User:Amayesing77/NMAC 4460 Journal

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October 27, 2019: Why Can't it just be a game?

Journal 17

After reading Espen Aarseth's Genre Trouble and Stuart Moulthrop's From Work to Play essay it seems that ludology has made a strong point of games being just that a game. Aarseth points out that "Any game consists of three concepts (1) rules, (2) a material/semiotic system (a gameworld), and (3) gameplay (the resulting events from application of the rules to the Gameworld)."[1]

Games digital or not are just that games you play them to challenge your self and compete against others to win. By trying to incorporate narrative in gaming defeats the purpose of playing the game. Is there a narrative when you play paintball, laser tag, Best Fiends, No. The allure of games is that it's about strategy and how you are going to beat the game or other players to be the ultimate winner. The first computer game I played was The Oregon Trail even though I was supposed to be learning about history I didn't care about the narrative of the family in their coverd wagon crossing the United States I wanted to win.

Moulthrop also echo's the same ludology ideology games unlike novels , and cinema give the gamer more options over their Gameworld and several options to change the course of the game "-appeal because they are configurative, offering the chance to manipulate complex systems within continuous loops of intervention, observation, and response."

@Amayesing77: I want to point out something you said about the Oregon Trail. You said you weren't interested much in the narrative or history, but you just demonstrated you learned something about how people traveled across the country at that time. In that case, the game fulfilled its purpose. Looking at the Wikipedia page for the game, it even says it was designed to teach students about the time period in which the game takes place. Now as to playing paintball or laser tag, it can be argued that those types of games are more strategy based. Technically there isn't a narrative to chess, but how many movies have you seen that have two opposing characters playing chess when something else is actually going on. I think narratives depend on how you look at a game. Jkoplin1 (talk) 20:29, 27 October 2019 (EDT)

October 20, 2019: Dramatic Agency

Journal 15

Stories in multiform is an exciting idea that Janet Murray describes in her book excerpt Hamlet on the Holodeck. Murray’s parting question of how digital forms of storytelling will become holodecks that people can access in many formats like: MUDs, VR and other forms that will be used in the late 21st century.[2]

Now, what that will that look and feel like and how humans will interact with it is not a question of how but when. There is growing interest and commerce in AI. Currently on the market there are gadgets that can turn your cellphone into a VR world by placing your cell phone into goggles creating a 360 degree immersive viewing experience. This is the closest we are currently to what Murray refers to as a holodeck which is a vast variety of different forms of web based media entertainment that allows people to choose how they want to participate in the VR stories.

I mentioned in a previous journal that the film Ready Player One gave audiences a film view of what Murray's future holodeck of our world could look like. The film uses a form of Aldous Huxley "feelies" instead turning knobs to experience the same kiss the actors are expiring in the film. Ready Player One uses body suits that replicate the same "feelies" VR experience. Giving a person real feelings of a punch, a kiss and other physical responses to being in the body suit.

Murray’s take on this type of new media and how that links to being digital makes me look at the way digital media continues to evolve. However, my experience with VR is limited. Yes, I’ve been to a 3-D movie and it's a disorienting feeling and I've tried the cell phone image enhancer goggles and felt disoriented. I don’t know what the future of multiform narrative storytelling will be in the future, but I think there are current and fictional examples of what it could be.

@Amayesing77: You must proofread and revise. Read your first sentence above. Does this really make sense to you? This seems to be the incorrect subject for this date. —Grlucas (talk) 08:03, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

October 13, 2019: Victor Victoria Syndrome

Journal 14

Virtual reality seems like an over-complication of real life in cyberspace. Why create these elaborate worlds only to do the same basic things you do in real life. I thought I was going to read something that the virtual world offered that the real world does not. So far Turkle along with the other readings and video have done nothing to make me understand the allure to VR, MUDs, Moos. It seems like just a place to escape and appear to be something your not one example happens in real life every year Halloween, and every summer in San Diego and ComicCon. All of this reminds me of the film Victor Victoria (1982) a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. In MUDS, Moos etc... a real person pretends to be an avatar (human, immortal, wizard, or other forms) then builds a world to act out normal life encounters with other avatars. I understand the need for an escape from everyday life I escape in a book, a classic movie, I roller skate around my house. I think I just don't understand for the elaborate and prolonged escape to VR. [3]

