An Ethics Case Study

The impact upon research seems first and foremost to be a case of the Hawthorne effect – the fact that you’ve declared interest in their use of language is going to increase their consciousness of that use and self-monitoring. Your results will not be true to life; individuals may shape their behaviour to their perceptions of your expectations.

Ethically, there is a low but substantial level of pressure involved in such a case; unless the chatroom was created for the purpose of the study, the participants are probably regulars, and you’ve essentially walked into the equivalent of a neighborhood pub and asked if the boom mic over the bar is too intrusive, set up a sound studio in the corner and told those with the squeamish faces they’re free to request not to be included. The atmosphere is no longer casual; no longer is the situation created solely by the participants. There is a deprivation of a sense of control over one’s usual ‘territory,’ and what is implicitly stated in the introduction is that the subjects, if they do not wish to be included but also prefer not to leave, must simply trust to your judgement and ethical standards that their contributions will not be inappropriately used.

So between finding an appropriate respectful distance on a level between private and public communications – essentially this is analogous to the semi-privacy one might experience at a restaurant, where one expects others to be occupied in their own affairs – and the opt-out nature of the study, in which to avoid involvement one must alter one’s behavioural patterns significantly (either by contacting researchers in order to opt out, or by leaving altogether), there are two muddy ethical issues easily resolved, though imperfectly: establish the study in a chatroom created for the purpose, and thereby create an opt-in environment in which each new participant is presented immediately with information regarding the study and their choice whether or not to opt for participation.

Prosper.com

How does the site make money? (What is its business model?)
Payment seems to be incorporated into the process of making or accepting loans itself, as membership is free. Late payments are accompanied by a charge by the site. The primary profit model seems to be that “skimming” of successful transactions.

What is its “niche” or comparative advantage?
It seems like a relatively unique targeted directory listing for interpersonal loans, and offers what sounds like a relatively secure interface for both lender and borrower. It makes finding complementary parties easier and gives a relatively secure method of payment, as well as anonymizing parties to maintain privacy. Loans can be repaid in full at any time without penalty, which is appealing.

Your impressions? Would you shop there?
If I needed the service, perhaps. The immediate penalty-free repayment is appealing, as is anonymity. My interest and ability to participate in the lending aspect of the site is slim for the next few decades minimum; if I had the sort of spare cash to invest in others’ futures I might consider it. A broad range of contributing sums and interest rates make the lending aspect of the site more approachable – deemphasizing capitlal – and potentially productive for those in search of a small profit.

Which elements of internet economics exemplified? What does this tell us about the changing economy?
Largely what I see here is the relative nonvalue of bandwidth functioning as the primary draw, pulling in clients to utilize the service, with payments corresponding only to successful connections between clients, and made initially only by lenders, decreasing the pressure on the borrowers for capital up front. This would have been impossible years ago, prior to what have become essentially “free” communications. Though less directly involved with the internet, there is a definite emphasis on living on credit – these loans are commonly for paying off of other debts.
What really fascinates me here is the trust culture – Prosper does not guarantee lenders will be paid back, and there’s an element of doubt introduced anytime something appears in pixels. Prosper may do a credit check, but that’s hardly a guarantee of future returns. And this is the sort of situation where much is at risk and relatively little stands to be gained; how will reputation be preserved, here? Many communities hold onto a sense of “face” until they become large enough for game theory to play out in offenders’ favor; at what size will this community exemplify that? (And at that point, what will the size of the actual active community be, relative to the numbers?)

Candidate Page Recon

I’d like to know about policies on the future of the net, on women’s rights issues, on educational funding and content (controversial issues including sex education, evolution), on gun control, on medical technologies and research rights, on religion and its place in the public sphere (especially issues such as gay marriage legislation), on the war, on foreign policy, on tax schemes, and a number of other topics, in no particular order. Being somewhat outside the political situation at the moment due to a lack of time for adequate research into all candidates, I have heard that Obama seems to have made “change” a buzzword; I’d like to know what in specific he hopes to change and in what ways. In the last few years a number of issues have stuck out to me as not only distateful but justified for the wrong reasons; I’d like to see whether his positions on change of these situations align with what I’d consider proper justification.

