Bonus Mission 2

Yes, it's just a game," says Joi Ito. "The way that the real world is a game."(Levy, 2007)This is how the World of Warcraft was described in an article which discussed whether this massive multiplayer game was actually a 'game' or not. The same could be said about Second Life. The difference between the two, Second Life and WoW, is that there is a peak that can be reached in the latter. Second Life is a completely open ended virtual world, which is in many ways similar to the real world we live in. Orientation Island is where one learns to walk, talk and get a hang of the basics. Once we reach the main land, we have very little money and it depends on what we want to do. People could waste everything away, or could work there way up to become millionaires and live the good life.While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, it does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games (WikiPedia,2007). Apart from lacking the common characteristics of a game, Second Life offers people a wide variety of activities to engage in which can be immensely profitable. Second Life hurls all this to the extreme end of the playing field. In fact, it's a stretch to call it a game because the residents, as players prefer to be called, create everything (Hof, 2006).Anshe Chung is a resident in Second Life and a lot more than that. The name previously mentioned is not her real name and is used in the virtual world. She is a Chinese born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. Anshe started buying and developing land in Second Life and now rents these spaces to people within Second Life. She has turned the concept of a game around and proven how profitable the virtual world can be. Her estimated net worth is close to 250,000 US Dollars (Hof, 2006) However, I feel that this is the tip of the iceberg. Second life is relatively new and people like Anshe Chung will try to capitalize this virtual world. Second life offers places to gamble, and online gambling is a multi billion dollar industry. If improvements could be made to the interfaces of these activities within the program, it could be exploited. Sale of goods and trading within the community has a lot of potential to attract big businesses into its economy. Once this virtual world is examined in this way, the concept of it being a game fades further away.

References:

Robert D. Hof (2006) My Virtual World. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm

Second Life. (2007, April 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved, April 6 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Life&oldid=120268909

Levy, S. (2007). In World of Warcraft: Is It a Game. Retrieved April 6 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/.

Qotw10:Second Life

The Grand casino.

Second Life, at first, sounded like a futile concept to me. I was under the impression that it was a virtual world created where people would just go to while away time online. This impression changed when i sat down to explore its horizons. At first i was stuck at orientation island becuase i lost my oihud and didnt know how to get of the island. After an hour of researching online, i got a walkthrough for the island, and was on my way to the mainland. I had fun editing my appearance, and i think i did a pretty good job at it. When i got to the main land, i was surrounded by all these signs which read "Nympho Paradise". This was a bit distrubing because there were tons of naked people running around getting upto all sorts of stuff. I came across one sign which read, "Grand Casino", and given that i had only 250 Linden dollars i thought it would be a good time to make some money. I headed straight to the poker tables. Thats where i took the first picture. I played with six other people, and in an hour i was up 500 Linden Dollars and called it quits. I headed to the black jack tables and had a good run there as well.

I got the hang of telelporting to differnt locations, and went to a ton of palces. I went to Hollywood, Paris, Tokyo, Lion City, Hawaii and lots more. I made a Friend at this island called Hawaii Kai which is a beautiful place, with a lot of nice houses. I strolled around for a while, and bumped into Nina Voom. We started talking and she showed me her house. It was really nice, and she told me she paid 950 Linden Dollars a week for it. After twenty minutes, she told me she had to go work. She used to sell Jewellery and make it herself.

On Ninas Beautiful Balcony.

After I left Ninas palce, I came across this one palce called 'Goddess of Love", which sounded like anpther one of those mass orgy palces. After i read a description of it, it said that it was the best club in Second life and so i checked it out. This was truly quite a nice palce. The design was great, the music was good and there were tons of people. As i got in i saw about a hundred people dancing in the middle of their dance floor. Five minutes into it, i had already made freinds with a girl and i asked her to dance. Her name was Starshine. we danced for about twenty minutes or so , and then she had to leave.

Starshine and myself at the Goddess of Love.

I had spent close to three or four hours on Second Life,and didnt even realize it. I made money, made friends had a good time at a club. Second life is very engaging and very open ended. While i did feel that there was a lot of sexual content in this world, i realized i can ignore it and still find hundreds of things to do and even more people to meet. All in all i had a great time on the program and am sure that I will spend a lot of lazy afternoons doing whatever i want to do in this ingenius virtual setting.

