I have a graphics problem. Actually, I have two graphics problems.
The first problem is inherent in the challenge of programming any video game: one of the largest hurdles is developing the graphical representation of the game. Coding loops isn't terribly challenging, but making those loops mean something recognizable on the screen is far more daunting. I've decided to use the Game Maker software popularized by YoYo Games. The website itself does a great job of pooling together already developed graphics, sound, and loop libraries from other users, allowing the community to do a great deal of the potential legwork for the beginning programmer. That said, I wasn't able to find much support for my particular graphics need (i.e. no trolleys), so this has left me at square one.
The second issue has been examined--at least tangentially--in much of the written research I've done. The overall goal of this project is to assess the video game medium as a way of portraying moral thought experiments, which hitherto has been a primarily textual undertaking. A responsible examination requires a careful consideration of rhetorical factors that affect other forms of thought experiment presentation, whether it be asked orally or read as a written question. The research presented by Ditto, et. al. (2009) and Petrinovich, et. al. (1996) are two sample studies that consider how the thought experiment is conveyed and/or the context in which it is conveyed. When considered in tandem, the "framing" and "priming" effects described begin to point to some of the inherent challenges in analyzing normative decisions in response to scenarios and questions presented rhetorically.
With both these factors in mind, I think what I have on my hands here is a project that, in practice, is attempting to examine two things simultaneously: 1. Can you effectively convey moral dilemma-type thought experiments in a video game? And 2. What are the control factors involved in doing so?
Throughout the semester, there has been a thoughtful examination of how digital writing affects cultures, communities, identity, and academia, and a motif of the discussion has been an examination of the unintended consequences of the digital writing medium. Although gender or racial inequality was not something that was intentionally designed into the internet 'apparatus', Nayer's writing and other writers we have examined have argued that the way the written discourse on the net is structured that there is oftentimes analogous forms of discrimination present online. Because video games frequently try to mimic the physical conventions of the offline world, the encoding and graphical manifestations of many of the factors that play into real life "framing" and "priming" will only be more manifest in a video game environment.
In Ditto, et al's, study, the attempt was made to partially obscure the racial identities of those presented in the trolley problem and yet the expected social prejudices were still (as expected) manifest. Turning the same situation into a graphically represented one would likely only increase the likelihood of such manifestations of social "priming."
Even at the 16-bit level of graphical representation that I am working at, the same issues apply. If I represent the in-game avatar as a white male--say, Mario--and I give him the choice of saving either Princess Toadstool or Luigi, Toad, and Yoshi, have I not presented as situation where the player is already "primed" to decide to save the former? The question of whether it is even possible to use popularly familiar avatars--the most readily available graphics libraries--has certainly provided me a key point of consideration. Likewise, having characters that are non-human or non-familiar has the possibility of tweaking the 'buy-in' factor of moral considerations.
I have however, come to a few conclusions on game mechanics that I am generally convinced will enhance the virtual thought experiment's efficacy. First, drawing on Sicart (2010), I believe that avatar selection or customization greatly enhances the simulation's ability to create the moral tie to the game player needed to exacerbate the level of player interest in the situation presented. Second, drawing on some of the considerations by Galloway (2006) about some of the features of gamer culture, I need to ensure that I break from some of the common conventions of contemporary video games, including the graphical depiction of the realization of the outcome of whatever decision is made. (The resulting violent act--resulting in a kill--is far too conventional of reward for standard video gameplay.)
References:
Galloway, A. (2006). Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. USA: University of Minnesota Press
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Research Post: Motivated Moral Reasoning
Article Link:
http://www.peezer.net/storage/Pizarro%20PublicationsChaptersDitto%20Pizarro%20Tannenbaum%20.pdf
In my last research post, I discussed an article that used the trolley problem to examine what moral philosophers called "framing." A similar concept is something that Peter Ditto, David A. Pizarro, and David Tannenbaum call "priming." In this paper, they describe a series of tests using a variation of the "trolley problem" and other moral thought experiments to test for the presence of social, political, and linguistic influences on the moral stances of various groups. This includes both examining in-text and out-of-text factors, meaning that both how the moral dilemma is conveyed is as important of a consideration as where it is told and who it is told to.
The paper's conclusions point to understanding all moral decisions as being affected by social priming, in all its different forms. The first part of the study dealt with whether or not names and professions that inferred a certain racial identification within the trolley problem would effect the moral analysis of participants. The second part of the study examined whether or not the nationality of potential victims in a military setting would affect the moral decision making of those presented with a trolley-type moral dilemma. The final part of the study analyzed whether or not the presentation of written material slanted towards certain moral conclusions prior to the presentation of the trolley problem would affect the decisions. Additionally, all participants in all parts of the study were examined by comparing self-identified political affiliations. All the empirical portions of the study showed that these forms of "framing" and "priming" did influence moral decision making in statistically significant ways.
In a video game environment, this means that the visual, textual, or audio representations of avatars, NPCs, etc, will have substantial effects on the moral reasoning of the player, even if these effects are unintended/unnoticed by the game's developers. This paper suggests that the innumerable unintended consequences of game design, including all its rhetorical components, simply because of the complexity of the task of representing a narrative in such a multifaceted medium, make it impossible to create a virtual environment that does not affect the decision making of the player. This, however, does not undermine the exercise of attempting moral thought experiments inside virtual environments because, as the studies presented in the paper show, every presentation of a moral dilemma will be affected by "priming" of one sort or another. Yet, the care one must take to separate the apparent empirical conclusions from the intended and unintended "priming" effects of the medium will be critical in creating quality moral studies.
References:
Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum. (2009). Motivated moral reasoning. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 307-338. doi:10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00410-6.
http://www.peezer.net/storage/Pizarro%20PublicationsChaptersDitto%20Pizarro%20Tannenbaum%20.pdf
In my last research post, I discussed an article that used the trolley problem to examine what moral philosophers called "framing." A similar concept is something that Peter Ditto, David A. Pizarro, and David Tannenbaum call "priming." In this paper, they describe a series of tests using a variation of the "trolley problem" and other moral thought experiments to test for the presence of social, political, and linguistic influences on the moral stances of various groups. This includes both examining in-text and out-of-text factors, meaning that both how the moral dilemma is conveyed is as important of a consideration as where it is told and who it is told to.
The paper's conclusions point to understanding all moral decisions as being affected by social priming, in all its different forms. The first part of the study dealt with whether or not names and professions that inferred a certain racial identification within the trolley problem would effect the moral analysis of participants. The second part of the study examined whether or not the nationality of potential victims in a military setting would affect the moral decision making of those presented with a trolley-type moral dilemma. The final part of the study analyzed whether or not the presentation of written material slanted towards certain moral conclusions prior to the presentation of the trolley problem would affect the decisions. Additionally, all participants in all parts of the study were examined by comparing self-identified political affiliations. All the empirical portions of the study showed that these forms of "framing" and "priming" did influence moral decision making in statistically significant ways.
In a video game environment, this means that the visual, textual, or audio representations of avatars, NPCs, etc, will have substantial effects on the moral reasoning of the player, even if these effects are unintended/unnoticed by the game's developers. This paper suggests that the innumerable unintended consequences of game design, including all its rhetorical components, simply because of the complexity of the task of representing a narrative in such a multifaceted medium, make it impossible to create a virtual environment that does not affect the decision making of the player. This, however, does not undermine the exercise of attempting moral thought experiments inside virtual environments because, as the studies presented in the paper show, every presentation of a moral dilemma will be affected by "priming" of one sort or another. Yet, the care one must take to separate the apparent empirical conclusions from the intended and unintended "priming" effects of the medium will be critical in creating quality moral studies.
References:
Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum. (2009). Motivated moral reasoning. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 307-338. doi:10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00410-6.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Research Post: Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions
Article Link:
The primary focus of an upcoming project I am working on is comparing whether certain medium presentation mediums of a moral dilemma affect the moral decisions of those confronted with morally challenging scenarios. The question is a primarily rhetorical one: does the method the story is told by effect the moral persuasiveness of the story. Within the field of rhetoric, similar considerations have been made by specifically changing word selection in certain aspects of a story. A 1996 study by Lewis Petrinovich and Patricia O'Neill (Journal of Ethnology and Sociobiology), studied exactly this. By examining the differences in the decisions of groups posed with the trolley problem first posed by Phillipa Foot when the moral dilemma presented at conclusion of the problem was with either "saving" a number of workers or "killing" the reciprocal number of workers on the alternate track.