On looking at the site, I feel like some of the talk about his page being a ‘brand’ is not only accurate but in fact primary to its purpose; though finding content on the issues was not a problem, I experienced difficulty in extracting positions on most subjects from the expertly bland content. More decisive content was found in the downloadable PDF “Blueprint for Change,” thankfully searchable as it’s, again, largely vague impressions of ideas with no particular suggested solutions (in other words, a masterpiece of political potential success – like a number of religious texts, it could conceivably be used to support at least most possible views.)

However, the marketing is supreme. Going beyond the most dominant networking sites – Facebook, Flickr, Myspace, Youtube, Digg – they’ve selected a handful of pages that encourage real-world involvement (Eventful) and a handful of demographically-targeted markets by religion and race. One thing in particular I’ve not seen elsewhere is the outreach beyond black and Hispanic demographics to the “Asian vote,” which though not targeted beyond its presence on AsianAve including seven photographs and a single paragraph in regard to sensitivity to the community may be the only outreach at the moment to an untapped and numerous minority. The website itself features pages custom-tailored to a number of concerns, under a menu titled “People.” Under “Action,” supporters can manage their own profiles, blogs and social network within the site. Mobile phone wallpapers and ringtones are available, but I’ve not seen any other mobile services, such as updates via SMS, available through any other means than Twitter.

In looking at Ron Paul’s site, though, in a clickthrough from this article, I see why his designers praised Obama’s – my immediate thought on seeing his home page was to wonder whether the template was originally for an insurance sales representative. His site has links to Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Digg and Twitter, as well, but the content (excepting Youtube, to some degree) is less integrated into the main site. User participation seems to have been almost entirely foregone; the “Supporter Spotlight” is on an interactive par with any testimonial page but in reverse, with an individual’s contributions showcased rather than their questions or perspective. Comments on the blog posts number in the lower double digits, though the blog has an RSS subscription link. The site is no easier or harder to navigate than Obama’s, however, though slightly larger fonts and higher contrast may make text easier to read for some viewers while a slightly busier look makes content recede. The technological requirements of both sites are relatively high, though Ron Paul’s has more up-front animation in cycling through graphics and messages. Obama’s featured more flexibility and quality choice in video content and generally more nontraditional media; Paul’s was largely text- and image-based and generally felt more like a standard commercial website.

Naturally Obama’s site reaches to a younger demographic, who are more likely to use the internet for research than other media; Paul’s feels built for my parents’ generation, who are unlikely to default to internet usage for information-gathering (making the gearing of the site seem sort of pointlessly redundant), and provides basics. Obama’s will receive more clickthrough views due to broad presence on social networking sites, whereas Paul’s is likely to receive traffic through advertisement or intentional seeking by the audience. Obama’s site, then, is optimized to his needs in campaign; Paul reluctance to rely on internet communications to spread his message speaks of and more exclusively to an older audience and implies that this is who he identifies as a compatible base and seeks to pursue on the campaign trail. While they are a more vote-conscious demographic, this may cost him new potential voters.

Web 2.0

Select one or more elements of Web 2.0 that struck you as interesting from Tuesday’s discussion. Write about your impressions, citing examples from the web.

Well, my first thought, elevated and circumspect as it was, was, “Well, I guess I ought to bite the bullet and learn the basics of XML.”

And then, “Come to think of it, a Flickr account would be a good way to log my photos while I’m in China.”

Flickr always seemed a little extraneous for my own personal uses; I publish most photos with intent to keep them relatively private, relatively quiet, because I’m not a photographer and rarely produce work of artistic merit in the medium, and thus the photographs are of either a personal or commercial nature, and tend to be posted according to that dichotomy – art photos are posted to deviantArt, where their context is primary and of greater priority than their content, and personal photos – funny things, memories, the odd, awkward, childish shot of something pretty – go up at Facebook or on my own sites.

But I’ve never really had a camera while travelling, and I’ve never travelled anywhere more interesting than San Francisco, so while I’m in China I doubt I’ll be able to put the camera away. And given that the photos might be of interest to someone, somewhere, and potentially have value outside of their context as photos some twentysomething homebody on their first international trip, I’d be happy to share them much more broadly than I otherwise might have.

