Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Finished the Last Podcast!

Well Finally finished the last podcast! This podcast was sort of a change up because this time it was only me, Jessica, and Steve. I think this podcast was my favorite of all of them, because we got to talk about the overall course and what it meant to us. We all had much different views about the course and what they enjoyed and didn't enjoy. That is what I figured would happen with an online course. There are people who are going to be for it and then others who it doesn't work as well for.

This podcast also FLEW BY! We didn't have to stop and edit once, we all had so much to say we just kept talking. I really believed that doing the podcasting was a great addition to the course. It really allowed us to get our points across and discuss the topics of the course! :) I think that the podcasts should be something that is presented in the course in following semesters.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Slight Change Up!

I have just finished my neovox essay and I truely believe I have written a really good essay this time. I believe that the issues and points I have written about are important to people our age and of other ages. I think it really pertains to the audience that will be viewing my article.

At first I wanted to write about the privacy on online profiles, but then I realized why not write about privacy in general with the internet! For instance, how many people do their shopping online now? Cyberspace has become a very important aspect of peoples lives now and I think that it is importnat that people not online think about how easy using this new technology is, but also be careful to still protect our privacy.

I worked really hard on this essay to make it something that would important and information to those who view it. Take a look, I hope everyone can give me some input.... ENJOY thanks! :)

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Ideas for Neovox Essay

I have been thinking a lot about what I wanted to write for my neovox essay. On my last essay I wrote about taking an online class which was meaningful to me. I also wrote my essay on that because I thought it would be something that would be meaningful to others as well. Thats what I also planned to do for the second article.

I was trying to think about college students and what aspect of technology is common today. Then I came to the conclusion about writing on facebook, myspace and online profiles. I know many times problems can arise in dealing with how much are people exposing them and the problems with the amounts of privacy you get within them.

I think that this is a great topic to talk about and I know that it would be useful information as well as information that will be interesting to the viewers on neovox. Myspace especially has been known for preditors that have even proven guilty as well people putting inappropriate pictures up for anyone to see at any age. Although facebook is more private and controlled that myspace, there is still some privacy issues at hand.

Im excited to get started and write this! :)

Reader Responce 10

What I like most about this book is how Dibbell takes us through the experience so we can almost ourselves be part of the experience. I find this virual world of business to be very interesting and enjoy reading about his time going through it. I think the concept of this book is simply mind boggling and unbelievable to imagine that this man could be making the money he is making in the virtual world.

"Live from the Acalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, Califonia, I'm wishing you and yours a prosperous new year--more prsperous, at any rate, than the one I just completed, which closes with a whopping $3, 131.42 in profit accrued from my dealing in virtual items." This quote stuck out to me because I think it makes his life seem pretty tempting don't ya think? If you truely think about the concept of dealing in virtual items over $3,000 is a huge accomplishment.

In chapter 37, Dibbell talks us through the near ending of his experience. "You will see that in their strictest sense, I have already failed. The income-tax return I file in April will of course pertain only to money made in 2003, and as I've already reported, my profits fromt he sale of imaginary items last year amounted to a measly $3, 131.42, or a little more than 6 perfect of my income." I still think that the amount that he has been making is still a high number especially since he is selling imaginary items! Who wouldn't want to do this on the side of another job, when your making a decent amount of money as Dibbell did. Althought he knew he wasn't going to be successful he kept up with his mission.

I have not yet finished the book, but am almost there and I believe that although Dibbell wasn't successful in beating his earnings as a writer he was still successful in making money of "virtual loot." It is amazing that this worked and he did in fact make money off this idea. I think this book is something that people should read in the sense that it shows us, how much technology and the internet affects the world that we are in today. Technology is becoming a huge part of our lives not only the play world, but in the working world as well.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Short Video

The short video was a good experience for me. I think it is a great opportunity to see how everyone in the class can be "imaginative" and see all the different videos that people come up with. For my group we came up with a lot of good ideas, but it was hard to find one that would actually be able to work and fit with the materials we had. Our idea that was personally my favorite was one that we could not do. We wanted to see how an older person would work with our technology and vice versa. Our problem with this is, we couldn't find an object such as a typewriter or older phone that we could use for someone in our generation. Also we didn't want to approach someone we didn't know that was older with our technology such as an ipod and make fun of them on video. We didn't believe that it would really be appropriate.

I think that our idea overall was a good one. Myself as well as Jessica Weise had the job of making the video and of course getting stuck on camera, while the boys helped come up with the idea and had the job of editing it. This process took us a while to accomplish, even though we had our plan and were ready to start right from the beginning. We had went to the library and all the cameras were out so I had to put my name down to get the next available camera and the library has yet to call me back and its about two weeks later! Jessica had to go home over one weekend and get her families own video camera for us to use. We had later ran into the problem that the boys didnt know how to edit this video with the type of tape we used! Hopefully the finishing touches will come out as great as I hope they will!!!

Overall this was a fun and creative experience! :)

Reader Responce 9

“Personally, I’m convinced historians of technology will one day recognize no essential difference between the ancient board game and then modern computer.” I found this quote in Dibbell’s novel Play Money, to be very interesting. Right now the modern computer is in hype and most games and entertainment arrive from this system of technology. Board games seem to be so old fashion and not nearly as advanced as the computer. Dibbell is right though; look how much and fast technology has grown from there and the time for this transformation has not been that long. I found this quote interesting, because it really makes you wonder exactly how far technology can take us, and what new form of “games” we will be brought to.

“In a sense Adventure was a metaphor for computer programming itself.” Dibbell here was talking about Steven Levy and his explanation of Hacker. If you think about it, everything involving computer programming is combined with some sort of adventure. Many of these virtual worlds and games are filled with adventure and that’s what makes them so attractive to people. We as humans have a great need for excitement and adventure and that’s what computer programming brings to us. We are able to test or limits and be adventurous in ways that we could no do in our real lives.

Dibbell also goes over the word “cyberspace” which we have heard much of throughout our course and is substantially what our course is about. Dibbell describes cyberspace as “the name a generation of mid-1990s Internet virgins gave to the alternate dimension they couldn’t help sensing they stepped into every time they went online.” An example of this cyberspace is shown in both the novels, Snow Crash and Neuromancer. Gibson’s cyberspace in Neuromancer is described as a dark, sleek “consensual hallucination.” In Snow Crash which we had read in our class, hackers had created the virtual world of the Metaverse that I think could also be described as this “consensual hallucination.”

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Second Life

I finally went to sign up today for second life. I don't really know much about it, but I know it something that maybe I would enjoy. I don't really engage in it anymore, but when I was younger I was really into the SIMS and I feel like second life is a step up from that technology. I haven't got to play the second life yet because when I went to start up the game, a notice came up saying that the system had crashed! My great luck I have. When I first went to sign up it ask me to pick what I want my character to look like. It only gave about 8 or 10 choices and I found the choices to be strange as well. There were a few boys and girls that you can choose from and then they had peoples bodies with animal faces! I found that to be really strange! After I picked what I wanted myself to look like I had to choose a name for myself in the second life world. You can tell that there are a lot of people in this second life world because I had to kept choosing names over and over because people already had the names I chose. Finally I came up with the first name JAM14(which is my initials and my lucky number) and I had chosen their last name of Matova which was just chosen at random. When I first went to go log in of course I had forgotten the password I chose, so I had to keep trying different things until finally I realized that we are supposed to put our second life name into the system and not our real name. Real Smart, I know! ha. After all of that and trying to get in, the system crashes and I don't get to try the game. I will keep trying and let everyone know how it turns out! :)