Plan of attack: introducing World of Warcraft as my topic, give some facts about the game, address the assumptions and conventional wisdom about immersive video games in general. Introduce my interview subjects. Address the claims about and charges against WoW (and gaming in general), who says what. Responding with quotes from my interview as an additional enlightening perspective. End with a summary of why conventional wisdom in many aspects may be wrong, and how, gamers or not, people are people and they are mostly the same everywhere in every situation.
Relevant quotes:
"There was and is a stigma attached to it, like it's a weird thing that only super nerds do or it's not cool for whatever reason. Also that it takes over your life when it starts and it's a huge time sink."
"It has a lot of cooperative elements where you can take on other challenges with other people that require a lot of cooperation and communication."
"I consciously tried to play less, because if I let myself I could spend a lot more time playing the game than I want to. There's so much that you could do, or try to do, that I would feel was ultimately not worth doing. Both within the game and outisde the game. But you feel like you want to keep pace with the people you play with, and achieve what they achieve."
"A lot of people, when they receive media, just take everything in and don't give anything back. In the game, there is a certain give and take, and a lot of people can't adjust to that. There's a lot of immaturity and there are deliberately inflammatory comments, people just seeking attention."
"There are so many people that play WoW - I found out my cousin plays, I found out my uncle, a conservative Southern Baptist minister, plays too - so it's a huge sample of the population."
"It's skewed towards people who have enough privilege to afford a computer, afford the subscription, and sit in front of a computer all day. They don't have 3 kids they need to support, or some other financial or social obligation that prevents them from taking part."
"I think people mostly don't understand how fun it can be, and I 'm not the kind of person to ridicule something someone else does that I haven't personally tried. So I tend to think the people who ridicule it are doing so out of some sort of insecurity of their own. But I do think some of the complaints people have about it are very valid. Some of my own perspective on WoW includes that ridicule - paying for the subscription and spending the time playing that I do. But I haven't faced a lot of ridicule, just because I usually don't tell people I play."
"Most of the officers in the guild I would consider friends. Three of them are on a raid team that Aisa and I lead together. We're as close to them as anyone in the game, they have my cell phone number, they can text me and stuff. Two of them live in LA and one of them lives in Florida. There's another guy that lives in Boston that we're close to too."
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Profile Feedback
Miranda liked my interviewee's honesty and self-awareness, and she thought it was interesting that he was embarrassed to tell other people he plays WoW, because other people are so prone to making judgment about things they don't understand. My interviewee is biased against video games in general, but he also pointed out how this perspective is flawed and people shouldn't assume that video games are a less valuable pastime compared to other pastimes. This is something I could raise as an overarching question: "Is the idea that video games are a waste of time a relic of the past?"
Clarkia pointed out that I could ask my 2nd interviewee more about education and video game design, and how designing intricate realities is a whole new skill set that we can't even conceive of, having received the education that we did. I'm glad I interviewed one person and got feedback about that and about my topics, so I can take a more refined and targeted approach with my 2nd interview. I will definitely broach this subject with Robert.
I think I need to put together an outline next, with the various questions I want to raise and the relevant responses from my interviewees. I plan on doing this tonight and writing up my final draft tomorrow night!
Clarkia pointed out that I could ask my 2nd interviewee more about education and video game design, and how designing intricate realities is a whole new skill set that we can't even conceive of, having received the education that we did. I'm glad I interviewed one person and got feedback about that and about my topics, so I can take a more refined and targeted approach with my 2nd interview. I will definitely broach this subject with Robert.
I think I need to put together an outline next, with the various questions I want to raise and the relevant responses from my interviewees. I plan on doing this tonight and writing up my final draft tomorrow night!
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Little Brother Intro & Chapters 1-5
INTRO
Readers more likely to discover writers for "free" versus throwing down money in a bookstore & the idea of being able to "borrow" electronically (books and music) as we always could in real life...both good points.
Biggest music pirates are also the biggest music spenders! Does that make sense?
CHAPTER ONE
"Spent our textbook money" on the gait recognition software...suggesting that administrators are more interested in security than in actual education. What has contributed to that in our society?