Moral philosophers call differences in wording "framing effects." This study was designed to specifically examine the efficacy of such effects. The study was conducted in two parts, the first of which dealt specifically with the trolley problem. The presentation of the problem was presented eight different narrative presentations, or "dimensions," coded both for the varying presentation factors and the "kill-save" variation. The study found that people were far more likely to agree with statements worded with the "save" variation.
While this study is fairly limited in the range of difference in presentation--or at least compared to comparing a video game to a written description--but it demonstrates that the differences can be profound in how the moral problem is conceived by the participant. My expectation is that similar differences would exist in any medium. For example, camera angles in a film presentation may affect the moral disposition of the viewer when presented with what may be the identical moral scene. This intra-medium analysis does not, in my opinion, make it impossible to examine inter-medium differences. Ultimately, the most predominant factor of the moral dilemma presented is the dilemma itself. Although the "framing effects" may 'nudge' moral intuitions to one side or other, the essential aspects of the morally reasoning process, once reflected upon, remain the same. The is, however, an immense value in examining, as this study did, the nature of the 'nudge.'
References:
Petrinovich, Lewis and O'Neill, Patricia. (1996). Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions. Ethology and Sociobioiogy 17:145-171. New York, NY: Elsevier Science Inc.
The primary focus of an upcoming project I am working on is comparing whether certain medium presentation mediums of a moral dilemma affect the moral decisions of those confronted with morally challenging scenarios. The question is a primarily rhetorical one: does the method the story is told by effect the moral persuasiveness of the story. Within the field of rhetoric, similar considerations have been made by specifically changing word selection in certain aspects of a story. A 1996 study by Lewis Petrinovich and Patricia O'Neill (Journal of Ethnology and Sociobiology), studied exactly this. By examining the differences in the decisions of groups posed with the trolley problem first posed by Phillipa Foot when the moral dilemma presented at conclusion of the problem was with either "saving" a number of workers or "killing" the reciprocal number of workers on the alternate track.
Moral philosophers call differences in wording "framing effects." This study was designed to specifically examine the efficacy of such effects. The study was conducted in two parts, the first of which dealt specifically with the trolley problem. The presentation of the problem was presented eight different narrative presentations, or "dimensions," coded both for the varying presentation factors and the "kill-save" variation. The study found that people were far more likely to agree with statements worded with the "save" variation.
While this study is fairly limited in the range of difference in presentation--or at least compared to comparing a video game to a written description--but it demonstrates that the differences can be profound in how the moral problem is conceived by the participant. My expectation is that similar differences would exist in any medium. For example, camera angles in a film presentation may affect the moral disposition of the viewer when presented with what may be the identical moral scene. This intra-medium analysis does not, in my opinion, make it impossible to examine inter-medium differences. Ultimately, the most predominant factor of the moral dilemma presented is the dilemma itself. Although the "framing effects" may 'nudge' moral intuitions to one side or other, the essential aspects of the morally reasoning process, once reflected upon, remain the same. The is, however, an immense value in examining, as this study did, the nature of the 'nudge.'
References:
Petrinovich, Lewis and O'Neill, Patricia. (1996). Influence of wording and framing effects on moral intuitions. Ethology and Sociobioiogy 17:145-171. New York, NY: Elsevier Science Inc.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Flickr and Twitter: Too Much Effort (And then some...)
The past few weeks I've been working with two forms of social media that I had thus far managed to avoid. I feel compelled to write about my experiences with each both because this sort of reflection is required for a class I'm taking and because I spent a great deal of time pondering what about these sites make them unique enough to fulfill whatever cyber-voids that Facebook, blogging, commenting, texting, and emailing don't.
Twitter
Of the two, Twitter is the most important. This is both because its sudden ubiquity, but also because it has become our de facto agora in contemporary society. I had a very hard time crossing into the realm of "Tweeters" (this is the right terms for someone on Twitter, right?), because I am aware that should any amount of fame or infamy ever find me, my Twitter posts will be the likely point of focus of any public speculation on my state of mind, interests, or opinions either relevant or irrelevant to whatever notoriety I may incur. Thus, picking a user name on Twitter was a dizzying challenge of prediction and restraint. Do I use my real name? Do I use an absurd name? Will all of humanity either find me pretentious or ridiculous for choosing or not choosing either one of those? (I eventually settled on the name "TysonMe"--decidedly not clever, but probably unoffensive as well.)
Tweeting hasn't been too much of a chore. It's as easy as sending a text message or updating my status of facebook. Which of course brings me to my biggest issue with Twitter: What distinguishes it from a facebook feed or text message? I suppose the extreme public nature of Twitter posts is the essence of what makes it different than a facebook post (but only marginally so, unless your facebook privacy settings are cranked all the way up). At the same time, though, this makes me hesitate at the point of tweeting anything: Who is going to read this and why? There is an existential crisis built into the Tweeting process, something simultaneously akin to public nudity and voyeuristic urge, which although probably ignored by many prolific Twitter users (Yes you, Kanye), that creates the risk of the whimsical gaining ground on the profound on happenstance alone.
Answering the question: "What's happening?" has never been such a simultaneously banal and profound act.
Flickr
My first thoughts while trying to register for Flickr: Yahoo has deserved to suffer a long and protracted death.
My current thoughts about using Flickr: Yahoo deserves to suffer and continuing long and protracted death, preferably involving bees and feral dogs.
I've posted hundreds of photos on Facebook, used Picasa any number of times, and uploaded photos to everything from newspaper websites to blogs. The process of setting up my Flickr account was agonizing? What do I get in return for setting up a YahooID? Given the effort, time, and frustration of setting up a web-based account, then having to essentially repeat the process on my phone, I think I may have rather gone through the process of acquiring an STD--at least some portion of that acquisition might be enjoyable.
What did I get for my efforts? Well, not that much. Although I appreciate all the functionality in tagging, geo-tagging, cropping, rights-setting, etc, that Flickr provides, I haven't really found myself warming up to the whole process. Granted, I'm not the photo-taking type, but the level of investment just to get pictures out and available to my friends and family using this site just doesn't provide the type of return that other sites I already use do.
Of the two, Twitter is the most important. This is both because its sudden ubiquity, but also because it has become our de facto agora in contemporary society. I had a very hard time crossing into the realm of "Tweeters" (this is the right terms for someone on Twitter, right?), because I am aware that should any amount of fame or infamy ever find me, my Twitter posts will be the likely point of focus of any public speculation on my state of mind, interests, or opinions either relevant or irrelevant to whatever notoriety I may incur. Thus, picking a user name on Twitter was a dizzying challenge of prediction and restraint. Do I use my real name? Do I use an absurd name? Will all of humanity either find me pretentious or ridiculous for choosing or not choosing either one of those? (I eventually settled on the name "TysonMe"--decidedly not clever, but probably unoffensive as well.)
Tweeting hasn't been too much of a chore. It's as easy as sending a text message or updating my status of facebook. Which of course brings me to my biggest issue with Twitter: What distinguishes it from a facebook feed or text message? I suppose the extreme public nature of Twitter posts is the essence of what makes it different than a facebook post (but only marginally so, unless your facebook privacy settings are cranked all the way up). At the same time, though, this makes me hesitate at the point of tweeting anything: Who is going to read this and why? There is an existential crisis built into the Tweeting process, something simultaneously akin to public nudity and voyeuristic urge, which although probably ignored by many prolific Twitter users (Yes you, Kanye), that creates the risk of the whimsical gaining ground on the profound on happenstance alone.
Answering the question: "What's happening?" has never been such a simultaneously banal and profound act.
Flickr
My first thoughts while trying to register for Flickr: Yahoo has deserved to suffer a long and protracted death.
My current thoughts about using Flickr: Yahoo deserves to suffer and continuing long and protracted death, preferably involving bees and feral dogs.
I've posted hundreds of photos on Facebook, used Picasa any number of times, and uploaded photos to everything from newspaper websites to blogs. The process of setting up my Flickr account was agonizing? What do I get in return for setting up a YahooID? Given the effort, time, and frustration of setting up a web-based account, then having to essentially repeat the process on my phone, I think I may have rather gone through the process of acquiring an STD--at least some portion of that acquisition might be enjoyable.