October 13, 2019: Virtual Reality

Journal 13


Wilson Gibson introduced the literary world to the term Cyberspace in the early 1980s. From there the term grew and is used often in today's vernacular. However, the term "cyberspace" had an earlier debut in the art world Susanne Ussingand her partner, Carsten Hoff, created the name using the term "cyberspace" to create under that name art installation. It's interesting that this term that doesn't instantly read as literary or art came from those origins.[4]

Making Connections

In real life or in a virtual world people want to make connections with someone or a group that has a shared interest. Or sometimes they could be looking for a place to escape their real life. Esacpism societies like Second Life and role-playing video games create a safe place for a person(s) to interact with others in a without the stresses of their real appearance. This type of escapism society was played out in the film Ready Player One (film) (2018) the idea behind virtual worlds is that people want to connect in ways they were limited by prior to the digital age. The instant connection people get in a virtual world is easy there isn't any face to face social norms a person has to run through their mind to make sure they don't misread the situation and say or do the wrong thing. Real-life is extremely difficult learning how to navigate through major life decisions and waiting for the outcome that can span up to 10 years makes the virtual world appealing escape and a way to live or re-live decisions in a virtual space where you real-life isn't affected in theory.

Unfortunately, virtual worlds like Second Life have had negative effects on people like Ric Hoogestraat who is married in real life but has a wife in the virtual world of Second Life. So is Ric a bigamist or a cheater? Ric is a cheater he's having an intimate relationship with someone else. It doesn't matter that they have never met nor plan to meet in real life. The point is that Ric is choosing to spend 10 - 12 hours a day in Second Life with his virtual wife and zero time with his real-life wife. The relationship may not be physical but Ric is having an emotional relationship with "Tenaj" his wife in Second Life. [5] Most real-life affairs begin or go on for a long time because of the emotional connections between the two people involved. They are both looking to connect with someone because they are not connecting with their significant other.

October 6, 2019:

Journal 12

The main thing I took away from the readings and was if I want to survive in the digital age I must continue learning. Which means I need to choose how I want to learn.[6]. There are more options than the traditional classroom environment and institutions of vocational or higher education. I can learn for free view YouTube or search online for content related to what I need and want to learn about digital media. The idea of the could that Mitra presents in his Ted talk makes sense if I want to learn something there has to be a place (or cloud) that I can access to learn what I need and maybe something I didn’t know I needed. [7]

October 6, 2019: What is Education Really Worth?

Journal 11

Old Tricks in the Digital Age

Am I wasting my money and time attending college? Am I wasting my children’s time and valuable brain development by sending them to public school? Probably, but education (primary or higher learning) is a societal requirement for living in the world as we know it today. The current teaching model has not changed since I was in high school (90's), which doesn't make sense in the digital age, we live in now. The divide between low-income and middle class from the upper class wasn’t new information. Access to things better childcare or private schools because of income is a given. What I thought was interesting was that parents were making time to meet and discuss ways to decrease screen time. [8]

What the parents are trying to decrease may be the very thing their children will do in the future for employment even now when I go to a website for a company, they have their own chat for help. Being digital has created new ways of tackling a problem and in turn creating employment opportunities for people. This is no different than the Industrial Revolution when people were replaced with machines that were more efficient and cost less than employing people. [9]

