The Power of the Almighty Text

In class the other day we had a group give a presentation and in it they played a youtube video that talked about how President Obama refused to give up his Blackberry when he became president. They had to make him a $3000 top secret phone that could both view secure and unsecure sites. It showed clips of the president texting as he was walking. This was very interesting to me because ever since cell phones and particularly text messaging has become popular it seemed that the older generation were resistant to it. It usually was turned into a joke among older people how they could not understand how young people could text all the time and "why don't you talk on the phone or in person like a normal person?" It was creating a generational divide because the younger generation accepted it as a natural form of interaction and the older generation did not. However I think that by the Prseident Obama making such a big deal about his use of cell phones and texting that maybe he will be able to convince the older generation of its value.

I have battled this same resistance in my life. Older people who are my leaders have often tried to convince me that texting is an unnatural form of communication and should be avoided. I did some research and found that 94% of 18-24 olds use text messages regularly. There have been claims that it makes people awkard in person. Maybe there are special cases of this but I do not believe this is the case the majority of the time. That is just too ridiculous of a claim...94% of 18-24 olds are awkward in person?? REALLY?? Texting enhances my relationships. My girlfriend can text me when we have opposite schedules and don't have the chance to see each other all day. Texting gives us the chance to stay connected and feel like we are experiencing the other person even when we are not in person. but just because we have the ability to text does not mean that when we do have the chance to be face to face that we would rather stay home and text each other! And it certainly does not make us awkward when we are in person. It saves us time, instead of having to go through the "how was your day...." boring cliche talk that people use to have to go through, we already know all that. We can skip it and just be in the moment with each other.

Do you think that President Obama's attitude about new technology specifically cell phones will help to bridge the generational divide? And if so how will this affect interpersonal relationships? Do you see it having a positive or negative affect?

Stereotypes in Videogames

Although this is a topic we talked about a long long time ago in class, it is a topic that I had intended to write a blog about, and now that I am running out of time I am forcing myself to write on this topic. I will admit that when we first went over this topic in class I felt like it was a bit of a stretch. I felt that the people writing these articles were just looking for something else to complain about. But after seeing such evidence and then paying more attention to what I was seeing in video games I really could see that they were on to something.

There is no doubt in my mind now that video games delibrately use stereotyping, and since I was pretty much the last person to realize this, then it should be apparent to everyone. So the question is why? Why do they feel the need to use such exaggerated stereotyping in video games? I will admit that there may be times to follow a stereotype. For example lets take Halloween, if you want to be a plumber you would dress as the stereotype....trucker hat, pants below your crack, beer gut etc. That would be the quickest way to get people to realize what you are suppose to be. But then again that is only because the stereotype exists to begin with. So that may just be causing more of a problem.

The serious problem I see with using stereotypes in video games is that these games are played by young kids. These kids are imperssionable and they are actually learning how to view the world by what they see in the games. So while we stay politically correct in schools and at home (hopefully) and then the kids go and see minorities with guns and women being portrayed as sexual objects then it is not hard to see the conflicting views they are getting.

A study called Fair Play? Violence, Gender and race in video games, done in 2001 showed the following results. 86% of the heroes in video games were white males. Eight out of ten African American males were athletes in sporting games. Latinos only appeared in baseball games and most Asians were fighters. Also 86% of African American females were victims of violence in the games, which was almost twice what white females were. The results of this study truly shocked me, this is how are teaching kids to view the world. What effects will this have on the future world if kids continue to be exposed to these kind of stereotypes in video games as they grow up?

Does Facebook Increase Social Capital and Improve Interpersonal Relationships?

I chose to write about the Facebook/social captial topic that seems to be popular. It is interesting that most young people take the side that facebook definitely increases social capital and that it is mostly a few older people who do not like technolgy that go against it. But from what I have seen it seems that a vast majority of people see the benefits of Facebook no matter their age.

In the article "Does facebook Replace Face Time or Enhance It?" by Lisa Selin Davis, she brings up some interesting ways that facebook has helped her reconnect with old friends she would not otherwise have been able to. She starts out the article talking about her friend Jenny who would never return her calls, but would contact her on Facebook. And then they made plans to meet for lunch all over facebook. The article brings up an interesting point how before the internet people would purposefully call when they knew the person would not be home in order to leave a message on the machine. Now Facebook is an advanced version of that in a way, people can relay messages without having to feel trapped talking on the phone. This is clearly an examply of how Facebook improved this ladies relatinonship to her friend.

Now there are also claims that Facebook will increase your social capital in many ways but where are the examples? I tried doing research but it is hard to do a google search to find an article on someone who got a job through a friend on facebook. So the best I could do is ask friends and go off of my own experience with Facebook social capital. I have a friend who has a friend on her page who is always selling stuff and posting notes about it on facebook. This can work as a benefit on both sides, for him to find someone to buy and for the person who is looking to buy. This is a good example of finding social capital through facebook. Also something that happened in my own life, my supervisor at work saw a picture of me tagged on one of her friend's pages. Once she talked to me about our mutual acquiantance she was much more friendly to me and I had a much easier work experience. Facebook was completely responsible for this because never in a million years would we have found that mutual friend through our normal conversation. SOCIAL CAPITAL!