What did I get for my efforts? Well, not that much. Although I appreciate all the functionality in tagging, geo-tagging, cropping, rights-setting, etc, that Flickr provides, I haven't really found myself warming up to the whole process. Granted, I'm not the photo-taking type, but the level of investment just to get pictures out and available to my friends and family using this site just doesn't provide the type of return that other sites I already use do.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Research: The Rhetoric of Video Games
Article Reviewed: The Rhetoric of Video Games by Ian Bogost
One of challenges of bringing the study of a video games into the realm of academic discourse is attempting to define the academic ontology that video games can be studied under. Computer science is an obvious choice, as are fields that study human computer interactions (i.e. psychology, neurology, computer engineering), media studies, and the effects of video games on children. Philosophers and rhetoricians also seem to have a stick in this fight, examining games as some sort of combination of narrative medium and rhetorical play. One of the more seminal arguments for game under this interpretation is presented by Ian Bogost in "The Rhetoric of Video Games."
Bogost argues that video games present a new form of rhetoric, "procedural rhetoric," that, in the case of video games, is a subset of digital rhetoric and visual rhetoric. Illustrating his point by citing games such as Rockstar Studios Bully,"...models the social environment of high school through an expressive system of rules, and makes a procedural argument for the necessity of confrontation;" and Will Wright's Spore, which "subtly arguing through its game play that the spread of life in the universe is most likely caused by sentient beings transporting other creatures from star to star."
I find that there are three profound implications to Bogost's essay, two that he names and one that he does not. First, as Bogost writes, "...playing video games is a kind of literacy... that helps us make or critique
the systems we live in." Second, "By teaching...arguments in procedural form—even simple ones like models of their everyday life—video games can become a carrot medium for both programming and expression." The final implication, that Bogost does not overtly mention, but can be derived from his work, is that video games merit the same forms of study and criticism as other forms of rhetoric. Video games are just as susceptible to critical inquiry as literature or film and gaming elements, like literary elements (i.e. syntax, metaphor) or visual elements (i.e. composition, color), are just as due for analysis and study. Conventions of genre and form in video games should and will become principle to cultural and social understanding of the medium.
For my own research, I found it interesting that Bogost on multiple occasions cited Plato and his use of allegory to make rhetorical arguments about behavior and perception. To contrast and place video games next to classical forms of rhetorical discourse says a great deal about what video games may be capable of in terms of "education" in the most classical sense of the word. That said, of course, I find no closer real world analog to Plato's Cave Allegory than the contemporary living room, with its large screen TVs, XBOX's, Blue Ray players, and 24/7 cable programming feeds. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
References
Bogost, Ian. (2008). The rhetoric of video games. In K. Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (117-140). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
One of challenges of bringing the study of a video games into the realm of academic discourse is attempting to define the academic ontology that video games can be studied under. Computer science is an obvious choice, as are fields that study human computer interactions (i.e. psychology, neurology, computer engineering), media studies, and the effects of video games on children. Philosophers and rhetoricians also seem to have a stick in this fight, examining games as some sort of combination of narrative medium and rhetorical play. One of the more seminal arguments for game under this interpretation is presented by Ian Bogost in "The Rhetoric of Video Games."
Bogost argues that video games present a new form of rhetoric, "procedural rhetoric," that, in the case of video games, is a subset of digital rhetoric and visual rhetoric. Illustrating his point by citing games such as Rockstar Studios Bully,"...models the social environment of high school through an expressive system of rules, and makes a procedural argument for the necessity of confrontation;" and Will Wright's Spore, which "subtly arguing through its game play that the spread of life in the universe is most likely caused by sentient beings transporting other creatures from star to star."
I find that there are three profound implications to Bogost's essay, two that he names and one that he does not. First, as Bogost writes, "...playing video games is a kind of literacy... that helps us make or critique
the systems we live in." Second, "By teaching...arguments in procedural form—even simple ones like models of their everyday life—video games can become a carrot medium for both programming and expression." The final implication, that Bogost does not overtly mention, but can be derived from his work, is that video games merit the same forms of study and criticism as other forms of rhetoric. Video games are just as susceptible to critical inquiry as literature or film and gaming elements, like literary elements (i.e. syntax, metaphor) or visual elements (i.e. composition, color), are just as due for analysis and study. Conventions of genre and form in video games should and will become principle to cultural and social understanding of the medium.
For my own research, I found it interesting that Bogost on multiple occasions cited Plato and his use of allegory to make rhetorical arguments about behavior and perception. To contrast and place video games next to classical forms of rhetorical discourse says a great deal about what video games may be capable of in terms of "education" in the most classical sense of the word. That said, of course, I find no closer real world analog to Plato's Cave Allegory than the contemporary living room, with its large screen TVs, XBOX's, Blue Ray players, and 24/7 cable programming feeds. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
References
Bogost, Ian. (2008). The rhetoric of video games. In K. Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (117-140). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Social Software: Continuing the Story
Background
In 2004, technologist Christopher Allen wrote a short article about the development of social software since the 1940's. Back in 2004--pre-Facebook, pre-YouTube, pre-social networking--most of this software was geared towards collaborative business and/productivity tools(ex. Adobe Connect, Skype, and, in a very limited way, Second Life-like environments). At the time of writing, he made a few vague predictions about how such software would be characterized in 2010:
"Typically, a visionary originates a term, and a community around that visionary may (or may not) adopt it. The diaspora of the term from that point can be slow, with 10 or 15 years passing before a term is more generally adopted. Once a term is more broadly adopted, it faces the risk of becoming a marketing term, corrupted into differentiating products rather than explaining ideas.
Is 'social software', which just now gaining wide acceptance, destined for the same trash heap of uselessness as groupware? And, if so, what impact does the changing of this terminology have on the field of social software itself?"
The Re-Write:
Although the trend of social software through the opening years of the millennium had primarily been tools for academic and business collaborations, beginning with Friendster in 2002 the popular adoption of social software to facilitate social networking and online community building became the predominant form of social software. The three most important exemplars of this type of social software that emerged by the close of the decade were Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Facebook, which emerged from an initially crowded social networking market that included MySpace, Orkut, and Friendster, has become the de facto social network of mainstream culture, not just in the United States where it originated, but globally, with over 150 million users from over 60 different countries. Facebook evolved into not only a service for linking people and maintaining "weak" social relationships, but also a gaming, advertisement, and entertainment platform, with all the applications reinforcing the site's collaborative, socializing nature.
YouTube, a video sharing site, was started in 2005 and was by 2010 one of the most popular sites on the web. It regularly spurs collaborated creative efforts, often in the form of creative video responses (replies) to original media from other YouTube users. Definitely falling within the realm of social software, the site is primarily viewed as an entertainment site.
Twitter, a streaming feed of short text posts ("tweets") created by individual users, is a cultural data feed that incorporates everyone from the average joe, politicians, entertainers, athletes, and fictional characters. The overall effect of the site is universal inclusion of individual messages, organized temporally, but not connected by any specific theme, narrative, or prompt.
The Future: 2020
The popular social networking sites of 2010 had already revealed that traditional social norms, traditions, and mores often came into conflict with the types of views, attitudes, and customs that were revealed by users. Ultimately, these sites erode not only users notion of personal privacy, but also society's expectation of it. This will have a revolutionary effect on public-private social norms, morality, and social transparency.
In 2004, technologist Christopher Allen wrote a short article about the development of social software since the 1940's. Back in 2004--pre-Facebook, pre-YouTube, pre-social networking--most of this software was geared towards collaborative business and/productivity tools(ex. Adobe Connect, Skype, and, in a very limited way, Second Life-like environments). At the time of writing, he made a few vague predictions about how such software would be characterized in 2010:
"Typically, a visionary originates a term, and a community around that visionary may (or may not) adopt it. The diaspora of the term from that point can be slow, with 10 or 15 years passing before a term is more generally adopted. Once a term is more broadly adopted, it faces the risk of becoming a marketing term, corrupted into differentiating products rather than explaining ideas.
Is 'social software', which just now gaining wide acceptance, destined for the same trash heap of uselessness as groupware? And, if so, what impact does the changing of this terminology have on the field of social software itself?"
The Re-Write:
Although the trend of social software through the opening years of the millennium had primarily been tools for academic and business collaborations, beginning with Friendster in 2002 the popular adoption of social software to facilitate social networking and online community building became the predominant form of social software. The three most important exemplars of this type of social software that emerged by the close of the decade were Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Facebook, which emerged from an initially crowded social networking market that included MySpace, Orkut, and Friendster, has become the de facto social network of mainstream culture, not just in the United States where it originated, but globally, with over 150 million users from over 60 different countries. Facebook evolved into not only a service for linking people and maintaining "weak" social relationships, but also a gaming, advertisement, and entertainment platform, with all the applications reinforcing the site's collaborative, socializing nature.