Qotw9: STOMP- CItizen Journalism

STOMP (Straits Times Online Mobile Print) is an online portal set up by the Singapore Press Holdings. Here, the online portal makes use of the three platforms consisting of online, mobile and print, to involve the public in the updates of Singapore (Stomp, 2006).

Citizen jounrlaism is also commonly known as 'participatory journalism'(Citizen Journalism,2007). Ordianry people are now able to capture images and videos on thier handheld devices with ease. This technological advancement has given society many more eyes and ears.

STOMP is a platform where people who have news to share, can publish thier stuff online. This was possible before this platform was created, via blogs. However, STOMP is an example of organization and efficiency. Instaead of going to multiple blogs to read about different things, STOMP organizes forums and chatrooms, where people can go and share interests and news. this feeling of involvment is very productive for society and can give rise to Jurger Habermas's concept of the public sphere. STOMP has the resources, and the process of debate would be open for everyone to see and judge. Sites such as STOMP are also a good way of cultivating democracy within Singaporean society.

STOMP has restrictions on what can be published on their site. This can be seen as a hinderence and can also be seen as a neccesity. While, real eye cathing stuff would be great for attracting crowds on the site, alot of people misuse the internet, and would probably post vulgar or become abusive on the forums. While there are restrictions to it, ordianry citizens have a better chance of gettins omething useful posted on STOMP rather than getting it published in Newspapers or Magazines.

The concept behind STOMP is new and very benficial. However, the site tends to deal with very soft and light hearted material. The concept behind citizen journlaism, is to get ordinay people's views on current affairs. An anchorman on CNN telling us somethign about Singapore would not be as interesting as hearing it from a Singaporeans mouth. STOMP should try and keep its lively feel to get people comfortable with the site, but i believe it should center around hard hitting news, so people can get actively involved in what is happening around them .

Refernces:

STOMP (2006) From Singapore Press Holdings Retrieved March 30, 2007 from http://www.stomp.com.sg/

Citizen Journalism. (2007, March 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 30, 2007, fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Gillmor, D. (2004). We the People: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Retrieved March 30, 2007 from http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html#chap3

The Age of Insecurity

In today’s fast paced world we are constantly bombarded by information. People’s lives are open to the public. Any celebrity’s life is an open book, and can be recorded on a daily basis. Random people can be made famous overnight, and this lightning fast process is because of a lack of privacy. People have forgotten how to do things for themselves, and are more concerned with how others will perceive it. If someone were to do something good, they would hope that someone catches it on camera, and they probably will.

People online are sharing information all the time. Personal details are given without thought for registration purposes. Blogs are filled with personal information. Sites like friendster have pictures, videos and tons of other information regarding the user. People around the globe are willingly uploading information that they wouldn’t disclose to strangers in the physical world. What they are doing online is as good as calling millions to a gathering and telling them about themselves with a slideshow and contact details. While it is true that millions of people will not bother to look at any one individual’s website, but if they wanted to they could do so with a click of a button.

The internet has vastly increased the opportunities for individuals to subject themselves to the demands of the personality market, resulting in ever increasing confusion and anxiety about how much of ourselves to reveal to strangers(Rosen, 2004). Given the nature of the internet people are forced to reveal personal details of themselves to strangers to have a substantial impact on them. This is because such details are hard hitting and get people thinking. This has been described as the best way of attracting attention online (Rosen, 2004).

This attention seeking tactic however comes across as an act of desperation. Apart from desperation, people who try very hard to cultivate an image of themselves in a public space so that they can get noticed would be described as insecure in the real world.

As an individual, I would not and do not disclose personal information about myself online at all. I have a freindster account, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of who I am. While I am very dependent on the internet I like to use it for convenience purposes and not to attract attention. I contribute to an online poker forum, but only when I am faced with a problem and need advice.

Another perspective of looking at the internet and the concept of privacy is to use the internet as a form of expression. This way revealing different aspects of ones personality would be similar to that of an artist working on a blank canvas. However, with artists and their work, coherence with their lifestyles is apparent. Whereas, a person made famous for their blog and the tons of pictures which are posted up there, is different. A lot of the time, People try to be something they’re not, and to deal with their insecurity issues pretend to be something else in the virtual world. Therefore it can be defined as an escape, which helps them out with their own internal issues. By telling the world about oneself and getting recognition for it at the cost of privacy is an inherent problem with this medium and its users.