The measures Marcus uses to get around the school security are super elaborate. Do you think young people will always find ways to flout rules? Or are most people willing to accept the limitations imposed on them by authority figures?
CHAPTER THREE
Kidnapped! Did you imagine that these would be the stakes for the novel? I was surprised by the expanded scope of the book.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor." Does that quote resonate with anyone else?
Readers more likely to discover writers for "free" versus throwing down money in a bookstore & the idea of being able to "borrow" electronically (books and music) as we always could in real life...both good points.
Biggest music pirates are also the biggest music spenders! Does that make sense?
CHAPTER ONE
"Spent our textbook money" on the gait recognition software...suggesting that administrators are more interested in security than in actual education. What has contributed to that in our society?
The measures Marcus uses to get around the school security are super elaborate. Do you think young people will always find ways to flout rules? Or are most people willing to accept the limitations imposed on them by authority figures?
CHAPTER THREE
Kidnapped! Did you imagine that these would be the stakes for the novel? I was surprised by the expanded scope of the book.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor." Does that quote resonate with anyone else?
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Profile Interview #1
How long have you been playing World of Warcraft?
Ummmm....I started in January of 2010. I don't think that's right. Actually, I think it was 2009. We were still living in the Wallingford House.
What got you started?
[My two best friends] played and they tried to convince me to start playing. And it worked.
Did you have any hesitations?
Yes. There was and is a stigma attached to it, like it's a weird thing that only super nerds do or it's not cool for whatever reason. Also that it takes over your life when it starts and it's a huge time sink. I was hesitant for both those reasons, but mostly the first. But having two people I was really close to that played was a huge draw for me.
What do you like about it, in brief?
I like that it has a lot of cooperative elements where you can take on other challenges with other people that require a lot of cooperation and communication, and it's really fun when you achieve stuff with other people. The solo element of it is more boring to me. It's the same thing over and over. Within the game it's called "the grind."
How many hours a week do you play on average? Does this vary much from week to week?
Some weeks I don't play at all, some weeks I play up to 8 hours. Usually when I play, I play for at least 3 hours at a time.
Was this always the case?
I used to play more, but when I first started I played very infrequently, like once or twice a week for two hours at a time. That was for the six months or a year that I played. After my first character hit max level, we transferred realms and we started raiding.
Why do you play less now?
I consciously tried to play less, because if I let myself I could spend a lot more time playing the game than I want to. There's so much that you could do, or try to do, that I would feel was ultimately not worth doing. Both within the game and outisde the game. But you feel like you want to keep pace with the people you play with, and achieve what they achieve.
Have you ever deliberately taken a break from playing WoW? If yes, why is that?
No. I never felt addicted to it, or like it was affecting other parts of my life negatively. Also, I try hard not to buy into the stigmas about it. It's something I enjoy, it doesn't have negative consequences. Why shouldn't I do it? Before I played, what was I doing? Watching movies, playing other computer games, playing video games. Just because it's more concentrated in one place doesn't make it worse.
Do you play with people you know in real life? Did you know them before you started playing WoW?
Yes, my two best friends.
Have you formed any friendships solely within the game?
Yes. We were originally characters on a random server (there are about a hundred servers in the game), and it turned out the one we chose was a low population server. It was a "horde" server, and you can't play interactively with those people. We wanted to start raiding, but there was nothing going on. [One of my friends] was and is much more involved in the game than I am, and she'd read lots of blogs, so she found out there was a gay server called "Proudmore." They're actually having a pride celebration on Saturday inside the game - I marched in it last year, it was really fun. She had found that realm and she wanted to transfer there. It was less douchey and a lot more gay friendly.
We eventually joined a guild that was led by this insane dude, a megalomaniac who was so weird, he was an ex-Navy Seal who was Dutch and lived in Canada and posted pictures of himself on...it was almost like a porn site but not really. He was so weird. That guild fell apart because he was so insane . Some of the officers on that guild started another guild, and that's the one I'm in. The point of the guild was to not tolerate the nastiness and immaturity that you see out in the game at large. There's a rigorous screening process where you have to write a long application to get in, there are 10 or 12 questions, and the officers on the guild get to vote on whether the people get admitted. We are only taking applicants that are referred by someone else because we are really trying to keep it small.