YouTube, a video sharing site, was started in 2005 and was by 2010 one of the most popular sites on the web. It regularly spurs collaborated creative efforts, often in the form of creative video responses (replies) to original media from other YouTube users. Definitely falling within the realm of social software, the site is primarily viewed as an entertainment site.
Twitter, a streaming feed of short text posts ("tweets") created by individual users, is a cultural data feed that incorporates everyone from the average joe, politicians, entertainers, athletes, and fictional characters. The overall effect of the site is universal inclusion of individual messages, organized temporally, but not connected by any specific theme, narrative, or prompt.
The Future: 2020
The popular social networking sites of 2010 had already revealed that traditional social norms, traditions, and mores often came into conflict with the types of views, attitudes, and customs that were revealed by users. Ultimately, these sites erode not only users notion of personal privacy, but also society's expectation of it. This will have a revolutionary effect on public-private social norms, morality, and social transparency.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Game of the Year that Wasn't: Medal of Honor
 |
| Afghanistan circa 1988 |
The Great Pashtun Hope
There was a lot of hype about EA's new Medal of Honor game. It set series pre-sale records. EA's stock price went up--before reviews of the game came out, at least. And there was the press-so-good-you-can't-buy-it controversy surround the ability to play as a
Then the game was released.
To be fair, the reviews haven't been horrible. It has been holding steady at 75 on Metacritic, which is a fairly strong score. Yet, every reviewer seems to lament the same foibles: short, unimpressive single player campaign, glitchy graphics and gameplay, simple AI, and definitely not as good in any way, shape, or form as its major First-Person-Shooter contemporaries such as Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare or Halo: Reach.
In general, I agree with these criticisms. The campaign levels are at times claustrophobic and woefully dull. I usually felt like I was playing a video game cross of Disney's Splash Mountain and whack-a-mole, forced to follow down a narrow mountain path shooting at predictable, cover and shoot enemies in the same manner over and over again. There were occasional graphical glitches and slow frame rates--especially during the helicopter stages. While I certainly appreciated the tactical chatter my AI-controlled squadmates provided and their attempts at utilizing actual tactical movements, they were frequently dumb enough to walk right in front of my machine gun as I was firing down some canyon or into a valley of bad guys. That was ok though, because the one new thing I did learn about special forces in Afghanistan is that they are both invincible and carrying unlimited ammunition at all times. A game designed to be 'accurate' can't be wrong, right?
Colonel Trautman: I'm sorry I got you into this, Johnny.
Rambo: No you're not.
--Rambo III
This brings me to my biggest criticism of the game: It's not even remotely realistic enough. In addition to all the US Forces in Afghanistan being super-soldiers, Afghanistan has no females, no children, no dogs--no civilians whatsoever. In the game, you and your squad-mates raid numerous villages, with the order to essentially shoot everything that moves. Thanks to some mysterious force called "intel," you know there are "only bad guys" in these villages, and thus shooting everything that moves is the absolutely just thing to do.
Likewise--and I'm mystified how the folks at EA could have included this in the wake of the infamous Wikileaks video--while operating as a helicopter gunner, you can essentially decimate entire villages with combinations of machine gun and rocket fire without so much as a mention of the potential for civilian casualties. Of course, this same "intel" is constantly being criticized by your squadmates for underestimating the number of opposing forces, the nationality of those forces, the location of those forces, and even the weather, but when it comes to identifying the civilian population of an entire province as being vacated, "intel" is spot on.
By removing the moral challenges of the Afghan conflict from the narrative of the game, the folks at EA, Danger Close, et al, have abandoned the single most challenging aspect of the contemporary military conflict they wish to convey. I could handle the dumb AI, the campaign-on-rails level design, but given all the attention and promotion of the game's "realism" and tactical accuracy, far more effort should have been spent on creating a realistic Afghan operation.
I think the game developers were at least tangentially aware of this as well. Somewhat lazily, they included a few moral conundrums in a few of the games cinematic scenes. In one scene an enlightened colonel is overruled by an aloof, far-away general (in civilian clothes?) over teleconference, leading to the massacre of an unknown number of Afghan allies. Likewise, in what is perhaps a nod to Lone Survivor, when your squad comes across a shepherd at the beginning of a level, they opt to knock him unconscious rather than shooting him. Nice touches, perhaps, but they are completely removed from the gameplay itself, and the player has no opportunity to exercise their own decision making abilities at any point in the game, nor do the acts conveyed require any sort of moral reflection on why exactly this particular war is hell.
Oddly enough, the game's insanely challenging and complex multi-player mode does a better job of conveying the challenges of modern war. Other, human players allow for a more cunning, more' human' foe. All of a sudden, the
"This film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan."
--Rambo III
Danger Close and EA close the single player campaign with a several paragraph dedication to the men of the US Special Forces community. It's an earnest, for some tear jerking, attempt at memorializing the figures featured in the game. And yet, and yet... The efforts the game designers took to humanize the special forces characters--closely rendered faces, great voice acting, humanizing pre-combat rituals of rubbing rabbit feet and chewing tobacco--only highlights by contrasts their inability to humanize the conflict itself. While there were moments--just moments--where I felt a recognition that I was playing/fighting in a scenario alongside what were the in-game equivalents of contemporary, human warfighters, I never felt that the enemies represented anything more human than Halo's Covenant aliens--perhaps even less so. Likewise, with an Afghanistan populated only by targets and target shooters, the gameplay itself removed any pretension of human conflict.
What is left is at best a spiritual sequel to the Rambo films of the 1980's. Stallone wrote those films to memorialize the forgotten military heroes of a generation that largely tried to forget the conflicts that they fought in. Likewise, this game makes an effort, albeit a meek one, to bring to the popular fore the conflict that so few contemporary Americans have any connection to. Yet, it isn't Stallone's films that offer anything near an accurate portrait of war or those that fight in them (later films such as Blackhawk Down, We Were Soldiers, The Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, Letter from Iwo Jima, etc all do a far better job), and because of this, much of the earnest sentiment is lost amongst the explosions and oiled set-pieces. All that one remembers is the visceral war porn that remains.
I have higher hopes for a number of games that are coming out in the coming weeks, Fallout New Vegas and Fable III, to name a few. While these games do not purport to represent reality or contemporary conflict, I actually expect these games to feel more human, more provoking than Medal of Honor, a game that, by design, should have been so much more.
 |
| Afghanistan circa 2005 (Apparently, all the women and children moved to Pakistan?) |
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Online Community Examination: The Economist Debates
I've passively followed some of the debates on The Economist's website for a few years now. By passively, I mean as--in web parlance--a lurker. I've never posted a comment. I have voted a few times in the "agree with the motion" or "disagree with the motion" but I've never felt interested/motivated or qualified enough to contribute a written opinion. I suppose this makes me a quasi-lurker, but I digress.
In general, the community is made of readers of the Economist and its website (the debates have been regularly plugged in the print magazine), but it can also include guest luminaries and pundits varying by the subject of debate.
Purpose:
The debates are designed as an enhanced forum for traditional Oxford style debate. A motion is proposed by the "house," and the debate is whether to "agree" or "disagree." At the end of a series of phases, a winner is declared by the editorial staff (the "moderator"). The debates tend to focus on issues tangent to current events. As such, the Economist can present a number of related archived stories, featured agree/disagree opinions by expert or celebrity commentators, and yet another forum for expert but objective commentary on the points made in the user forums and by experts. As a whole, the debate forum as The Economist presents it allows participants to further educate themselves on the facts of the situation presented, and provides exposure to the breadth of opinions presented the (assumed) most capable pundits and its readership. In the classical sense, the purpose of this website is education via a dialectic.
Product:
Although the site is mostly textual, it does what I feel is a fairly good job of presenting the multitude of information surrounding a debate in parallel. Although dense, the site is organized professionally, adhering to design concepts argued for by Redish, Williams, etc. That said, a fair amount of literacy and openness to moderated argument is assumed of the site's readership. While flame wars have been present in the forums, they are far more polite that what one might find in the comments section of a CNN.com article, with most forum posts beginning "Dear Sir," or "Dear Moderator." Rarely are comments directed at specific posters. (This may be against the Oxford Union-house rules that the forum is modeled on. Regardless, it is effective.)
