Presentation Notes - 4/27/10

Dan A. - Exploring the Correlation Between Video Games and Virtual Communities

"Learning principles of video games are enhanced in online environments"

- Using James Paul Gee's Learning Principles of Games

- Statistical Information (xbox live)

- Opposition (common misconceptions)

Comment: Sounds like you have it together.  Interesting topic.  One suggestion would be to make sure you stay focused on your argument.

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Mike P. - Cybercrimes: Real vs Virtual

Types of crimes (real vs virtual)

How information is used (real vs virtual)

What cybercrimes are...

How to protect yourself.

What happened to Mike personally.

Comment:  I'd tailor your argument to something along these lines "Cybercrimes make us more vulnerable to criminal activity and here's why:  blah blah blah"  Interesting topic.

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Lee - YouTube's Unique Roles: political activism and perpetuation of hate

Thesis:  YouTube has revolutionized political activism and, in doing so, it has uniquely contributed to the perpetuation of hate, however inadvertently.

Why/How

Comment:  Make your argument a little clearer by making it more precise.  For example:  "YouTube has revolutionized political activism and perpetuates hate."  Stick to one or the other.


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Angela - Bridging the digital divide by using concepts of video games in education

To bridge the digital devide, students to be become actively involved in video games.

Gee's learning principles
Digital Youth Network - Results
First Lego League

Great material and argument.

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Derek N.  - Bridging the Digital Divide (mobile phones)

"mobile technologies (cellular phones) are positively affecting the digital divide"

Statistics
Problem
Solution

Content is king
E. Silva
Barriers: Education
McCann - mobile internet solving lack of book problem
Conclusion

Comment: Good argument, thesis, and content.

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Kristin D.  -  HOPE

Argument for K-7 program "Healthy Online Presence Education"
Teach kids not to bully and learn how to prevent being bullied.

Purpose and Goals
Implementation
Conclusion

Comment: Works for me.

Presentation Notes - 4/22/10

Dena - Legal Eagle and the Case of the Social

- Who is responsible for content?
- How to enforce laws?
- DMCA section 512  - takedown notices
- There is no one single governing body to protect users and ISP from legal action.

Comments: I would recommend that you focus in on a single law or idea and use that as the basis for your argument.  For example, "Here's a law designed to prevent blah blah blah, and it works (or doesn't) because..."

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Michelle - Human Computer Interaction

"Computer UI creating seamless transition from real to virtual."

- Our attachment to machines is aiding this transition (human-like qualities assigned to them)
- Examples of interface design (madotate, 2nd life, etc)
- In the future, computers will be designed to meet the needs of the users
- Interfaces more real like.

Comments:  Make your thesis clear on how you intend to argue this and then back up your thesis with proof from the reading materials.  Fascinating topic!

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Brittany -

"Mobile Location Based Advertising"

FEAR and ISSUES
- tracking issues and privacty
- spam

Advantages to Buyers vs Businesses

Comments:  Narrow the scope of the essay by looking at mobile advertising.  Tell us why and how it works.  Use plenty of examples from your research to back up your essay.  Very interesting idea.

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Mark - The Cost of Access "World of Warcraft"
- Describes what WoW is

"Blizzard's changes to WoW have fractured their user base"

Blizzard implemented new quest system
Removal of challenges
Thriving alone

Comment:  I think you need to take a stand and say outright in your thesis, what Blizzard is doing (right or wrong) and what it is they are or not doing to fix this.

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Chris - A Growing Digital Divide

Even if everyone moves online, we'll still have a fragmented society... the digital divide will still exist, just in a different form.

- fragmented identities
- communities begin to fragment due to fragmented identities
- infrastructure / internet

Nice argument and content to back it up.   I definitely think you're on the right track.

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Presentations

Katie S. - Proposal - "How to bridge the digital divide in low income schools"

Pre implementation
- Teachers need to be on board.
- Students and families on board.
- School needs to implement chart of computer and technology use in school

Phase 1 - Bridge the Knowledge Divide
- provide specific examples of how to do this

Phase 2 - Bridge the Access Divide
- provide specific examples of how to do this

Post implementation
- School need to re-evaluate progress

Comments: I really like concept and it's sorely needed in the education system if we want to have a society that doesn't leave people out.  Nice work.   nJulie is good to go with it, so... what else can I say...