And for the first time, I’d be truly contributing to the database. I’ve used tagged content elsewhere – on blogs, for example, or over at dA (not that that content is released for display elsewhere), or in limited other situations such as public-service image-tagging or similar. But most of these have been of limited application and even more limited utility to people who aren’t me. Shots of the apartments at Fudan University, though? Or at the Bund? Or a noodle cart? Things I might release under CC licensing, or at least publicly for the educational benefit of… maybe a future study-abroad applicant, anyway. There was rather a paucity of such shots online when I needed them. (Come to think of it, I still need them.)

One of the other problems that I’ve had for years that 2.0 seems to be making a few faltering efforts to solve is the number of services available on the web and their lack of interface with each other; I know I’ve had on the order of about ten profiles I actually bother to maintain, and elsewhere if I give any information whatsoever it tends to be references to other profiles. In theory, sufficiently compatible metadata could eradicate this issue; thinking of the possibility of updating only one profile – perhaps the one whose interface you most prefer (!!) – is tantalizing. This, however, gets to be tricky territory for service providers – at the moment, they can compete based on weight alone: the Microsoft method, by which you succeed because you have a corner on the market and compatibility is nil. If the climate begins to favor metadata, portability of information, cross-compatibility, they’ll have to compete for a userbase on the quality of services instead, which is a thrilling idea as a consumer. Not having to choose between the interface at Livejournal and a particular social circle at Xanga might appeal to more than just this user. It’s why I’m so fond of Adium; all the connectivity without redundant applications taking up digital space and human time for customization, preferences, endless updates…

And again we return to the central advantage of a 2.0 web environment – instead of spending time organizing data, we spend time creating and consuming it.

Of course, being able to separate your information might be just as necessary. Do you really want to have to project a consistently professional image on Facebook just because your boss would be able to access the profile through LinkedIn? Political or religious views in your artwork or creative writing projects online might not go over so well with your manager; will we need to censor ourselves in an attempt to remain consistent now that the evidence of our longstanding inconsistencies can follow us around through space and time? How might this be achieved, and how long a breadcrumb trail will we leave anyway? Augustine would hardly have become a priest, much less a saint, in this day and age if photographs from his youth managed to circulate their way into the hands of the church; it’s easier to forgive that which can be forgotten. Past and present (and work and play) become confounded in this system of easily-made, instantaneously-transported records of events. Will the sanctions for certain indiscretions soften when everyone is equally exposed? I’ve often wondered if some of the indulgence we offer children today has to do with the fact that there are much more vivid, numerous records of parents’ own childhoods to remind them that they were like their own once; what happens when we reach the point at which a young teen can log on and view decades-old information, and discovers his own father’s forgotten Mashable profile, complete with a photo of him posing with a bad haircut and an obscene gesture? I’ve already experienced a certain age-flattening effect on the web, but that’s a new kind of anachronism.

New forms of viral-and-collaborative-behaviour-friendly creative endeavor have sprung up around 2.0 as well, from the overall silliness of Ytmnd.com – the paragon mashup website, complete with its own memes – to the gamut of Oekaki boards, FanFiction.net and Ficlets. As the technologies become more sophisticated, I hope to see content do the same; as it does so, new art forms become more likely to win acceptance for their exemplified creativity, relevance and merit.

It’ll be interesting to see how things work out.

Research ideas

Continuing with my emphasis on Chinese culture, it’d be fun to evaluate some of the potential causal relationships surrounding China’s restricted internet policies – why they’ve been enacted (and that’s a bit more complex than just Mao, there), why the public accepts them, to what degree they are and will continue to be successful, and what sort of impact they might have on China’s social and cultural evolution, political structure, legal precedents and economic power. It’d also be interesting to see whether that might have in turn an impact on the choices by other governing parties regarding the same issues.