Process:
Debates have five parts: Overview, Opening, Rebuttal, Closing, and Post-Debate. Each of the latter four phases marks the closing of the forums for that part, the starting of a new forum, the inclusion of new expert pundits, and additional commentary by the moderator. Forum members can change their agree/disagree votes at any time, and the votes are charted daily up until the closing phase. This is very unlike other online forums that may be moderated, but are not closed off into temporal sections of discussion. While an online thread on, say, Brett Farve's love life on a Viking's Fan Site, has the potential to go on into perpetuity, that this forum is designed to actually come to some sort of moderated conclusion on a social, economic, or political issue makes it somewhat unique.
Has a debate ever changed my opinion? Not completely. I have never found myself transitioning from the "agree" to "disagree" or vice versa, but my view on the topics presented have always ended up more nuanced, more complex than prior to following the debates. This house proposes that this makes this community an effective, intriguing one, both for the quality of its presentation and the occasionally thought provoking post in the floor forum.
In general, the community is made of readers of the Economist and its website (the debates have been regularly plugged in the print magazine), but it can also include guest luminaries and pundits varying by the subject of debate.
Purpose:
The debates are designed as an enhanced forum for traditional Oxford style debate. A motion is proposed by the "house," and the debate is whether to "agree" or "disagree." At the end of a series of phases, a winner is declared by the editorial staff (the "moderator"). The debates tend to focus on issues tangent to current events. As such, the Economist can present a number of related archived stories, featured agree/disagree opinions by expert or celebrity commentators, and yet another forum for expert but objective commentary on the points made in the user forums and by experts. As a whole, the debate forum as The Economist presents it allows participants to further educate themselves on the facts of the situation presented, and provides exposure to the breadth of opinions presented the (assumed) most capable pundits and its readership. In the classical sense, the purpose of this website is education via a dialectic.
Product:
Although the site is mostly textual, it does what I feel is a fairly good job of presenting the multitude of information surrounding a debate in parallel. Although dense, the site is organized professionally, adhering to design concepts argued for by Redish, Williams, etc. That said, a fair amount of literacy and openness to moderated argument is assumed of the site's readership. While flame wars have been present in the forums, they are far more polite that what one might find in the comments section of a CNN.com article, with most forum posts beginning "Dear Sir," or "Dear Moderator." Rarely are comments directed at specific posters. (This may be against the Oxford Union-house rules that the forum is modeled on. Regardless, it is effective.)
Process:
Debates have five parts: Overview, Opening, Rebuttal, Closing, and Post-Debate. Each of the latter four phases marks the closing of the forums for that part, the starting of a new forum, the inclusion of new expert pundits, and additional commentary by the moderator. Forum members can change their agree/disagree votes at any time, and the votes are charted daily up until the closing phase. This is very unlike other online forums that may be moderated, but are not closed off into temporal sections of discussion. While an online thread on, say, Brett Farve's love life on a Viking's Fan Site, has the potential to go on into perpetuity, that this forum is designed to actually come to some sort of moderated conclusion on a social, economic, or political issue makes it somewhat unique.
Has a debate ever changed my opinion? Not completely. I have never found myself transitioning from the "agree" to "disagree" or vice versa, but my view on the topics presented have always ended up more nuanced, more complex than prior to following the debates. This house proposes that this makes this community an effective, intriguing one, both for the quality of its presentation and the occasionally thought provoking post in the floor forum.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Trolley Problem
"Suppose you are the driver of a trolley. The trolley rounds a bend, and there come into view ahead five track workmen, who have been repairing the track...[Y]ou must stop the trolley if you are to avoid running the five men down. You step on the breaks, but, alas, they don't work. Now you suddenly see a spur of track leading off to the right. You can turn the trolley onto it and thus save the five me on the straight track ahead. Unfortunately...there is one track workman on that spur of track. He can no more get off the track in time than the five can, so you will kill him if you turn the trolley onto him.
Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley?" (Thomson I).
And such was my introduction to the question that Phillipa Foot first posed when addressing the question of abortion in 1978 in her The Doctrine of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect. Although the trolley problem's ties to Foot and the subject of her original essay have been largely forgotten, the type of thought experiment posed by the question has become a critical feature of any number of fields of study. Judith Thompson, an MIT professor and Foot's contemporary expanded on the problem considerably, crafting all sorts of morally frustrating variations. Law schools soon latched on as well and the question is often posed to first year law students when the question of 'what is morally just versus what is morally permissible' is initially posed (perhaps to hasten the moral cynicism that all law students eventually succumb to).
Study of the trolley problem is currently of interest to neuroscience, as morality thought experiments, when posed to populations observed by fMRI scanners, have revealed how the brain performs moral reasoning and, more interestingly, how members of different gender, ethnic, and social groups actually may process such question differently than other populations. At the forefront of this type of research is a Harvard researcher named Joshua Greene who runs that university's Moral Cognition Lab. (See exemplar studies below.)
Similarly, psychology has found all interesting uses for variations of the trolley problem. Of recent note was a study released by Cornell research psychologist David Pizarro, who used varying nouns to implicate race distinctions in the various descriptions of the problem, revealing telling inclinations of certain political groups towards favoring one ethnic group over another. (See Wired.com summary here, article cited below.)
Those interested in these fields will find each discipline’s study of the problem fascinating in its own right, but the trolley problem and its frustrating rhetorical implications has come to represent thought experiment par excellence of our contemporary age.
(Now if we could just manage to convey the same sort of thing with a video game...)
References:
Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum. (2009). Motivated moral reasoning. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 307-338. ![http://www.sciencedirect.com/scidirimg/clear.gif]()
doi:10.1016/S0079-7421(08)
Foot, P. (1967). The problem of abortion and the doctrine of double effect. Oxford Review, 5. Retrieved from http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/
Greene, J.D., Nystrom, L.E., Engell, A.D., Darley, J.M., & Cohen, J.D. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44(2), 389-400. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2004.09.
Greene, J.D., Sommerville, R.B., Nystrom, L.E., Darley, J.M., & Cohen, J.D. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science 293, 2105-2108. doi: 10.1126/science.1062872.
Thompson, J.J. (1985). The trolley problem. Yale Law Journal. Retrieved from http://amirim.mscc.huji.ac.il/
Sunday, October 3, 2010
My Netiquette Top 10
1. Don't forward chain e-mails. Ever.
My dad is the worst offender I know on this big number one netiquette rule. Because my earliest email experiences involved corresponding with him over email, an on-again-of-again conversation that has lasted since at least 1996, this has also been one of my most persistent annoyances. To be fair, my dad's affection with chain emails is well intentioned. I get the feeling that he has looked at every email or link he's ever forwarded. Likewise, I remember early on in the 'internet age' when getting jokes and funny little stories (see Darwin Awards) in your email was a real treat. Friends and colleagues took the time to discuss the most recent emails at parties and lunches. This probably doesn't happen anymore. In fact, I imagine that except for a dedicated few, most the emails sent by my dad beginning with "FW:" end up as they do in my email box, subject lines bold and unread into perpetuity.
2. Don't friend request your boss.
This has always seemed obvious to me, but I still see people try to do it all the time. That said, if your boss friends you, it's probably ok to accept (cynically mandatory, actually). Friending former bosses is passable behavior as well. On the other end of the spectrum, however, is friending someone who you've just been assigned under, but have never actually met. This is the definition of cyber awkward. Expect rejection.
3. Don't start Facebook wall posts with "Dear," "To whom it may concern:," etc. or end a post with "Love," "Sincerely," "Best wishes," etc. (Unless you're being ironic.)
Facebook posts aren't letters. They aren't even email. They are wall posts, descendants of graffiti in urban spaces. Your identity is obvious as soon as it shows up on the wall, so there's no need to identify yourself. Any niceties on the front or back of your post make it seem like you are completely lost or are suffering from momentary amnesia. The bright, electric screen and pictures of your cousin's birthday party should make it obvious you're not crafting a epistemological masterpiece, Mr. Hemingway.
4. Don't harass gamer girls.
I've been playing a lot of Halo: Reach lately. Every so often, a female gamer will be part of one the games. The second a female voice is heard by the rest of the (male) players, the discourse, gaming, and general vibe of the experience goes downhill immediately.
Exemplar comments:
-'You sound hot. Where do you live?'
-'Do you have a boyfriend?'
-'I have a girlfriend, but I'd do you.'
-'How about you give me your phone number? I'll sext you.'