Gold Farming and Relationships

There are many different angles of how gold farming affects interpersonal relationships, and also which of the various relationships it affects. You could focus on the affects it has on the gold farmers themselves, and the relationships they would have, or not have, with their family and friends while they work the long hours in the computer labs. You could also focus on the relationship the gold farmers have with other MMOG players, as we learned in class the gold farmers are easy to spot by other players. And to take a different angle you could focus on the reltionships that people how hire the gold farmers to adavnce their avatars have with other players of the game. Basically I will talk a little about each of these in this blog because I think it is an interesting topic and I can't decide which I angle I want to focus on most.

From what we learned in class by watching a few youtube videos that documented gold farming it pretty much seemed like any other sweat shop from China that you would hear about. As discussed it may be a little better than the sweat shops where they make shoes or something since they are playing a game, but not much better. In the article The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer by Julian Dibbell, we read it talked about a man that quit a job building car parts to go work for a gold farming place so it must be a step up from that. But still, as an American and with the working conditions we expect here, I feel sad that people would have to work under the conditions they do there. It does not seem like they have any time to spend with family or friends, they just sleep in the smalls rooms they have at the gold farming shops and then wake up for their shifts. Does not seem like a life filled with meaning interpersonal relationships to me.

Also we learned from the article and from the class videos that other MMOG players see gold farmers as second class citizens (or less) in the game. In the article a story was told about a player attacking a gold farmers avatar basically out of spite, and also that this is a common thing to happen. In the video one gold farmer being interviewed said he felt inferior to the other players so they are not finding any meaning reltionships inside the game. So if these gold farmers are not finding interpersonal relationships in the game because players don't like them, or with their family or friends because they are living at work, where are they getting them?

To look at the other angle breifly, how are people who hire gold farmers to adavance their avatars gaining or losing interpersonal relationships? Well from one video we watched a lady had a young child and just could not keep up around the house and spend the hours she needed to gain experience for her avatar so she hired out. I actually think it is a good idea for someone in her position to do that. Think of the way her relationships with her husband child would suffer if she spendt all her time on the computer trying to advance her avatar and ignoring them. Now there is something to be said about the relationships she misses out on in the game when someone else takes over her avatar. In that same video it showed a friend of hers who also played the game telling her ha had tried to talk to her avatar but she ignored him. She then explained that she had hired someone to advance it for her. he told her he thought it was cheating and she should do it herself. But in my opinion I think she made the right choice by choosing to strengthen family relationships over casual friendships.

Could Ubiquitous Computing Create New Relationships?

In class we recently discussed what possible consequences could occur if the country used ubiquitous computing technology. Even though it seems that it would be many years before this technology is even available it seemed to spark a lot of paranoia for people in the class. Now while there were many interesting points people brought up in class the subject of my blog will be to decide if ubiquitous computing could enhance public interaction specifically in places where it would be socially awkward by today's standards to start a conversation. So if anyone comments on my blog don't ask my about the possible negative affects it could have because that is not the theme of my blog, it would just take too long to discuss all possible outcomes.

In the article "Ubiquitous Computing," by R. Jason Weiss, the author talks about four areas that make up ubiquitous computing. Those four areas are nanotechnology, wireless computing, context awareness and natural interaction. In class we watched a video clip of a device that is being worked on at the moment that incorporates all of those. It was a device you could wear around your neck and you could pretty much do anything with it. It was definitely contextually aware and created natural interaction. The one aspect of it that seemed to have the biggest impact on people's minds in the class was that it could theoretically look at a person and display personal information about them to the person wearing the device. Now while there are obviously many privacy issues that come up here, I am going to explore the possibility that this aspect of the device might have on interacting with more people out in public.

As I thought about this topic I decided to do a little bit of research to see what the dominant cultural idea is currently about talking to people you don't know in public places. I came across a blog online written by a guy asking if he would come across as weird if he talked to people on the train on his way to school. He got many responses and most of them supported my assumption that it is not generally acceptable to talk to random people in public. Most of the responses said things like "you would probably creep people out" "you would annoy people" and one person even referred to it as an "American no no." But it was not always like this. Back in the early 1900's it would have been quite the opposite, if you kept to yourself and did not address people in public in a friendly way then that is what would make you creepy. So why the change? Is it a good thing that society has divided in such a way? Things like ipods are making the divide even bigger because now not only do the sit in silence, they actually put headphones on and go to another world, which would just make it harder to talk to people.

Why don't people talk to each other in public places? Maybe because they have no starting point, they know nothing about the other person. Imagine if people were basically wearing all their interests on their sleeves....literally. Is it possible that you could meet someone who had the same interests as you and create a meaningful relationship with that person that you never would have met otherwise? And if this new technology was adopted by the mainstream would it change the social stigma of not meeting new people? Could we get back to where we were as a society in the early days where people would give a kind hello as you walk by them ont he street? Could this increase quality of life for people that are introverted and don't go out of their way to meet new people?