhaps why many people don’t use (and even adamantly dislike) Twitter. It has nothing particularly substantial to offer. Just a lot of fluff and amusement.

For these reasons, I doubt I will be involved in Twitter beyond this class. I will keep my account, keep following the Twitterers that amuse me, and perhaps post something every once in a while, but only on occasion, or it I am unusually bored.

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Commentary on Wiki'ing

On September 16th, in the computer lab, our class undertook an impressive task: to build a collaborative Wiki on Moodle. At first, this doesn't sound like a particularly difficult assignment. However, the twist was this: we had to do this with no pre-established leadership, no ideas about direction or style, and no knowledge of the programming medium whatsoever. It became quickly apparent that the main focus of the exercise was less about the quality of the resulting Wiki and more about how we managed to get there. Obviously, one of the goals was to create a functioning, helpful, well-formatted webpage. But if that were the only goal, Professor B. would have assigned specific tasks to each of us, given us an in-depth tutorial in Moodle programming, and explained what precisely we were supposed to do. Instead, he all but threw us into the wild and proclaimed, "You're on your own. I'm just here to watch." What happened next was spontaneous and yet, in some ways, expected. Immediately a particular student assumed the loose role of "Leader". This student gathered everyone around one computer, had us look through what we had to work with, explained her ideas for organization, and assigned tasks to various people. I knew, from the get-go, that someone would assume this role. People are naturally drawn together. We naturally form groups and organize and delegate; we like order as opposed to chaos. With our newly-designated little tasks, we all settled at our various computers and began work. I personally worked a great deal on the main page, formatting the text so it looked decent and cleaning up "debris" from old code. This task was easy enough, merely repetetive. The Moodle tool makes it amazingly easy to accomplish this sort of thing. I was surprised at how well the class continued discussing outloud and collaborating after work began. Computers have a tendency to "suck people in", even when we're all sitting together in the same room, side by side, working on the same project. We forget that we're working with real human beings as opposed to some nameless, faceless entity inside the machine. And so, much of the time, computer-based projects turn into a cluster of related (but distinctly separate) projects occurring in tandem, in which we're all working with the computer, not with each other. But that didn't happen here. One of the interesting functions of Moodle is that only one person can edit any given page at once. If someone is already working on a page, and someone else tries to edit it, they get an error message saying "(So-and-so) is editing this page!". Since the main page of the Wiki needed, by far, the most work, this quickly became a problem. Everyone wanted to work on it at once, and much of the other work couldn't occur before the main page was dealt with. However, our group tackled this issue well. In fact, it seemed to facilitate a greater degree of interaction. If someone needed to get at the main page (or any other page, for that matter) and someone else was working on it, they would simply say, "Hey (so-and-so), I see you're working on (such-and-such). Could you let me on for a second?". We talked to each other. We requested feedback. We crowd-sourced. We asked for help. We worked collaboratively, keenly aware that we were all working together toward the same goal, with (more or less) the same result in mind. By the end of the day, we had a complete, lovely, fully-fuctioning Wiki that was wholly the result of all of our collective effort.

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Not to overhype this or anything, but this song/music video is pretty much the greatest.

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Hello World*

*at least, those of you out there in the world that are listening. This marks the debut posting for my yet untitled blog, created for the purpose of the COMM 170 class at Clark University. As may be unnecessary to state at this point, I have decided to use Tumblr for my blog. There are several reasons for this choice, about half of which are logistical in nature, and about half of which are purely artistic and/or sentimental.

I have been using Tumblr for personal purposes for several years now, so I am very familiar and comfortable with the website. Starting a new blog was simple enough to do. Even someone who had never visited the site before would find it immensely easy and straightforward. If you don't have an account already, upon visiting the Tumblr homepage you will be immediately presented with a registration form. All they require is an email address, a password, and a unique Tumblr URL for your blog. Simple as that. No tedious forms to wade through, no unnecessary information, no "Click here if [are going to pretend] you have read the Terms and Conditions". Tumblr doesn't put needless steps between you and blogging. The entire site feels clean and simplified. Homey, even. Whether you are a blogger yourself or just have a Tumblr for reading others' content, everything on the site is easy to do. In fact, the most difficult part of setting up my blog was choosing a theme.

This brings me to what is perhaps my favorite quality about Tumblr: it's customizability. There are literally infinite possibilities for the appearance of your blog page. Thousands of user-made templates are available for free, and if (by some strange tragedy) one to your liking isn’t already on the site, it’s relatively easy to create and upload your own. Everything on your page (layout, appearance, content, the level of interactability available between your readers and yourself, and more) is completely customizable. There is, of course, consistency in the basic function of blogs, which means that although no two blogs look anything alike, they are all equally navigable and understandable.

My only complaint about Tumblr is that it is incredibly difficult to have any meaningful social interaction on the site. It’s possible to “like” a post, to reblog it and add your own caption to the content, and to send private messages to other users. That’s it. There are no forums, no comment system*, or social-networking-type “Walls” for feedback or discussion. It often makes Tumblr feel somewhat one-directional. Bloggers put up plenty of content, and it’s easy to access, but it’s hard for readers to contribute back. (* There is a way to set up comments on Tumblr, but it’s convoluted and through a third-party system. For most people (myself included) it seems like far too much trouble).

All in all, Tumblr is a great blogging service, and I will undoubtedly continue to use it after this class is over. However, I may explore other blogging options at some point, as the lack of social interaction can sometimes make Tumblr feel a little lonely. Anyway, that’s all for now. Til next time.  - Lauren

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Welcome. I haven't gotten around to finishing up my first proper blog entry, so this place was (understandably) feeling a little empty. So, here's something lovely to look at in the meantime.