Most of the officers in the guild I would consider friends. Three of them are on a raid team that Aisa and I lead together. We're as close to them as anyone in the game, they have my cell phone number, they can text me and stuff. Two of them live in LA and one of them lives in Florida. There's another guy that lives in Boston that we're close to too.
When you say there is nastiness and immaturity in the game at large, what do you mean?
A lot of people, when they receive media, just take everything in and don't give anything back. In the game, there is a certain give and take, and a lot of people can't adjust to that. There's a lot of immaturity and there are deliberately inflammatory comments, people just seeking attention.
How do you react to the statement in one documentary about media usage, "I'm closer to my WoW friends than my friends in real life"?
I would question what that closeness means to them. I don't think that's a completely outlandish statement to make, but I think that's a really unusual circumstance, compared to the way most people's lives work. Most WoW players too. There are so many people that play WoW - I found out my cousin plays, I found out my uncle, a conservative Southern Baptist minister, plays too - so it's a huge sample of the population, and to me that's still a very unusual perspective to have among WoW players.
Are your friends in Warcraft people you would have been able to form connections with in real life, or did World of Warcraft specifically facilitate the connection?
I am friends with some people in Warcraft that I wouldn't be friends with in real life, but the people I am closest to in Warcraft are people that I could definitely be friends with in real life. Gay guys in their mid 20s, that sort of thing.
Have you met any of these friends in real life since meeting them online? If yes, how did it go? If not, would you consider it? Why or why not?
I've never met them. I would consider it, but I don't know, unless it was somehow unavoidable I probably wouldn't. I don't feel any need to meet them. I guess I don't really see what I would get out of it. A lot of people play Warcraft because they like the social aspect, and they like that they can meet people within the medium, but that's not why I play.
Do you ever turn down real world social invitations specifically in favor of playing WoW? If yes, how do you feel about that?
Yes, I have done that in the past, but I guess in hindsight I would say that most of those things I wouldn't have been interested in participating in anyway. It's a thin line between turning it down in order to play WoW or turning it down because I wasn't really interested in the first place. But I make a point not to do that now.
Do you think WoW players overall tend to share your interests and your points of view more than the average person?
No. It's skewed towards people who have enough privilege to afford a computer, afford the subscription, and sit in front of a computer all day. They don't have 3 kids they need to support, or some other financial or social obligation that prevents them from taking part in this activity every single day.
Are you ever reluctant to tell people you play WoW? Have you faced ridicule in the past?
Yes, I'm reluctant. I think people mostly don't understand how fun it can be, and I 'm not the kind of person to ridicule something someone else does that I haven't personally tried. So I tend to think the people who ridicule it are doing so out of some sort of insecurity of their own.
I do think some of the complaints people have about it are very valid. Some of my own perspective on WoW includes that ridicule - paying for the subscription and spending the time playing that I do. But I haven't faced a lot of ridicule, just because I usually don't tell people I play.
What would you say in response to the theory that playing these games (in moderation of course) could actually help prepare children in school for future real-life situations, both social and career-related?
I think that it definitely could do that. But I would be really hesitant to put children in the sort of immature, inflammatory environment that it fosters and just hope there is really positive takeaway. I think in a very controlled environment, kids could learn things about social interaction by playing WoW or something similar.
Do you think it's possible for someone to be "addicted" to gaming?
Yes, I think it's possible. But having never felt like I was addicted to anything, it's hard for me to personally say.
Do you have any advice for those seeking to find moderation in their gaming?
I think for me, and this is sort of weird, but I think that question sort of comes down to expectations, and as an offshoot of that, shame. What do you feel like you should be doing with your life? If you read books 10 hours a day because that's a "good" thing to do, would you say "I need to moderate this somehow"?