On Intellectual Property

Lessig rather won me over with his talk of free culture. Having just written a piece of original fiction in part based on a friend’s copyrighted painting based on a Bronze-age European god, I certainly see the value of a certain passing into public domain following observance of the author/originator’s rights to their own work. And as with the Open Source community mentality, there’s an element of reasonable limit to what I can agree to – everything passes into public domain eventually, yes, sure, but when? Not immediately, or that puts all the artists, musicians, writers, coders out of our jobs. (I can already see how I’d do Lessig-esque powerpoints. I admit I rather like his style, he seems to have fun with it while still knowing it so solidly back to front that he never misses anything.) So what’s an appropriate term?

In class, the “About a Boy” notion came up – the child of a successful creative professional living off his father’s inheritance. Where do we draw the line of the middle road, though, between Disney’s aristocratic monopolization of both financial and cultural capital and my immediate sacrifice of a labored design to the altar of Public Domain and the rights of my audience?

We like the idea of providing for our children, and our children’s children. But generally speaking, any generation we can’t see is one we don’t worry about; Chinese culture, for instance, tends to accept one ceasing to leave offerings for the “expired” po souls of the body of an ancestor after nobody who remembers them personally is still alive. So what about the current life + 70 years policy? You’re covered for the duration of your own lifespan, your children are covered for the duration of theirs in all likelihood, and the grandkids will be able to get something out of it if royalties are still coming in, enough to give them a boost. Ought it be extended after that?

Well, what we’re weighing here is the rights of the author/originator vs. the rights of the audience. By the time that that copyright expires – the lifespan of the A/O plus seventy more years – if that piece of culture is really that relevant, that valuable, and is still exerting an influence on the new generations, it belongs to them in the way that the air they breathe does. It’s part of their childhood socialization, maybe even their psychological schemata, and to attempt to regulate it on the grounds that it was your great-great-grandfather’s work and thus is owned by the family, and persecuting the audience for it, makes about as much sense as persecuting that individual because their great-great-grandfather supported Kodos’ 2012 presidential campaign with money from that work. (If anyone caught that reference and smiled not only at the reference but its use in the context of an argument on the stunting of creative development in which the culture in which one is raised is under copy protection law, you made my day out there.)

And there are situations in which not money, but meaning is the protected element – I’ve heard tales of a couple of lawsuits by the Red Cross organization to try and fight dilution of their nominal mark. As one can learn from any video game, the mark on a white field has come to be standard and international visual language for “medical.” And this is why copyright law is still necessary. It’s the frivolous or miserly suits, like when Johnson & Johnson sued the Red Cross over use of the red cross emblem that cause trouble, convincing people that pulling a Stella is acceptable, wasting our courts’ time and our taxpayers’ money, and generally make intellectual property protection look bad.

So what’s different about things nowadays? Here’s where Felton shows up – he emphasizes mostly what people are concerned about now, the differences between analog and digital technologies. We can make exact copies, quickly, easily, and the same flawless repetition in transmission that makes widespread dissemination of information feasible essentially voids in near-totality any ability to truly halt its proliferation.

In the end, we’re back in the beginning: with a few moderating factors, we can either choose to limit all information, for good or ill, quite often, and hope that our society has appointed individuals who will ensure these information dams are applied diligently and thus work for general benefit, or to allow all information, for good or ill, to pass freely, and hope that our society will have established a widespread culture of benevolence that will ensure that the information that propagates itself will be the “right” kind.

Will the internet be policed from “outside,” in real life, or from “inside,” by other users? I have repeatedly had the sense that those who propose the former are even problem-solving from tactics including the limiting of information – the scare tactics of the RIAA, for example – and that those who propose the latter are attempting to accomplish it by campaigns for knowledge, such as with the Creative Commons. Those who seem to themselves know how to use the technology, though, seem less afraid of it.

On Open-Source and the Revolution OS Documentary

Off the top of this writer’s head: Open-source software is that which can be freely accessed, used, modified, and distributed, allowing for rapid development of new features, customization and improvement of the program as a whole. The inclusive, noncommodification environment tends to draw an educated userbase likely to contribute those modifications of the program they deem desirable if only for their own use, and the eventual later “official” (if there is any such thing, such as with Mozilla’s Firefox browser) releases of the program sometimes undergo a certain darwinism, conforming to popular tastes.