However, this concept of privacy issues online has become common. People update their Blogs and webpage’s and hope to get as many hits as they can. Privacy is not the issue anymore, recognition is. Becoming famous online is a straight link to stardom. Blogs like www.perezhilton.com have made their owners media icons for reporting and critiquing the lives of celebrities. Dawn Yong, a famous Singaporean blogger is a household name due to her activities online. The list is endless and people are waiting and uploading their lives onto the internet so that maybe someone finds them interesting enough to talk about in larger circles. The way I look at it, is plain and simple insecurity.

References:

Rosen, J. (19th July, 2004). "The Naked Crowd". Retrieved on 8th March, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm

Sullivan, B. (17th October, 2006). "Privacy Lost: Does Anyone Care?". Retrieved on 9th March, 2007 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Privacy (7th March, 2007). In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 9th March, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy&oldid=113354124

QotW5

“A single person's identity embodies multiplicity. You possess many sectors within your personality and play numerous roles in your life - such as child, parent, student, employee, neighbor, and friend. Cyberspace offers a niche for each of these specific facets of selfhood. Some people even talk about how we can "deconstruct" ourselves online. We don't have to present ourselves in toto - how we look, talk, move, our history, thoughts, feelings, and personality, all in one big package.”(Suler, J.R, 2002)

If someone were to walk into a room full of strangers in a world which was new to them, the possibilities to what they could say or do are endless. They could make up whatever name they want for themselves, make up a profession and if they were invisible too, they could assume any identity. This is what happens online. Millions of people log on everyday into cyberspace and they are set free of earthly boundaries.

An identity is a constant. It is something that is built up over years of hard work and honesty, given that the person we are talking about is honest and hardworking. In the real world though, there are many ways which people use to recognize people and their identities, visual and audio recognition. In cyberspace people are generally just a name or a picture. This phenomenon has opened up a whole new problem of identity theft and reputation building in a virtual environment.

I play poker online under the name Ozmanz69 and sheikhoo26. I play on a variety of sites and poker rooms. I am also a member of the pocket fives community under ozmanz. In the online poker community it is common for people to steal people’s identities and usernames, but it is mostly people who have established themselves as professionals and thus have a lot of respect.

Reputation and skill level in relation to online poker has now become easy to detect thanks to a variety of sites which help people to see another players stats, tournament rankings and so on. www.sharkscope.com is one such site. People are limited to five names which they can search a day. People enter the names they want to check out, and a complete history of their time on a particular site is made available. This way a person’s reputation or skill level can easily be judged. www.pokertracker.com is a site which offers users a program which tracks every hand you have ever played with anyone on one table. If the program is run every time someone plays, over time millions of hands are recorded and each time a player encounters someone they have played before poker tracker will let you know what their betting tendencies and other stats are. Thanks to these programs, poker players are kept honest online.

In the online poker world, it is difficult to steal someone’s identity because each username is unique and more than one player cannot access it at one time. The only way to get around it is to hack into the persons account. However, when this happens people do not play under their name they redirect the money from the account to another unknown account and draw the cash from an ATM. This is very rare as well because these sites track players who make large withdrawals or play from different terminals.

Identity theft is a big security risk that is affecting people throughout the internet. Online poker has a very stringent system because of the large sums of money that are circulated within their system, but online forums and chat rooms are infested with people trying to be something they’re not. This is a menial thing, but if it were to get out of hand, a lot of problems could be associated with such activities.


References:

Griffin, E. (2006). Social information processing theory of Joseph Walther. A first look at communication theory, 6th edition, pp. 142-155. McGraw-Hill Companies.

Donath, J. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved February 20, 2007, from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Suler, J. (2002). Identity Management in Cyberspace. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 4, 455-460. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/identitymanage.html

Qotw4

The internet is a great medium of exchange. There is a constant flow of information from person to person. This makes the internet a great learning tool. Online, people are willing to share valuable information which each other without asking for anything in return. An example of this would be www.pocketfives.com. Pocketfives is an online poker community. It has forums and articles where people who are members are in constant communication with other members, discussing strategy and winning moves. This is very strange considering the fact that in poker, the lesser your opponent knows the better. Most of the members are pocketfives are experienced and very successful players who plat with each other a lot online, but still help each other out in relation to the game of the table.

Thus the word, gift economy. A gift can be defined as an obligatory transfer of inalienable objects or services between related and obligatory transactors. Therefore, once someone is gifted something they cannot demand something back in return, but this would eventually kill the relationship and the medium of exchange. Information sharing online is known as a gift economy because even though nothing is asked for in return, the receiver of this bit of information is now obligated to reciprocate.

