Well it's been an interesting semester to say the least. I had a great time in this class and I can honestly say that I learned a lot about the implications of online communication technologies. Thanks for everything professor, and everyone else!!!
I've attached my macro assignments in an email to you professor - enjoy :)
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
g) social networks
I’m sure most other people will say this but Facebook is by far the most effective online way to communicate with people. It’s a common site between pretty much all of my friends (and for some people professors, family, coworkers etc.) so it is easy to contact multiple people at once and you can casually browse other people’s pages to see how they are doing. No more boring vacation picture slideshows because you can click through all of the photos once they’ve been uploaded in a matter of minutes. There are also no annoying email addresses or screen names to memorize, it reminds you of birthdays that you normally would have forgotten, you can be invited to parties you might not have been otherwise, you can catch up with people quickly through the chat section (since we are online way too much)… the list goes on and on.
Personally I have never used Twitter – maybe since I never created an account it wasn’t possible for me to get addicted to it or anything like that, but overall I think it is kind of a waste of time. You get very little information (a sentence at a time) or a link that will distract you even more than you already are so you can procrastinate even further. It doesn’t really provide any useful purpose, especially since on Facebook everybody has a status they can update which does the same thing as Twitter. I suppose some people find it amusing to follow other people’s Twitters (like celebrities and whatnot) but I find it to be kind of a waste of time… no offense :P
I think the electronic interactions have been interesting as I got to see other student’s ideas about the concepts we were learning in class, that I might not have been exposed to otherwise. I thought it was appropriate for the class considering we were looking at blogs and different ways of online communicating – it forced me to delve into that world just a little bit to get a clearer idea of how those media work and what you can do with them.
As for online communication systems… I think that they aren’t as much of a distraction as just a part of modern life. It’s not something most people can avoid entirely – it’s our way of communicating now. Yes a lot of the updates we get are completely useless (I get invited to events in Taiwan during the year even when the people hosting them know I won’t be able to make it) but some of them are “important” as they relate to our daily lives. I make lunch dates and arrange to work on school projects through Facebook, I’ve even written apology letters through it. You can always be in communication with the people you need to be. Yes I’m addicted to it.
Personally I have never used Twitter – maybe since I never created an account it wasn’t possible for me to get addicted to it or anything like that, but overall I think it is kind of a waste of time. You get very little information (a sentence at a time) or a link that will distract you even more than you already are so you can procrastinate even further. It doesn’t really provide any useful purpose, especially since on Facebook everybody has a status they can update which does the same thing as Twitter. I suppose some people find it amusing to follow other people’s Twitters (like celebrities and whatnot) but I find it to be kind of a waste of time… no offense :P
I think the electronic interactions have been interesting as I got to see other student’s ideas about the concepts we were learning in class, that I might not have been exposed to otherwise. I thought it was appropriate for the class considering we were looking at blogs and different ways of online communicating – it forced me to delve into that world just a little bit to get a clearer idea of how those media work and what you can do with them.
As for online communication systems… I think that they aren’t as much of a distraction as just a part of modern life. It’s not something most people can avoid entirely – it’s our way of communicating now. Yes a lot of the updates we get are completely useless (I get invited to events in Taiwan during the year even when the people hosting them know I won’t be able to make it) but some of them are “important” as they relate to our daily lives. I make lunch dates and arrange to work on school projects through Facebook, I’ve even written apology letters through it. You can always be in communication with the people you need to be. Yes I’m addicted to it.
Monday, December 7, 2009
continuing thoughts from class today...
I've been thinking about a couple things since class ended just a couple hours ago that I felt like writing about briefly.
Firstly, about a comment I made near the end of class about how we want everything to be easy, simple and logical. I was looking for a snack in my room after class since I hadn't eaten lunch, and I found some packs of ramen noodles under my bed (don't worry they are still sealed and don't expire for another 10 years or so). That didn't sound too bad, so I looked at the directions and it said you have to actually cook them, like on a stove. My reaction in smiley was basically -_- . In words, it's unlikely I'm ever going to cook those noodles, unless I can figure out how to do it in the microwave.
The other thing I've been thinking about is the China Tracy video and the city she created. I personally do not think it was an act of individualism - she herself said that was not her intention at all - she claimed it was a space of culture, where people could be in a community of sorts. She took images and customs of modern China (that greatly combines new and old aspects of the society) and made a virtual world out of it. It didn't strike me as something particularly original or a way for her to escape the supposed lack of individualism in China - it was more a representation of what she saw in her daily life, just a few years in the future. From my experience, individualism and originality are not characteristics typically valued in Chinese society as they are in American society, and I've found that many foreigners do not very well understand why that is the case. And now I'm sprinting away from computer-mediated communication relevance, so I will end my mini-tangent at that. If you are interested you can leave a comment and I'll rant further :)
Firstly, about a comment I made near the end of class about how we want everything to be easy, simple and logical. I was looking for a snack in my room after class since I hadn't eaten lunch, and I found some packs of ramen noodles under my bed (don't worry they are still sealed and don't expire for another 10 years or so). That didn't sound too bad, so I looked at the directions and it said you have to actually cook them, like on a stove. My reaction in smiley was basically -_- . In words, it's unlikely I'm ever going to cook those noodles, unless I can figure out how to do it in the microwave.