Beau Y. -  Video Games

- Video games are bad for you.
- What people don't know.
- Games have changed our culture

Argument - gaming in a necessity / not a past-time

Comments:  I love the topic and couldn't agree more.  However, if I were you, I'd make sure you make a very specific argument (one liner) and then proceed to prove your point.


James  - Video Games

Comment: I think there's a lot of information here and this is VERY IMPORTANT.  One suggestion would be to make a very specific argument and then prove your point.


Hans W. - Social networks bridging the chasm

Connection
Content
Create

Comment:   Narrow it down to a specific argument and then prove your point.

Spencer T.- Do Games Generate Better Soldiers?

Presentation Notes

-Lorena-
I think there's a lot of good ideas here.  However, I think this (China / freedom) is a very broad subject and I'd make sure I tied this into reading material we've used over the semester.  No sense having to find all new material to cite your paper with.  Make sure you clearly state your argument and think about what it is that you are going to argue.  I wasn't entirely clear on what you were going to be arguing.

-Sheila-
I think you're on to something here.  I would have to agree with Julie's state about sticking with Club Penguin.  You base your entire paper on how they try hard not to propogate gender identities, but the users end up doing it anyways.  I think your on the money.

-Corrinda -
Education through gaming is a fantastic topic to explore.  Since you're not doing a traditional paper, I can't give you too much feedback on how to write a lesson plan (I've never done it), but I'd make sure that it's as specific as possible.  There's a lot of material that could throw it off, so focus, focus, focus would be my advice.

-Kathy- -
Loved the concept, and I was onto something similar but Julie advised me that it was way too broad.  My recommendation would be to pick a single event and then use material from class to back it up.  It could be really easy to get tripped up and go on tangents.  Make sure you make an argument, and prove your point in the essay.  Stay specific and on target.

Technopolitics in Open Source Software

In the conclusion or Technolopolitics and Oppositional Media, Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner propose that "It is up to oppositional groups that utilize the Internet to develop the forms of technopolitics that can produce a freer and happier world and which can liberate humanity and nature from the tyrannical and oppressive forces that currently constitute much of our global and local reality."

In looking at this concluding statement, I can't help but think about how the open source software (OSS) movement has helped change the world and the internet one program at a time.  Far too many people fail to understand what it is that the OSS movement has done to improve all of our online lives.

To start, I'd like to look at one of the most successful OSS movements in recent history, called SAMBA.  Headed by Andrew Tridgell (one of my personal heroes),  SAMBA is an open source software project aimed at allowing non-Microsoft operating systems (pick one) to share files and printers with computers running Microsoft operating systems such as Windows XP, Vista, and even 7.

While that might sound trivial in 2010, it has dramatically changed the politics of operating systems over the last ten years by helping to eliminate vendor lock-in.  Vendor lock-in, for purposes of this discussion is the complete and total dependence on a single company to provide for and sell you everything you might need because no other alternative is available.  In the case of Microsoft, they made it virtually impossible for any other computer to connect to their computers without purchasing either a licensed API from Microsoft, or buying a Microsoft product to facilitate the connection.

The only problem with this solution, was that for many years, Microsoft did not provide any licensing to do this, which left all other  computer operating systems incompatible with Microsoft operating systems.  In short, users of alternative operating systems could not share files or printers directly with Microsoft operating systems.

Putting this into context, Microsoft had a 95% market share of  computer operating systems and did not allow any other operating systems to connect to it.  If you wanted to share files or printers with Microsoft's operating system, your only solution was to purchase a computer with Microsoft's operating system. From a business point of view, Microsoft had a very lucrative model.  By eliminating the ability to connect with other non-Microsoft computers, users were forced into purchasing more Microsoft products.  Pure genius... or evil?  I'll let you decide.