In other words, this question has a bias, assuming video games are bad. But I would say that's also my bias. So I think first you would need to examine why you feel you must moderate, and second, what do you hope to gain or lose from moderating? If you want to keep your job, that's great. If you're moderating from a vague sense that it's a bad thing to do, but you can't explain why, that should be examined futher. If it's fun, and it doesn't hurt anyone, why not do it?
Ummmm....I started in January of 2010. I don't think that's right. Actually, I think it was 2009. We were still living in the Wallingford House.
What got you started?
[My two best friends] played and they tried to convince me to start playing. And it worked.
Did you have any hesitations?
Yes. There was and is a stigma attached to it, like it's a weird thing that only super nerds do or it's not cool for whatever reason. Also that it takes over your life when it starts and it's a huge time sink. I was hesitant for both those reasons, but mostly the first. But having two people I was really close to that played was a huge draw for me.
What do you like about it, in brief?
I like that it has a lot of cooperative elements where you can take on other challenges with other people that require a lot of cooperation and communication, and it's really fun when you achieve stuff with other people. The solo element of it is more boring to me. It's the same thing over and over. Within the game it's called "the grind."
How many hours a week do you play on average? Does this vary much from week to week?
Some weeks I don't play at all, some weeks I play up to 8 hours. Usually when I play, I play for at least 3 hours at a time.
Was this always the case?
I used to play more, but when I first started I played very infrequently, like once or twice a week for two hours at a time. That was for the six months or a year that I played. After my first character hit max level, we transferred realms and we started raiding.
Why do you play less now?
I consciously tried to play less, because if I let myself I could spend a lot more time playing the game than I want to. There's so much that you could do, or try to do, that I would feel was ultimately not worth doing. Both within the game and outisde the game. But you feel like you want to keep pace with the people you play with, and achieve what they achieve.
Have you ever deliberately taken a break from playing WoW? If yes, why is that?
No. I never felt addicted to it, or like it was affecting other parts of my life negatively. Also, I try hard not to buy into the stigmas about it. It's something I enjoy, it doesn't have negative consequences. Why shouldn't I do it? Before I played, what was I doing? Watching movies, playing other computer games, playing video games. Just because it's more concentrated in one place doesn't make it worse.
Do you play with people you know in real life? Did you know them before you started playing WoW?
Yes, my two best friends.
Have you formed any friendships solely within the game?
Yes. We were originally characters on a random server (there are about a hundred servers in the game), and it turned out the one we chose was a low population server. It was a "horde" server, and you can't play interactively with those people. We wanted to start raiding, but there was nothing going on. [One of my friends] was and is much more involved in the game than I am, and she'd read lots of blogs, so she found out there was a gay server called "Proudmore." They're actually having a pride celebration on Saturday inside the game - I marched in it last year, it was really fun. She had found that realm and she wanted to transfer there. It was less douchey and a lot more gay friendly.
We eventually joined a guild that was led by this insane dude, a megalomaniac who was so weird, he was an ex-Navy Seal who was Dutch and lived in Canada and posted pictures of himself on...it was almost like a porn site but not really. He was so weird. That guild fell apart because he was so insane . Some of the officers on that guild started another guild, and that's the one I'm in. The point of the guild was to not tolerate the nastiness and immaturity that you see out in the game at large. There's a rigorous screening process where you have to write a long application to get in, there are 10 or 12 questions, and the officers on the guild get to vote on whether the people get admitted. We are only taking applicants that are referred by someone else because we are really trying to keep it small.
Most of the officers in the guild I would consider friends. Three of them are on a raid team that Aisa and I lead together. We're as close to them as anyone in the game, they have my cell phone number, they can text me and stuff. Two of them live in LA and one of them lives in Florida. There's another guy that lives in Boston that we're close to too.
When you say there is nastiness and immaturity in the game at large, what do you mean?
A lot of people, when they receive media, just take everything in and don't give anything back. In the game, there is a certain give and take, and a lot of people can't adjust to that. There's a lot of immaturity and there are deliberately inflammatory comments, people just seeking attention.