-'I just killed you. That kinda turns me on. Does it turn you on?'
And so on.
This really ruins the experience of all the gamers, not just the females. I feel like there are enough experiential boundaries to getting into a competitive, relatively complex game like Halo: Reach to start throwing up crude social barriers to the gaming experience as well. And while not every gamer will look like the girls in this pertinent video, the gaming experience should be as open and welcoming to everyone as possible. If nothing else, having a larger number of players simply enriches the game play of all.
5. People don't care about your Farmville cows. (And neither should you.)
I know Zenga is making a zillion dollars a week by incentivizing time wasting to people around the world, but the last thing I want on my Facebook newsfeed is to hear about your new baby calf having diarrhea, what your mafioso crew did to some speakeasy, or that your pirates just assassinated a trove of pink unicorns.Yes, I know I can block stuff like this, but should I really have to?
6. You are not your dog, Martin Luther King Jr., or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Your Facebook profile picture should reflect this.
7. People do not want to be fans of your employer.
Congratulations! I'm glad you got that great new job at Target, I really am. I was tired of paying your half of the rent, anyway. But this does not mean I want to become a fan of Target, and I think you owe it to me not to suggest such a thing. Please. (By the way, you still do owe me $1200 and I'm not a fan of that, either.)
8. If you're going to post a link to an article, add a personal comment about it.
It's great that you think that Tom Friedman/Michelle Malkin/Any Huffington Post Contributor's latest diatribe is so insightful. But why? As Yoda once said: Posting an article does not an opinion make.
9. Don't hate (on Social Media).
I've been in more than one conversation with people who state that they 'hate, just absolutely hate' Twitter/Facebook/bloggers. And yet, when the question is asked, 'have you ever actually been on Twitter/Facebook/a blog?' The answer is almost always no.
People are entitled to opinions. But uninformed opinions... Not so much.
10. Yes, Professor, I am looking at Facebook during class.
And so is everyone else.
Although the argument is sometimes made that computers in the classroom detract from the classroom experience, in computer science classes, new media classes, and the like computer-centric classrooms are a necessary evil. In more and more college classes these days students are bringing their laptops (and at least their cell phones) into class. And all of these students have Facebook or Twitter or GMail open while they are in class. It's a fact of contemporary life. For instructors, this simply means that your margin of attention grabbing error is smaller than ever. The best perspective, in my opinion, is to see classroom Facebook use as a symptom of a problem, not the actual problem.
The actual problem is that you haven't sold me on the idea of what you're teaching is actually important and/or interesting. Although we all know cognitively that we're already paying tuition, you're going to give us grades at the end of the semester and that this material will be on the final exam, it all doesn't matter when the cute girl/guy from the party last night just added us as a friend and we now have access to all their pictures from last spring break. Yes, professors, this means that you are competing against co-eds in swimsuits on the beach.
Time to earn your tenure.
My dad is the worst offender I know on this big number one netiquette rule. Because my earliest email experiences involved corresponding with him over email, an on-again-of-again conversation that has lasted since at least 1996, this has also been one of my most persistent annoyances. To be fair, my dad's affection with chain emails is well intentioned. I get the feeling that he has looked at every email or link he's ever forwarded. Likewise, I remember early on in the 'internet age' when getting jokes and funny little stories (see Darwin Awards) in your email was a real treat. Friends and colleagues took the time to discuss the most recent emails at parties and lunches. This probably doesn't happen anymore. In fact, I imagine that except for a dedicated few, most the emails sent by my dad beginning with "FW:" end up as they do in my email box, subject lines bold and unread into perpetuity.
2. Don't friend request your boss.
This has always seemed obvious to me, but I still see people try to do it all the time. That said, if your boss friends you, it's probably ok to accept (cynically mandatory, actually). Friending former bosses is passable behavior as well. On the other end of the spectrum, however, is friending someone who you've just been assigned under, but have never actually met. This is the definition of cyber awkward. Expect rejection.
3. Don't start Facebook wall posts with "Dear," "To whom it may concern:," etc. or end a post with "Love," "Sincerely," "Best wishes," etc. (Unless you're being ironic.)
Facebook posts aren't letters. They aren't even email. They are wall posts, descendants of graffiti in urban spaces. Your identity is obvious as soon as it shows up on the wall, so there's no need to identify yourself. Any niceties on the front or back of your post make it seem like you are completely lost or are suffering from momentary amnesia. The bright, electric screen and pictures of your cousin's birthday party should make it obvious you're not crafting a epistemological masterpiece, Mr. Hemingway.
4. Don't harass gamer girls.
I've been playing a lot of Halo: Reach lately. Every so often, a female gamer will be part of one the games. The second a female voice is heard by the rest of the (male) players, the discourse, gaming, and general vibe of the experience goes downhill immediately.
Exemplar comments:
-'You sound hot. Where do you live?'
-'Do you have a boyfriend?'
-'I have a girlfriend, but I'd do you.'
-'How about you give me your phone number? I'll sext you.'
-'I just killed you. That kinda turns me on. Does it turn you on?'
And so on.
This really ruins the experience of all the gamers, not just the females. I feel like there are enough experiential boundaries to getting into a competitive, relatively complex game like Halo: Reach to start throwing up crude social barriers to the gaming experience as well. And while not every gamer will look like the girls in this pertinent video, the gaming experience should be as open and welcoming to everyone as possible. If nothing else, having a larger number of players simply enriches the game play of all.
5. People don't care about your Farmville cows. (And neither should you.)
I know Zenga is making a zillion dollars a week by incentivizing time wasting to people around the world, but the last thing I want on my Facebook newsfeed is to hear about your new baby calf having diarrhea, what your mafioso crew did to some speakeasy, or that your pirates just assassinated a trove of pink unicorns.Yes, I know I can block stuff like this, but should I really have to?
6. You are not your dog, Martin Luther King Jr., or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Your Facebook profile picture should reflect this.
7. People do not want to be fans of your employer.
Congratulations! I'm glad you got that great new job at Target, I really am. I was tired of paying your half of the rent, anyway. But this does not mean I want to become a fan of Target, and I think you owe it to me not to suggest such a thing. Please. (By the way, you still do owe me $1200 and I'm not a fan of that, either.)
8. If you're going to post a link to an article, add a personal comment about it.
It's great that you think that Tom Friedman/Michelle Malkin/Any Huffington Post Contributor's latest diatribe is so insightful. But why? As Yoda once said: Posting an article does not an opinion make.
9. Don't hate (on Social Media).
I've been in more than one conversation with people who state that they 'hate, just absolutely hate' Twitter/Facebook/bloggers. And yet, when the question is asked, 'have you ever actually been on Twitter/Facebook/a blog?' The answer is almost always no.
People are entitled to opinions. But uninformed opinions... Not so much.
10. Yes, Professor, I am looking at Facebook during class.
And so is everyone else.
Although the argument is sometimes made that computers in the classroom detract from the classroom experience, in computer science classes, new media classes, and the like computer-centric classrooms are a necessary evil. In more and more college classes these days students are bringing their laptops (and at least their cell phones) into class. And all of these students have Facebook or Twitter or GMail open while they are in class. It's a fact of contemporary life. For instructors, this simply means that your margin of attention grabbing error is smaller than ever. The best perspective, in my opinion, is to see classroom Facebook use as a symptom of a problem, not the actual problem.
The actual problem is that you haven't sold me on the idea of what you're teaching is actually important and/or interesting. Although we all know cognitively that we're already paying tuition, you're going to give us grades at the end of the semester and that this material will be on the final exam, it all doesn't matter when the cute girl/guy from the party last night just added us as a friend and we now have access to all their pictures from last spring break. Yes, professors, this means that you are competing against co-eds in swimsuits on the beach.
Time to earn your tenure.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wiki
Many moons ago, my friend Hannibal and I were tasked with making a project Wiki for the Naval Academy's CDX team. Every lesson learned, every tool used had to have the appropriate documentation added to the Wiki. By the end, I felt pretty savvy on the Wiki stuff.
That was then, this is now, however. Revisiting the MediaWiki software, I was quickly reminded about some of the quirks of the markup language and all the various ways an administrator has to customize the interface to get it up to a familiar level of Wiki functionality.
The biggest markup issue I had was with the image alignment. Somewhat counterintuitively, the markup language built into MediaWiki does not add breaks after images. More counterintuitively, the standard html "<br />" doesn't do the job either. As a result, this was our article:
That was then, this is now, however. Revisiting the MediaWiki software, I was quickly reminded about some of the quirks of the markup language and all the various ways an administrator has to customize the interface to get it up to a familiar level of Wiki functionality.