Recognizing this limitation and vendor lock-in to Microsoft products, Tridgell and a team of hackers set out to solve what Microsoft would not.  They created software that mimicked Microsoft's networking protocols, allowing them to connect non-Microsoft operating systems to Microsoft operating systems by pretending to be Microsoft operating systems.

Problem solved?  Not by a long-shot.  In fact the battle had just began.  Once Microsoft found out what the SAMBA team was up to, they modified their operating system to be incompatible with it.  Every time Microsoft modified their software, the SAMBA team had to go back to the drawing board and fix their software to work again.  This back and forth went on for almost 7 years.

Microsoft, being found guilty of various other vendor lock-in and monopolistic practices was eventually forced to release their networking code to the SAMBA team in a landmark European court ruling. Finally, after many years, the SAMBA team was allowed to actually view Microsoft's networking code and write open source (free) software that would allow anyone with any computer to share files and printers with Microsoft operating systems.

Why does this matter?  Thanks to hackers like Tridgell, any computer operating system running SAMBA can freely connect to Microsoft computers.  Who uses it?   Every single computer operating system that isn't a Microsoft windows computer, that's who.  Have an Apple Macintosh and share files and printers with a Microsoft computer?  Thank SAMBA.

It's hackers like Tridgell that exemplify what Kahn and Kellner were trying to say.  Thanks to their efforts, the computer world is free from the grips of at least one tyrannical, monopolistic, techno-power.

Amen.

Final Project: Abstract

The digital divide, in any form,  is essentially a lack of access to digital tools and technology. While the reasons for the existence of this divide are numerous, this essay will focus specifically on how mobile phone technology is helping to narrow the divide within rural america.

Mobile phones are no longer devices used exclusively for voice communications between one or more parties. Instead, mobile phones are hardwired to cyberspace in various manifestations that make them far more than the simple communications devices they were certainly originally intended to be.

Drawing inspiration from Howard Rheingold's article, "Mobile Phones, Ritual Interaction and Social Capital", I will argue that modern cell phones, with their digital connection to cyberspace, are not only helping to close the divide's gap within rural agricultural areas in the U.S., but changing how they go about planting, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting their crops.


Works Cited:


Benedikt, Michael. “Cyberspace: First steps.” David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. The Cybercultures Reader 2nd Ed.  New York: Routledge, 2007.  19-33 

de Souza e Silva, Adriana. “From Cyberspace to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces.”The Cybercultures Reader 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. 757-772

"NWS National Digital Forecast Database" National Weather Service 9 May 2007. http://www.weather.gov/ndfd

Rheingold, Howard. "Mobile Phones, Ritual Interaction, and Social Capital." TheFeature.com Archives. 21 Apr 2005. http://www.thefeaturearchives.com/topic/Culture/Mobile_Phones__Ritual_Interaction_and_Social_Capital.html

Shirky, Clay. "Here Comes Everybody." New York: Penguin, 2008.

Uncapher, Willard. "Electronic Homesteading on the Rural Frontier: Big Sky Telegraph and It's Community." The Cybercultures Reader 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. 191-212

Topic Proposal: Digital Rights?

I'd like to write about how the conveniences of cyberspace, such as information at our fingertips, social networking, and digital media (to name a few) actually allow us to do things that have never been done before.  However, the price of this convenience is the shrinking of our rights.   For example, owning a copyrighted work is no longer a cut and dry matter.  If you own a digital copy of something, you can no longer legally (at least in the U.S.) do with it what you want.  You can't sell it, lend it out, or even back it up without being in violation of someone's EULA or government law.  Contrast this with owning a physical copy of something.  You can lend it out, sell it, or do with it what you will (as long as you keep within the copyright laws).

To summarize, I'd like to argue that we are losing rights in almost as fast a manner as we're gaining new "convenient" technologies (saying nothing about privacy, which is another paper altogether).  I will base this argument against current copyright law, the "Fair Use Doctrine" and the DMCA.  In doing so, I will contrast these laws with EULA's and what the EFF argues is not fair use.