How do you react to the statement in one documentary about media usage, "I'm closer to my WoW friends than my friends in real life"?
I would question what that closeness means to them. I don't think that's a completely outlandish statement to make, but I think that's a really unusual circumstance, compared to the way most people's lives work. Most WoW players too. There are so many people that play WoW - I found out my cousin plays, I found out my uncle, a conservative Southern Baptist minister, plays too - so it's a huge sample of the population, and to me that's still a very unusual perspective to have among WoW players.
Are your friends in Warcraft people you would have been able to form connections with in real life, or did World of Warcraft specifically facilitate the connection?
I am friends with some people in Warcraft that I wouldn't be friends with in real life, but the people I am closest to in Warcraft are people that I could definitely be friends with in real life. Gay guys in their mid 20s, that sort of thing.
Have you met any of these friends in real life since meeting them online? If yes, how did it go? If not, would you consider it? Why or why not?
I've never met them. I would consider it, but I don't know, unless it was somehow unavoidable I probably wouldn't. I don't feel any need to meet them. I guess I don't really see what I would get out of it. A lot of people play Warcraft because they like the social aspect, and they like that they can meet people within the medium, but that's not why I play.
Do you ever turn down real world social invitations specifically in favor of playing WoW? If yes, how do you feel about that?
Yes, I have done that in the past, but I guess in hindsight I would say that most of those things I wouldn't have been interested in participating in anyway. It's a thin line between turning it down in order to play WoW or turning it down because I wasn't really interested in the first place. But I make a point not to do that now.
Do you think WoW players overall tend to share your interests and your points of view more than the average person?
No. It's skewed towards people who have enough privilege to afford a computer, afford the subscription, and sit in front of a computer all day. They don't have 3 kids they need to support, or some other financial or social obligation that prevents them from taking part in this activity every single day.
Are you ever reluctant to tell people you play WoW? Have you faced ridicule in the past?
Yes, I'm reluctant. I think people mostly don't understand how fun it can be, and I 'm not the kind of person to ridicule something someone else does that I haven't personally tried. So I tend to think the people who ridicule it are doing so out of some sort of insecurity of their own.
I do think some of the complaints people have about it are very valid. Some of my own perspective on WoW includes that ridicule - paying for the subscription and spending the time playing that I do. But I haven't faced a lot of ridicule, just because I usually don't tell people I play.
What would you say in response to the theory that playing these games (in moderation of course) could actually help prepare children in school for future real-life situations, both social and career-related?
I think that it definitely could do that. But I would be really hesitant to put children in the sort of immature, inflammatory environment that it fosters and just hope there is really positive takeaway. I think in a very controlled environment, kids could learn things about social interaction by playing WoW or something similar.
Do you think it's possible for someone to be "addicted" to gaming?
Yes, I think it's possible. But having never felt like I was addicted to anything, it's hard for me to personally say.
Do you have any advice for those seeking to find moderation in their gaming?
I think for me, and this is sort of weird, but I think that question sort of comes down to expectations, and as an offshoot of that, shame. What do you feel like you should be doing with your life? If you read books 10 hours a day because that's a "good" thing to do, would you say "I need to moderate this somehow"?
In other words, this question has a bias, assuming video games are bad. But I would say that's also my bias. So I think first you would need to examine why you feel you must moderate, and second, what do you hope to gain or lose from moderating? If you want to keep your job, that's great. If you're moderating from a vague sense that it's a bad thing to do, but you can't explain why, that should be examined futher. If it's fun, and it doesn't hurt anyone, why not do it?
Profile Freewrite
RE: South Korean kids in the "Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier" video - the fact that there is so much awareness there of gaming addiction in that country and it's such an issue: 15 year old kids sent to rehab for 2 weeks, people gaming in arcades for so long that they're dying in their seats, etc. Can gaming really be an addiction in the scientific, chemical sense? What causes the obsessiveness? What triggers an obsessive gamer to take conscious measures to restore balance to his or her life?