The other thing I've been thinking about is the China Tracy video and the city she created. I personally do not think it was an act of individualism - she herself said that was not her intention at all - she claimed it was a space of culture, where people could be in a community of sorts. She took images and customs of modern China (that greatly combines new and old aspects of the society) and made a virtual world out of it. It didn't strike me as something particularly original or a way for her to escape the supposed lack of individualism in China - it was more a representation of what she saw in her daily life, just a few years in the future. From my experience, individualism and originality are not characteristics typically valued in Chinese society as they are in American society, and I've found that many foreigners do not very well understand why that is the case. And now I'm sprinting away from computer-mediated communication relevance, so I will end my mini-tangent at that. If you are interested you can leave a comment and I'll rant further :)
f) attend a virtual event
Ok now that I actually think about it, I’m not totally sure that what I did for this assignment was what you had in mind originally professor… but that’s ok, I still learned something!!!
So, I was looking online at random “virtual events” to attend. Then I saw an advertisement for this multiplayer interactive game called Evony. I see the annoying ads all the time on random sites I go on, so I decided I might as well try it out. Basically you build a medieval city – you build up your town (with houses, resources, etc), you can also build alliances, wage wars and so on – it’s rather like Age of Empires. There is also a chat box underneath with a number of different groups you can choose to chat with – as a beginner you only have access to the beginner group. That was really annoying because so many people use the site that there were too many people trying to talk or find out how to do something that no one actually had any kind of a conversation at all.
After about 20 minutes of playing the game and telling myself I wasn’t wasting my time I learned a valuable lesson – there are a lot of weird creepy people online. Some guy started emailing me through the game, and when I didn’t respond right away he kept asking me why. I lied about where I live and who I am, as it both amused me and made me feel safer. I continued to play the game a while longer however, because to enter a chat that didn’t have 100 people talking about unrelated things, you have to join an alliance with other gamers. So I upgraded my city until I reached that status and then started talking on the chat box. It was very interesting to see how many wars different alliances waged on each other. I purposely joined one called FRIENDLY so that wouldn’t be as much of a problem. However there were still gamers who wanted to wage wars on everyone. The game even gives you awards for talking in an alliance chat or sending a personal email for the first time. It really does encourage you to interact with the other players and create the feeling of a larger, complex world.
Overall I think it’s a fun experience… definitely not an essential one, but it’s something fun to pass the time with. I think it provides a similar appeal to Second Lifers – you do have to spend some time figuring the game out, how to utilize resources and gain as much power as possible, which stops a lot of people from playing past the first 5 minutes – and you create another world where you can be someone totally different. In this game you are forced to be someone different in fact, seeing as very few people these days are in charge of a medieval empire. It’s an interesting way of interacting with other people, and I could see how some would get sucked in to it – I witnessed a number of the chatters in the alliance that had really created a relationship of sorts. Some of the members got annoyed with others, some were clearly leading or trying to lead, others constantly looked for help from certain people, and so on.
Now my problem is that I’ve finally worked myself into the network, but the assignment is over, so I’m torn between wanting to play more and work on my finals… figures.
So, I was looking online at random “virtual events” to attend. Then I saw an advertisement for this multiplayer interactive game called Evony. I see the annoying ads all the time on random sites I go on, so I decided I might as well try it out. Basically you build a medieval city – you build up your town (with houses, resources, etc), you can also build alliances, wage wars and so on – it’s rather like Age of Empires. There is also a chat box underneath with a number of different groups you can choose to chat with – as a beginner you only have access to the beginner group. That was really annoying because so many people use the site that there were too many people trying to talk or find out how to do something that no one actually had any kind of a conversation at all.
After about 20 minutes of playing the game and telling myself I wasn’t wasting my time I learned a valuable lesson – there are a lot of weird creepy people online. Some guy started emailing me through the game, and when I didn’t respond right away he kept asking me why. I lied about where I live and who I am, as it both amused me and made me feel safer. I continued to play the game a while longer however, because to enter a chat that didn’t have 100 people talking about unrelated things, you have to join an alliance with other gamers. So I upgraded my city until I reached that status and then started talking on the chat box. It was very interesting to see how many wars different alliances waged on each other. I purposely joined one called FRIENDLY so that wouldn’t be as much of a problem. However there were still gamers who wanted to wage wars on everyone. The game even gives you awards for talking in an alliance chat or sending a personal email for the first time. It really does encourage you to interact with the other players and create the feeling of a larger, complex world.
Overall I think it’s a fun experience… definitely not an essential one, but it’s something fun to pass the time with. I think it provides a similar appeal to Second Lifers – you do have to spend some time figuring the game out, how to utilize resources and gain as much power as possible, which stops a lot of people from playing past the first 5 minutes – and you create another world where you can be someone totally different. In this game you are forced to be someone different in fact, seeing as very few people these days are in charge of a medieval empire. It’s an interesting way of interacting with other people, and I could see how some would get sucked in to it – I witnessed a number of the chatters in the alliance that had really created a relationship of sorts. Some of the members got annoyed with others, some were clearly leading or trying to lead, others constantly looked for help from certain people, and so on.
Now my problem is that I’ve finally worked myself into the network, but the assignment is over, so I’m torn between wanting to play more and work on my finals… figures.
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