The biggest markup issue I had was with the image alignment. Somewhat counterintuitively, the markup language built into MediaWiki does not add breaks after images. More counterintuitively, the standard html "<br />" doesn't do the job either. As a result, this was our article:
All that was left, of course, was to dig waaaaay into the documentation and I finally found--sandwiched between all sorts of other image format code a single sentence that provided a "<br style="clear: both" />" snippet. I'd never seen this before. It worked, however.
Finished page: http://www.english.digitalodu.com/courses/fa10/539/wiki/index.php?title=The_Joshua_Tree_Epiphany
That said, I still find MediaWiki extremely easy and user friendly. It is still my favorite Wiki software out there and I appreciate that the Wikipedia Foundation folks are still willing to distribute older versions of their software for free. It really is a great example of why Open Source products can work.
Purpose:
WikiMedia is an environment that allows users to publish Wiki articles in private domains. It produces a Wiki product that is similar in look and feel to Wikipedia.org's pages.
Product:
About as good as it gets. I know that the Wikipedia folks use a newer version of this software, and that it has additional functionality that I looked for when developing our page. The version of WikiMedia that we used was appropriate for the task.
Process:
Generating pages in groups is always ideal. Having multiple users working on the same page provides a QA and often deepens the depth of the information presented. Larger groups make for better groups. I'm sure there is a number of diminishing returns, but Wiki software is by it's very nature collaborative. I think doing one article as an entire class would have been a more interesting exercise.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
ENGL 662 Post II: Past as Prologue (A metaphor examination)
Because of last week’s reading from Nayar, I had feminism and depictions of females with reference to technology on the brain. Likewise, Halo: Reach came out last week, so I have video games on the brain as well. My wife does not think so highly of my video game habit--her words: “I hate them [video games]”--so I looked to the past to find out why this might be. Recalling my youth, I went to YouTube to scrounge up old (circa 1985) commercials for Nintendo games quickly finding this gem, an advertisement for the first Legend of Zelda game. The message of this video seems pretty apparent: Video games are made for white, upper-middle class teenage boys who may or may not be nerds and/or Vanilla Ice wannabes. While I am certain that I was the target audience for this commercial when it was released, I shudder to think that I could have, at any age, been influenced by such an awkwardly pitched item.
Bad rapping is not the only thing that is going on here, however. From Nayar: “...[T]he woman’s projected and real role in the use of...technological artifacts has prompted the artifact’s development in particular ways” (p. 116). I reviewed other early video game commercials, from Atari and Sega as well as Nintendo, and in almost every case it was males playing, with women either being non-present or acting as spectators to the action. Granted, there were market forces at work here, and pre-teen/teenage boys had likely already been identified as the most likely video game players from early video game trends of the 1960’s and 1970’s (i.e. SpaceWar). Yet, I can’t help but think that these commercial set the popular tone of video and computer games being a primarily male-oriented medium all the way up to the present day. Whether incidental or intentional, the exclusion of female players from the commercials of the first generation of home video game consoles created a cultural precedent.
Of course, it’s not just males that are being given the privileged position in this commercial. Certainly, as depicted in the commercial, nerds of the 1980’s could take pride in being the subject matter experts of contemporary gaming (“You mean you haven’t played it yet!? You can play it on my Nintendo Entertainment System!”). Likewise, my “digital native” ears found especially jarring the narrator’s “...your parent’s help you hook it up.” I forget that the Regan-era power dynamics hadn’t yet adopted the concept of youth being tech savvy to the point of (rather comfortably) usurping authority. Although this is taken for granted today, the proto-hacker character that Matthew Broderick portrays in WarGames (1983) was a novel concept at the time. I remember my parents hooking my various series of video game consoles only once--the very first time because (and this was probably because I was only four and couldn’t read the instructions).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so. A commercial exemplar from the present day is the recent campaign for Halo: Reach and it provides an enlightening contrast about where video games are today. A few glaring things stand-out. First, the “players” are gone. Segments of the commercial are even shot from a first-person perspective. Gaming has evolved into an ‘experience’, an ‘immersion’. Second, gender is non-present. There is even suggestion of female features in the wounded protagonist's face. Third, the game system is vastly de-emphasized compared to the 1980’s. Although this last point can be contributed to a change in the industry’s business model (emphasis on selling games [software] over new systems [hardware]), it is still important to recognize that the shift is contextualized visually in the presentation of the experience of gaming itself. Gone are the controllers and TV screens, the living room and couch: the fourth wall has been removed completely from the the gaming experience and thus it’s need for a rhetorical player--be it nerd or white-boy rapper.
Bad rapping is not the only thing that is going on here, however. From Nayar: “...[T]he woman’s projected and real role in the use of...technological artifacts has prompted the artifact’s development in particular ways” (p. 116). I reviewed other early video game commercials, from Atari and Sega as well as Nintendo, and in almost every case it was males playing, with women either being non-present or acting as spectators to the action. Granted, there were market forces at work here, and pre-teen/teenage boys had likely already been identified as the most likely video game players from early video game trends of the 1960’s and 1970’s (i.e. SpaceWar). Yet, I can’t help but think that these commercial set the popular tone of video and computer games being a primarily male-oriented medium all the way up to the present day. Whether incidental or intentional, the exclusion of female players from the commercials of the first generation of home video game consoles created a cultural precedent.
Of course, it’s not just males that are being given the privileged position in this commercial. Certainly, as depicted in the commercial, nerds of the 1980’s could take pride in being the subject matter experts of contemporary gaming (“You mean you haven’t played it yet!? You can play it on my Nintendo Entertainment System!”). Likewise, my “digital native” ears found especially jarring the narrator’s “...your parent’s help you hook it up.” I forget that the Regan-era power dynamics hadn’t yet adopted the concept of youth being tech savvy to the point of (rather comfortably) usurping authority. Although this is taken for granted today, the proto-hacker character that Matthew Broderick portrays in WarGames (1983) was a novel concept at the time. I remember my parents hooking my various series of video game consoles only once--the very first time because (and this was probably because I was only four and couldn’t read the instructions).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so. A commercial exemplar from the present day is the recent campaign for Halo: Reach and it provides an enlightening contrast about where video games are today. A few glaring things stand-out. First, the “players” are gone. Segments of the commercial are even shot from a first-person perspective. Gaming has evolved into an ‘experience’, an ‘immersion’. Second, gender is non-present. There is even suggestion of female features in the wounded protagonist's face. Third, the game system is vastly de-emphasized compared to the 1980’s. Although this last point can be contributed to a change in the industry’s business model (emphasis on selling games [software] over new systems [hardware]), it is still important to recognize that the shift is contextualized visually in the presentation of the experience of gaming itself. Gone are the controllers and TV screens, the living room and couch: the fourth wall has been removed completely from the the gaming experience and thus it’s need for a rhetorical player--be it nerd or white-boy rapper.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
ENGL 662 Post I: Orientation
The general thesis of my proposed paper idea is that video games, as a form of rhetoric, can, like other forms of rhetoric, be used to 'teach' ethical thought and decision making. As such, I have done a good deal of browsing for research and publication already done on the subject and have found some interesting sites and books.
Perhaps the best of these is a blog run by a conglomerate of Harvard professors called "Valuable Games" (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/). There are a number of interesting articles here, as well as some mixed media. The most useful to me, perhaps, was a video of a lecture that Harvard law professor Gene Koo gave at MIT on the presence of ethics and morality in video games. (Video found here: http://blip.tv/file/1480114?utm_source=player_embedded). Mr. Koo gives a brief but thorough overview of ethical systems within games, starting with Classical games and quickly moving forward to Dungeons & Dragons, and then the video games that attempt to emulate some of the moral paradigms that had been embedded in the paper and pencil role playing games.
Mr. Koo also makes brief forays into ethical theory, mentioning other scholars like his Harvard colleague Steven Pinker and others who have used more traditional thought experiments in the past to examine ethical reasoning and postulating that video games can provide a similar stimulus. Of special note is his use of two illustrations: First, his 'holocaust tetris' example, which, much like Sicart (2009, MIT Press) more extensively argues, conveys--rather shockingly--that video games are very much "moral objects" and that game designers have implied moral responsibility. Second, Mr. Koo goes 'old school' rhetorical with the famous "trolley car" thought experiment. Although I think there is far more mileage in considering video games as types of thought experiments, Mr. Koo is probably being deliberate when he brings it into his presentation here.