World of Warcraft convention, also in the "Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier" video - when a woman claimed that her WoW friendships were closer than the relationships she has with people in real life. Why would that come to be? Does it indicate a serious problem for us as a society? What prevents close, genuine connections between people IRL and what allows for them to occur over the internet? To what extent do these relationships encourage the video game "addictions" mentioned in the paragraph above?
Moving in a different direction, does WoW encourage valuable life skills? Should we promote this type of collaborative gaming in schools (a parallel with the old school game Oregon Trail springs to mind here). In Jenkins (page 4) there is a list of important abilities to acquire in this new participatory culture and a number of them seem potentially applicable to my topic. For example:
World of Warcraft convention, also in the "Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier" video - when a woman claimed that her WoW friendships were closer than the relationships she has with people in real life. Why would that come to be? Does it indicate a serious problem for us as a society? What prevents close, genuine connections between people IRL and what allows for them to occur over the internet? To what extent do these relationships encourage the video game "addictions" mentioned in the paragraph above?
Moving in a different direction, does WoW encourage valuable life skills? Should we promote this type of collaborative gaming in schools (a parallel with the old school game Oregon Trail springs to mind here). In Jenkins (page 4) there is a list of important abilities to acquire in this new participatory culture and a number of them seem potentially applicable to my topic. For example:
- Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
- Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
- Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
- Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
- Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
- Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Digital Participant Brainstorm
My immediate idea is to focus on the world of MMO RPGs - massive multiplayer online role playing games like World of Warcraft. My live-in boyfriend and my two former roommates are avid players, so they are great candidates for interview. I was intrigued by the claim in the most recent documentary that "my relationships within the game are more intimate than my real life relationships" (paraphrasing), so I think my take on the subject might be the question of "intimacy without proximity" and how the relationships you develop with other people inside these gaming worlds affect your desire to play longer and more often.
As someone who has never participated in these games, I am inclined to hypothesize that anyone who claims real emotional/spiritual intimacy with people they never see, or only ever perform one activity with, have a pretty messed up idea of what intimacy means. That's a pretty biased hypothesis, I know, so I'll probably have to tweak it a little if I want to get good information out of my interview subjects and not piss them off by implying they all have personality disorders. I will try to discover, however, what deficiencies might exist in a person's "real life" to make them seek intimacy with people they rarely see, and whether these deficiencies are created by the choices and personal qualities of individuals or whether they are brought on by larger social/societal forces.
Some possible questions:
As someone who has never participated in these games, I am inclined to hypothesize that anyone who claims real emotional/spiritual intimacy with people they never see, or only ever perform one activity with, have a pretty messed up idea of what intimacy means. That's a pretty biased hypothesis, I know, so I'll probably have to tweak it a little if I want to get good information out of my interview subjects and not piss them off by implying they all have personality disorders. I will try to discover, however, what deficiencies might exist in a person's "real life" to make them seek intimacy with people they rarely see, and whether these deficiencies are created by the choices and personal qualities of individuals or whether they are brought on by larger social/societal forces.
Some possible questions:
- What got you started playing World of Warcraft?
- How many hours a week/in one sitting?
- Do you think spending that time on the computer precludes other, more traditional social activities? If yes, do you ever consider scaling back your play time for that reason?
- Do you feel more connected to the people around you or to the people you meet in the game?
- Do you think a proportionately higher number of WoW players share your interests and your point of view?
- If you could change anything about your life, what would it be?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Digital Learners Documentary
It was awesome to see young kids interacting so competently with the technologies we were introduced to in our teenage and adult years and are still working to master. I wonder how much of what we saw in the documentary was sincere engagement with the learning experience, and how much was selectively shown to support the film's point of view. (Maybe that's a little cynical.) Still, it's hard to imagine kids wouldn't prefer designing a video game to busywork math assignments. And it's hard to deny the problem-solving implications.
What I absorbed most was the idea of educating 21st century problem-solvers versus future factory workers and menial laborers. Our educational model does seem awfully outdated now. I know budgets for school districts are always a huge issue, and most parents and school boards are pretty traditionalist when it comes to the curriculum. It's probably hard to be innovative and flexible unless you have large-scale cooperation from those forces. I look forward to watching the rest of the documentary and hearing the response from other students.