These sites which share information with each other are available for members of such sites. This is a very important concept because someone who is actively involved in such online forums makes an effort and this effort is made by a lot of the other members as well. This community shares a common love for the topic be it poker, sports cars or it knowledge. This similarity brings them together and they are motivated to share their views and opinions with each other and in turn get useful information which is beneficial to them as well.

The concept of reciprocity is fundamental in communication. Sharing information online has a number of reasons which would stimulate reciprocity. Firstly, if someone has benefited drastically from the help they got online, they would feel as if they owe that community something for helping them out. This would keep bringing people back. Some people are very good at games likes poker, and so an article or a comment left by them on a forum would receive a huge number of hits. For example, “Green Plastic” , is a prominent online player who over the past five years has made millions playing poker online. He has years of experience and his expertise at online poker has not gone unnoticed. Last month, he posted a comment on pocketfives saying that he was going to choose one person from the pocketfives community and make him his protégé’. His post got seventy five thousand hits. This respect drives people to contribute more because of all the admiration such people get for sharing important pieces of information.

Even though the internet is not governed by one central authority, it has created places where people can go and learn valuable things at no cost to them. In the real world, there are no such breaks. Free schooling is ineffective in relation to the extent that online forums can help people in a particular field. An information channel that can operate like this does not seem to crush the human aspect of things as most people believe that the internet does, instead I feel it drives a certain human instinct of working together in a community for little or no monetary gain.


References:

Gift Economy (2007). In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retreived on February 7, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gift_economy&oldid=105681971

Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Retreived on February 6, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm

Veale K.J (2003). Internet Gift Economies: Voluntary Payment Schemes as Tangible Reciprocity. Retrived on February 7, 2007 from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/veale/index.html

COM 125 Week 2 : Assignment

The internet was created as a secure space or medium which could be usedefficiently even in a nuclear situation. This virtual world has come a long wayfrom that time and has revolutionized our way of life. This relatively newmedium has introduced many new concepts and modes of communication. One of thesemodes is electronic mail. Before email people would wait for weeks to getreplies to their mail. Email made it possible for us to cross borders inseconds. This immediate exchange of communication has changed the way we operatein the working world. This has brought on larger margins in small industries buthas also consolidated the larger firms as well. This increase in competition canbe seen as a direct impact of online communication. Before the advent of email,communication was a luxury. International telecommunication was expensive and sosmaller businesses would not be able to handle their communication costs if theydidn't have major clients or deals which would balance out these costs. Emailhas created an even playing field in this area.
Email has now become even easier to access with the implementation of the 'push mail' service which is now being commercially sold by brands like Blackberry. This allows people to handle and access all their email on their handheld phone. Push mail allows people to synchronize and co ordinate their mail from different sites to one destination, in this case a mobile phone. Larger firms, now give their employees blackberry’s when they start working with them so that the pace of communication remains a constant and efficiency within the corporation is maintained. Thus, email becomes further simplified which is comparable to instant messaging or SMS.
The internet is basically a means of communicating with the masses easily. Products and ideas can be exchanged through this medium. Email is the language of this virtual market, or rather it was the first language for it. Instant messaging services like MSN messenger or Yahoo messenger are also a platform for online communication but a less formal one which took shape much later.
Email companies such as Hotmail and Yahoo, have become huge players in the economic market. They have millions of customers, and have expanded their businesses into different platforms such as instant messaging services and search engines. Google is another such example. They first started out as a search engine and when people were more aware of their presence online, they established Google mail.
Email has crossed boundaries in vertical communication as well. People at different levels of a corporate hierarchy can communicate freely with upper management through this medium easily. This was the case when letters were handwritten as well but email opened up this avenue to be accessible at much greater speed and a much larger scale.
However, email is a free service and available to all. It depends on which site you use. This competition gives rise to more space in your mailbox, and the option to send large files as attachments. If we were to analyze the trend, it can be seen that service provider we are using, for example, hotmail, is a form of marketing for these huge corporations. The more people that use their site, will access their webpage, and as a result of it they can hike up their prices for online advertisements. This just comes to show the importance of email in our lives. It is very rare to see free service providers fight for market share in a particular field. The magnitude of this form of communication is an example of its importance in our lives.