The final portion of Mr. Koo's presentation involves a fairly standard introduction to some of the controversy involving video games as a stimulus that provides negative, violent provocations in youth. The bulk of any inquiry into scholarship involving video games and ethics tends to this sort of slant and it is ultimately unfortunate that such an alarmist--and in my opinion, which seems to concur with Mr. Koo's--misguided stance is so widely represented in academic text.
Fortunately, in addition to Mr. Koo's presentation above, I have found a number of other resources that take a far more nuanced view of the ethics video games, as well as what I have summarized above. I will discuss those further in later blog posts. That stated, Mr. Koo seems to be one of the more serious scholars on the subject of ethics in video games-- it seems like Harvard/MIT faculty are leading the way on this subject as a whole--and this presentation serves as an excellent introduction to some of the more critical issues in game studies and moral thought.
References:
Koo, G. (2008, November 18) Talk on Games Morals and Ethics. [Blog Post]. Retrieved from
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/category/theory/morality-theories-of/
Sicart, M. (2009). The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Perhaps the best of these is a blog run by a conglomerate of Harvard professors called "Valuable Games" (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/). There are a number of interesting articles here, as well as some mixed media. The most useful to me, perhaps, was a video of a lecture that Harvard law professor Gene Koo gave at MIT on the presence of ethics and morality in video games. (Video found here: http://blip.tv/file/1480114?utm_source=player_embedded). Mr. Koo gives a brief but thorough overview of ethical systems within games, starting with Classical games and quickly moving forward to Dungeons & Dragons, and then the video games that attempt to emulate some of the moral paradigms that had been embedded in the paper and pencil role playing games.
Mr. Koo also makes brief forays into ethical theory, mentioning other scholars like his Harvard colleague Steven Pinker and others who have used more traditional thought experiments in the past to examine ethical reasoning and postulating that video games can provide a similar stimulus. Of special note is his use of two illustrations: First, his 'holocaust tetris' example, which, much like Sicart (2009, MIT Press) more extensively argues, conveys--rather shockingly--that video games are very much "moral objects" and that game designers have implied moral responsibility. Second, Mr. Koo goes 'old school' rhetorical with the famous "trolley car" thought experiment. Although I think there is far more mileage in considering video games as types of thought experiments, Mr. Koo is probably being deliberate when he brings it into his presentation here.
The final portion of Mr. Koo's presentation involves a fairly standard introduction to some of the controversy involving video games as a stimulus that provides negative, violent provocations in youth. The bulk of any inquiry into scholarship involving video games and ethics tends to this sort of slant and it is ultimately unfortunate that such an alarmist--and in my opinion, which seems to concur with Mr. Koo's--misguided stance is so widely represented in academic text.
Fortunately, in addition to Mr. Koo's presentation above, I have found a number of other resources that take a far more nuanced view of the ethics video games, as well as what I have summarized above. I will discuss those further in later blog posts. That stated, Mr. Koo seems to be one of the more serious scholars on the subject of ethics in video games-- it seems like Harvard/MIT faculty are leading the way on this subject as a whole--and this presentation serves as an excellent introduction to some of the more critical issues in game studies and moral thought.
References:
Koo, G. (2008, November 18) Talk on Games Morals and Ethics. [Blog Post]. Retrieved from
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/category/theory/morality-theories-of/
Sicart, M. (2009). The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Monday, September 6, 2010
The ENGL539 Blogging Meta-Post: "Rust"
(Updated 15 September 2010)  |
The Blogger CSS Editing Tool |
The Challenge
I've been hammering away at this blog off and on most the weekend. My biggest challenges have been doing the formating for the webpage. In many ways I sabotaged myself by using Blogger's templates. They generate a great deal of code, most of which involves JavaScript and some challenging variable assignments that had me scratching my head most of the weekend. I remembered enough from my undergrad days to identify why the generated html was so horrible to work with, but I definitely didn't remember enough to be very efficient at fixing things the way I wanted them.Background troubles
My first efforts were directed at setting up a custom background for the blog. I found the image in a Wikipedia entry on ancient maps. It's a WikiCommons image that I edited with Paint.net software (download from here: http://www.getpaint.net/download.html), which I hadn't used since college, but was able to pick back up fairly easy.
After that, I had to brush off my CSS knowledge to figure out exactly how to get the picture to show up as I wanted it to. I had no small trouble with Blogger's CSS entry tool. While I certainly appreciate the inclusion of this in their template editors, because of where it puts the code in the generated html, I had a number of syntax issues that weren't easy to track down in an editor like notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ --again, another tool I frequently used while programming for my undergrad work). Copy and pasting my code in Blogger's native HMTL editor kept on generating errors arising from the JavaScript coming from the template editor, so I was really forced to do a lot of trial-and-error coding within the CSS editor.
No big problem, but it took a while...
All's well that ends
I'm feeling more comfortable with the Blogger interface now, and with a little more time, I will probably be able to strip out a lot of the messy auto-generated code for something a bit more streamline.
That said, Blogger does do a good job of coding in some really nice HTML4 and 5 features, such as identifying a mobile web browser and providing all the code that pares down the site to fit a smaller screen. I had never coded something like this myself, and it probably would have taken me the entire semester to come up with the right 'formula' to pull it off myself.
All in all, not too frustrating... Now if I could just get these posts to stop showing up as center-justified all the time...
Friday, September 3, 2010
The Problem
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| Candyland: War College Edition |
Last week, Wired's Dangerroom Blog wrote about a Army Colonel who was relieved of duty in Iraq after writing a generally unflattering article about the US military's use--or rather, mis-use--of PowerPoint. The Colonel laments, "endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information.” He was relieved less than 48 hours after the article hit UPI, a newswire service.
While I can't quite figure out why the colonel would choose to release this over a wire service rather than a blog or some other, less 'commercial' forum--as Wired points out, the Army (and the military in general) has been generally hands off soldier's blogs and online postings--I agree with his general conclusion. The military has developed a PowerPoint habit to the point of inanity. Rather than using it as a tool to convey information in a visual form, it has become the sole, de facto medium of communication from the Grunts on the ground and deckplate Sailors up to the general officer and Pentagon command structure.
As a student interest in the rhetorical and functional implications of various forms of electronic media, the drawbacks of relying solely on PowerPoint are obvious. Take, for example, the infamous PowerPoint slide at the top of this post. The New York Times and others have reported on the military's reliance-to-a-fault on PowerPoint and have used this leviathan slide to illustrate their point. To the credit of the flag-level Officers who view these everyday, it's obvious that they know that all nuance and many important details are stripped from the information by the data gets delivered to them in slide form, yet this does not prevent this from the being the day-to-day status quo of decision making strategists.
Two issues:
1. From my level, I am usually directed to format a slide(s) in a particular way that I know is less effective than another method I have either learned or studied. There are certain formats ("stop-lights," "quadrant-slides," etc.) that I continuously produce or see being produced that are just not the most effective way to convey information to the "chain-of-command," but this is what the CoC demands--or implies that it demands. The reliance on these slides likely derives from the lowest common denominator of PowerPoint users. Most military users suck at PowerPoint, do all or most of the PowerPoint sins, and this ineffective use has evolved into an equally ineffective culture of information flow.
I believe that it is absolutely essential to fix the culture of ineffective info flow.
2. Returning to the slide that starts this post, the slide itself is essentially accurate. But, if the "medium is the message," then it's the medium that muddles the usefulness of what is presented here. The question I'm am very much concerned with is the same one The Guardian poses: How can it be done better? Can it be done better with PowerPoint or any other tool for that matter? The Guardian posed it as an open-ended question, and seems to have received anything in the comments section of any real substance.
So, professional writers, there's our gauntlet. America needs our help.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Hello ENGL 539!
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| Tuition? How about a kidney! |
So, this is me getting back on the wagon. And getting academic credit for it.
It took a deal of good fortune to get me to get here. A fortunate schedule that has my ship in an extended repair period, kidney surgery (see picture), and an upcoming transfer out of the Surface Warfare Community all aligned to allow me the opportunity to take a full graduate course load at ODU this fall. It may still be a challenge to accomplish everything--especially when I'm back to full duty--but this was my window of opportunity.
So, for the English 539 and 662 assignments and every other void that having an online expository platform such as this might fill: Hello World!
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