What I absorbed most was the idea of educating 21st century problem-solvers versus future factory workers and menial laborers. Our educational model does seem awfully outdated now. I know budgets for school districts are always a huge issue, and most parents and school boards are pretty traditionalist when it comes to the curriculum. It's probably hard to be innovative and flexible unless you have large-scale cooperation from those forces. I look forward to watching the rest of the documentary and hearing the response from other students.
Shirky/Jenkins Videos
Shirky:
His theory about our collective free time as a vast, underutilized social resource strikes me as pretty true, and yet I think a bit of mental downtime every day promotes overall sanity. I myself have said "Where do people find the time?" in reference to some of the more pointless and elaborate projects one finds online (and also specifically in reference to World of Warcraft, which he mentioned during his talk). Yes, there are a lot of hours of free time out there when you add them all up, but there is a large portion of the population (with families and/or pets to care for, or perhaps multiple jobs) that has barely enough free time to do anything other than read a novel for 10 minutes before bed.
I don't necessarily agree with "It's always better to be doing something than nothing," although I guess all that depends on how you define "something" and "nothing" - for example, if you compare the "something" that is 6 straight hours of playing World of Warcraft to the "nothing" that might be taking a walk or just sitting outside, alone with your own thoughts, I would personally assign more merit to the latter. So many people have such a hard time being alone with themselves. I can't credit gamers for contributing anything more to society than, say, a person meditating silently for half an hour.
I really responded to his point about interactive media - producing & sharing your own content in addition to consuming. I think that's a succinct and accurate way to describe the direction new media is taking, as it should.
Jenkins:
I really disliked the presentation format, specifically the power point presentation with a single word in the center of the screen. Extremely distracting. I was able to absorb his point about a "read/write culture" versus "read-only culture" immediately, and I responded well to it, but my favorite part of his presentation was when he discussed "ordinary people living outside the law" and how corrosive that is for a democracy. I think that applies to many aspects of our lives aside from the digital realm, although that's probably tangential in terms of the class.
I'm curious if any of you saw the link between these two videos and the documentary we watched (at least in part). To my mind, the connective detail was the interactive quality of new media and how that activates our brain so much more than merely consuming it. Was anyone else inspired by the implied possibilities?
His theory about our collective free time as a vast, underutilized social resource strikes me as pretty true, and yet I think a bit of mental downtime every day promotes overall sanity. I myself have said "Where do people find the time?" in reference to some of the more pointless and elaborate projects one finds online (and also specifically in reference to World of Warcraft, which he mentioned during his talk). Yes, there are a lot of hours of free time out there when you add them all up, but there is a large portion of the population (with families and/or pets to care for, or perhaps multiple jobs) that has barely enough free time to do anything other than read a novel for 10 minutes before bed.
I don't necessarily agree with "It's always better to be doing something than nothing," although I guess all that depends on how you define "something" and "nothing" - for example, if you compare the "something" that is 6 straight hours of playing World of Warcraft to the "nothing" that might be taking a walk or just sitting outside, alone with your own thoughts, I would personally assign more merit to the latter. So many people have such a hard time being alone with themselves. I can't credit gamers for contributing anything more to society than, say, a person meditating silently for half an hour.
I really responded to his point about interactive media - producing & sharing your own content in addition to consuming. I think that's a succinct and accurate way to describe the direction new media is taking, as it should.
Jenkins:
I really disliked the presentation format, specifically the power point presentation with a single word in the center of the screen. Extremely distracting. I was able to absorb his point about a "read/write culture" versus "read-only culture" immediately, and I responded well to it, but my favorite part of his presentation was when he discussed "ordinary people living outside the law" and how corrosive that is for a democracy. I think that applies to many aspects of our lives aside from the digital realm, although that's probably tangential in terms of the class.
I'm curious if any of you saw the link between these two videos and the documentary we watched (at least in part). To my mind, the connective detail was the interactive quality of new media and how that activates our brain so much more than merely consuming it. Was anyone else inspired by the implied possibilities?
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