Briefly react to the Revolution OS documentary.
Wow. Getting to hear from the brains behind Linux and the GNU licensing scheme was great. Good to hear the specific beginnings of the Open Source movement, as it explains rather a lot of why I heard about it when I did (which is to say, relatively late.) However, one strong reaction to the documentary that kept popping back up was nostalgia – the great flowering era of much of this was right around the time that I began to relate to technology. Seeing screencaps of ancient Netscape browser shots and of Slashdot’s header including a Nintendo 64 controller had me grinning like a maniac – that was my childhood. To hear about how this was going on while I was playing Ocarina of Time suddenly gives some perspective – no wonder it took so long for me to become aware of the Creative Commons licensing and about the Open Source movement. I mostly hung out online in a community of artists, and between being young and being protective of our works, Creative Commons was suspect and took a while to become popular. DeviantArt, for example, only just last year added CC as a standard licensing option for submitted artworks; the only Open Source ware I knew of for years was the Gimp, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a painting application, and I wasn’t quite sure how that worked legally.

What did you learn [about Open Source] that you were not aware of?
How early it was started, for one thing. The whys – how software was so proprietary early on; I would’ve guessed from an uneducated stance that most programs evolved organically at the beginning and that they would’ve been profitable mostly because transmission prior to the internet and without large-capacity portable media would have been difficult. Just what the GNU license specifies, and how it really was a labor of love by just a few. That Linux’s origins are slightly cloudy, or that it was named after an individual.

To what extent can OS be termed a Social Movement?
I would agree to the appellation for the most part. Most of its social function is virtual, and this makes it harder to see, but there is definitely a growing number of concerned individuals, often behaving in an organized fashion, pushing for change. However, I’d point out there’s something unusual that tends to happen when these things occur over the sorts of free communications situations that include the internet – it seems to have occurred organically. A few people thought it’d be a good idea, and a few more built on those few (whether because they had the same notion in isolation, but had no platform upon which to build – this is a growth very analogous to the way coral grows – or whether they heard about the idea, liked it, and passed it on – very like viral transmission.) This is harder, I think, to achieve in the “real” world simply because transmission of information takes longer and is limited by physical space. I think this is, in many ways, a new kind of social movement – from the bottom up, the bazaar, rather than the top down, the cathedral.

Describe the shared values, norms, beliefs of the OS community. Would you consider yourself an ally of this community?
My immediate thought is that there are still remnants a “hacker aesthetic,” an appreciation for what was done simply because it could be done, although this has been tempered by pragmatism as the community grows – “what can we do that would be useful?” This sort of demonstrates the emphasis on peer review as a determinant of value, a darwinism of programming – in a social situation, that which is beneficial to the most users will survive. But the root of that, the validation of creativity, I think is still alive and well and living in the community in general.
However, without a glass-box approach, it’s hard for that creativity to be seen, much less win approval and gratitude through its utility to others – and there’s a certain element of doing it for the praise in these communities. It’s become almost antiquated in the post-agricultural society of the real world to take what you can accomplish and apply it to the good of everyone, to throw game theory out the window and assume that just because you are spending your time and energy on other people while they benefit themselves that you will not “fall behind” and be let down by the community as a whole. The diffusion of responsibility for others’ welfare over a large group that allows capitalism to become truly wildly successful (for the lucky few) tends to make it quite difficult for more spontaneously altruistic/ socialistic behaviours to manifest themselves without consequence; the social “feel” of the internet, although one may be associating primarily with large groups of “capitalistic” individuals who will prioritize their own success over that of the group, is still that of a small, unconcernedly-altruistic, cohesive group. I think, in other words, that the internet is so big that we can narrowcast to shared-interest groups – and form tribes. And that can be a very warm, comforting thing, whether or not it’s a good idea for individual survival to behave as if the world is as warm and safe as it feels among friends.
The increasing consequence of this with the beginnings of Open Source, however, was that once they’d experienced the share-and-share-alike mentality within their groups, they wanted to expand that into the rest of the world, and create social change. The climate in which they were attempting this – one fresh out of the Cold War mentality of suspicion toward anything that looked like communism – could have been a bit more friendly. But the attitude, and the willingness to risk their own benefit on the hopes that everyone would simply do what was right, is impressive, and venerable.
However – how much should the community own? Should there be any such thing as intellectual property? Does your spending hours, weeks, or years on a project entitle you to own it? Legally, certainly; how about morally? The community for the most part is not quite as radical as this, and for that I am grateful. I’m happy to make certain contributions to the community with only the use of the software as compensation, certainly. I support the movement – I’ll donate small chunks of time, sometimes even small chunks of money. But the kind of contributions that actually counterbalance less interested peers? No, probably not. Do I need to agree that everything I make in the future, as it could benefit others, ought to be released under Creative Commons? Because I couldn’t commit to that. I’m too possessive of (and too emotionally involved in) my work, and the potential for financial gain associated with it is attractive to me for myriad reasons.
Likewise, I can’t think that it’s wrong to limit the usage of software you built to specific applications (without modifications) or paid users. But it will be increasingly easy for Open Source wares to become competitive for a userbase with proprietary or locked ones.