@Amayesing77: You make posts on your journal. You do not have many journals. There should be no space between your punctuation mark and your footnote. When you use a reference, it should be obvious what you're referencing; you can't just stick references in. Please make a point of signing up for a face-to-face session. I'm requiring this for you. —Grlucas (talk) 12:56, 7 October 2019 (EDT)
@Grlucas: Thank you for the feedback. I am signed up for the Friday face-to-face session.--Amayesing77 (talk) 23:40, 13 October 2019 (EDT)

September 29, 2019: Reflection

Journal 10 Digital media needs people to participate and to re-work ideas and digital content to reach a broad range of people. It' important to future generations that people are contributing to digital platforms because there are many things that might no longer be here. For example, earlier this year Notre-Dame de Paris fire destroyed parts the famous Catherdal that had been standing since the 12th century. Digital media in the sense of participatory culture and RW will allow for the reproduction of ancient cities to exist on the internet preserving the professional culture and inspiring people to create amateur culture pushing digital media to another level.

September 29, 2019: Making Connections in the digital age

Journal Post 9

Culture is something everyone does in their daily lives. Digital culture or participatory culture is an intentional choice people make in their daily lives. Right now someone is typing into a search engine to ask a question and in less than a second that person will have many answers to those questions. All because other people have posted, tweeted, wrote a research paper or something about that topic. They all participated in digital culture.

Participatory culture has been happening prior to digital media, one example is an amateur culture that brought with it the Fan club or Fan fiction. Fan fiction gave people an outlet to Remix culture per Lessig's theory by taking an original novel for example and changing certain aspects and then releasing the Fan Fiction as their own. Does Fan Fiction violate copyright law?

The law was written to protect copyrighted material like music or print media. Digital media as Lessig points out isn’t the same based on the induvial user versus a corporation using copyrighted material in the same way. I will use the popular digital emotional stamp Meme as an example of this. Meme's are created all the time and posted on social media but do they fall into to what Lessig calls “non-commercial use” yes. However, they are other (corporations) that think meme’s violate copyright laws and they want their money. [10]

September 22, 2019: Collaboration is the Key

Journal Post 8

Collaboration is the key to open source but sets it apart from Richard Stallman's free source GNU/Unix OS is that open source gives the creator ownership of what they created but allows users to modify the OS to fit the need of that user. What I learned about open source, copyleft, and propriety software is that you need all of it to make new media function. You need people like Bill Gates and his company to come up with proprietary software and you need hackers to use that software and make it open to users that need to create a version that works for them. All of them are collaborating whether they think they are or not. Each one is taking operating systems opening it up and tinkering around to make something new and useful to other users. This was the common theme the readings and video content this week. Amayesing77 (talk)

September 22, 2019: The Burning Question

Journal Post 7

Open Source as Bruce Perens defined in the Revolution OS documentary helped laypeople understand the fundamentals of free software that had evolved and became open software. This approach was different from the operating system Richard Stallman created GNU/Unix. Which became operational by the kernel created by Linus Torvald. Perens used his previous expertise in creating guidelines for operating systems to author and define what open source is and isn’t. [11]

What is open source and why does it matter? Open source makes it possible for certain industries to create software that runs in a specific way to help them compete in a digital world. [12] One example the article gave was cars and the computer software that is used in them today. This brings to mind the recent news stories about Tesla's autopilot drive mode which utilizes open source software in their vehicles equipped with autopilot.[13] The use of open source software in vehicle computers is one example of the effect open source has had on the vehicle manufacturing industry.

Open Source and new media seem to go hand in hand both use communities to build and inform users. Open source allows social media users the ability to create websites or apps that are specific to the users of that OS. Having a social media website or app that can be used by more than one type of OS is ideal enabling more people to use new media in a way that best works for them.[14] Amayesing77 (talk)

@Amayesing77: Good work incorporating references in this post. You needn't sign your own journal posts. Please see my feedback that I will be updating through the day on 9/24/19. —Grlucas (talk) 06:15, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

September 15, 2019: Being Digital: the Hacker

Journal 6

Hackers are kin to Disruptive innovation what I mean by this is that they are inventing solutions to issues, by creating an alternative approach to problem-solving in a digital platform. Hackers are digital explores unafraid to poke around in digital space, and find or create something new. Bracy believes hacking has been labeled negatively and it's time that people and society change their viewpoint about hackers. [15] Benjamin Franklin was a hacker by asking a question and finding his own way to answer that question. Even the hacker manifesto[16] believes that hacking is a natural step to learning in the digital world. A way to traverse uncharted digital territory and pioneer new digital concepts.

Hacking, digital exploration, disruption innovation are all branches that can be drawn from Being digital. Negroponte points out that being digital will shift from people pushing data to people or computers extrapolating data. --Amayesing77 (talk) 16:09, 15 September 2019 (EDT)

September 15, 2019: Negroponte

Journal 5

There are four points in Negroponte’s book Being digital that conceptualize what being digital means in relation to bits:

  • License to grow.
  • Option to be independent of confining standards.
  • Will change the nature of mass media from a process of pushing bits to people.
  • Will change the economic model of news selections.

Education is just a click away

Sugata has come to the same conclusion that Negroponte suggests in his book "Being digital". The standard education system of learning is obsolete and will continue to become obsolete in the future. By integrating digital forms of education to children all over the world creates new ways to teach and learn in any language [17].

New Economic Model

In the last point, I referenced by Negroponte, he focused on news selection, but the economic model of bits has changed with the establishment of the Bitcoin(2008). Bitcoin has been legitimized by the New York Stock exchange they have[18].

“created a bitcoin index; well-known retailers such as Dell, Newegg, and Overstock
accept bitcoin, as do online payment gateways such as PayPal; and hundreds of bitcoin ATMs operate on four continents.” - (Feng 2018)

Negroponte is proposing that what is known now about bits 1s and 0s is only the beginning. --Amayesing77 (talk) 03:23, 15 September 2019 (EDT)

Septmeber 8, 2019: Marshall McLuhan

Journal 4

Marshall McLuhan asked a very existential question about media as a media inUnderstanding Media: The Extensions of Man what does the medium really say about society and how that medium influences society versus the content of the medium. To an extent, this seems true newspapers, radio, telephones, car phones, and now smartphones are all media mediums that have caused disruption on society when first introduced. Currently, many media companies that use the electronic medium of the internet have had to begin monitoring the content displayed on their form of medium. McLuhan's point that the medium its self detaches society falls a little short. [19] Content does matter if it didn't then their wouldn't be Television and Film rating systems to tell people how violent or graphic the images they are viewing are. Amayesing77 (talk) --Amayesing77 (talk) 22:54, 8 September 2019 (EDT)

Septmeber 8, 2019: New Media Foundations

Journal 3

The earliest form of information device of the new age was the abacus[20] a calculating device developed in 1100 B.C.E. was the first digital device of it's time to use ones and zeroes. Moving into the 19th century Charles Babbage pushed new media into the forefront by creating a Difference Engine [21] (a computer) was Babbage's contribution to calculating data. The memex[22] is a database conceptualized by Vannevar Bush named by combining the word memory and index. The memex follows in the same line of calculation that Babbage introduced in the 19th century. Bush created a prototype hypertext system that would take information like books, records, and communication and code them into a hyperlink that would be accessible in the memex. By storing the information the user of the memex would have access to large quantities of information. Thus, taking the knowledge and the storage of knowledge to a larger scale. The memex reminds me of Wikipedia because like the memex its content is based on users input and the rules about how to format and input that content on Wikipedia. Also, the references, citations, and links used on wiki pages link to content directly or indirectly related to the information in Wikipedia just like the memex was when Bush conceptualized the prototype hypertext memex idea. Bush explains in his As We May Think essay that the mechanization of data was the next evolutionary step toward accessing and storing large quantities of information. [23] Both Babbage and Bush impacted new media then and now how people, companies, even professional occupations (i.e. medical) all use new media to change how they use computers. They are asking questions like how can I repair a heart without cutting open a person's chest? Buzz words like minimally invasive. Carbon footprint reduction, paperless billing. These are all off shots of new media and how it's changed the way the world functions in the 21st century. Amayesing77 (talk) --Amayesing77 (talk) 18:37, 8 September 2019 (EDT)

@Amayesing77: It's important to note that the memex never actually existed. It was a hypothetical device that, as I noted in my response as well, is a lot like Wikipedia! Computers now do a lot of what these guys thought many different machines would do. Our phones alone have access to books, to hyperlinks to other books, and the ability to go buy other books. Hthrxlynn (talk) 20:23, 8 September 2019 (EDT)

August 25, 2019:New Media

New Media has many definitions depending on who is writing about it and what aspect of new media that contributor is defining new media. In the article New Media[24], the focus is on how new media is used and how that media is used by humans in their daily lives. The idea of new media and the formats that human access it as a means to buy things in the context of this article was a perspective I had not considered when you say, “Using these media, the audience become consumers who purchase products and agree to use them in certain ways.” As a user of new media, I don’t think about my purchases as things I agree to use in a specific way, I thought of them as necessities required to function in the world, we live in.

Lev Manovich's approach to defining new media has more of a historical point of view to which he says, “…at some point photography, telephone, cinema, television each was new media.”[25] I thought this was a deeper look into defining the term new media by looking at types of media introduced throughout epochs to the present new media which isn’t new as both articles point out the media is in a digital format which makes it new in the way humans and computers interact with it. In the last article that defined new media was less of a definition and more of a guide to technology and how to use it if you were building new media for people to use. Christopher Mims article sums up rules laid out by Dr. Melvin Kranzberg a professor of the history of technology at Georgia Institute of Technology.[26] In these six rules that are written from an analytical point of view, less like you must do this and not that. The takeaway from the rules is technology in different formats digital or industrial will have an impact on culture and society and vice versa culture and society will have an impact on technology from what is created to how is accessed and used. Each of these articles has influenced how I think about new media and how that media can influence what I buy, how I vote, and how I use new media to express my thoughts in a variety of media formats.Amayesing77 (talk) 21:11, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

I can understand with the first aspect of new media, and how we buy things that we feel are necessary and that helps us make our lives better, but when the article mentioned about how consumers purchase and products and agree to use them in certain ways, I am thinking that an example of that would be when we buy the iPad or iPhone, and when we're setting it up, it shows that long contract about rules and regulations and if we agree to do it, and we click "agree" to move on and get our technology set up. I can see that point of view in that example, and I can also see from you point of view because I think that phones are necessary for emergency phone calls and other things. Also another example that I can see is medicine and how we buy them and agree to use it in a certain way like following the directions to get better, and how that is a necessity for our lives. So I can see that from the article's point of view and your point view. Vada.amerson (talk) Vada.amerson 21:53, 2 September 2019 (EDT)
@Amayesing77: Your first point about seeing media as a necessity required for the world that we live, rather than a consumer who purchases products and agree to use them in a certain way was my view before I read the article as well. Now that I'm thinking about how difficult it might have been for consumers to use media in different ways, the importance of new media and being able to create your own version stands out. This mindset might also depend on the generation that we grew up in. Now, we have the ability to use different media platforms the way how we want, so we are not just consumers who purchase products and agree to use them in a certain way anymore. I think that is why new media is important. Bridgette96 (talk) Bridgette96 22:00, 8 September 2019 (EDT)

August 14, 2019:Defining New Media

I define New Media as any form of communication in a digital format. This would encompass media content like audio books, Podcasts, Online subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu, etc...), Smartphones, Smart watches, basically anything that uses digital code to help humans get information and communicate information to themselves and others. Amayesing77 (talk) 15:34, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


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