Do you use any OS software? (Firefox? OpenOffice?) Discuss your experience with software, be it Open Source or not, in terms of usability, price, access, etc. How would OS software make your experience different?
I use Firefox and Thunderbird, Livejournal (on their server), Adium, OpenVanilla (a chinese-text input source), and Audacity. I probably have a handful of other OS apps that I’m simply not aware are open-source. Most of my most-positive software experiences (Adium, Thunderbird and OpenVanilla) far outstrip the proprietary competition – my one purchased proprietary pleasure (aside from my OS) has been Corel’s Painter IX, rather than OpenCanvas or Gimp. All of the above were free, most had a very gradual learning curve, and all have satisfied. For the most part, I’m a lazy computer user, and I go with what’s free and easy – Adium in particular, for example, was far easier to customize and play with than AIM’s own software, very pretty, and more versatile than iChat; Thunderbird has been great at straining out real content from junkmail. OpenVanilla has some kinks, but it’s still new, and I expect it to improve dramatically as time goes on.

What’s next: If you have ever tried web applications like Google Docs, comment on what this experience is like. In this case, not only is the use of the software free, but the storage of the data is also provided by someone else. How does this help or hurt the OS movement? the commercial software business?
I’ve not used Google Docs, but a number of blogging interfaces seem somewhat comparable. (Livejournal’s code has been Open Source for years, as has WordPress’, MovableType has gone Open Source, but Xanga and Blogger aren’t.) The transmission of data on non-open-source blogs varies in general facility, but it’s certainly possible to use them as simple word-processing applications on a computer that might otherwise lack them. HTML documents can be typed up and saved on their servers.
The main damage to the Open Source movement I can see is the desirability of free server space and accessibility from elsewhere; this might drive some users to applications like Google Docs who might otherwise become involved in OS software and thus contribute as simply as sending automated bug reports. But to the commercial software business, the blow is mostly in that the product is not only relatively equivalent for the casual user, it’s exceeded its capabilities in communications areas. The result will likely be a push for more limited compatibility of proprietary-application-created documents to OS or freeware readers, and greater compatibility from OS/freeware-created documents to proprietary readers. In either case, the threat does not seem terribly dire to me; the greater range of functions that invariably become accessible on OS wares through popularity and long-term usage by a broad base, not to mention the increasing availability of free websites and online briefcases/dropboxes will probably outweigh the built-in functions of smaller apps like Google Docs in the long run.

Discrimination on the Internet

Though internet access is perhaps now more ubiquitous than up-to-date textbooks or printed reference materials, with disparities in access and in user education, the internet seems to be transferring socioeconomic discrimination largely intact from the real world into the digital one, and preserving other linked forms of bias.

The internet may also be amplifying existing forms of discrimination – there has been a certain slowness to adapt to internet usage among the elderly, for example (see class powerpoint), and a somewhat lessened fluid intelligence [link] among older individuals may augment extant difficulties in learning a completely new media style.

The fact that visual language has evolved so rapidly [link] under the influence of new technologies has earned some notice – even proposals to standardize symbols. The highly-abbreviated, largely image-based navigation and interaction style of computers and internet interfaces can be daunting for new users, and the symbols are perhaps not so universal as might be hoped (think of the interpretation of the hourglass icon as a dhak drum as seen in Growing Up Online). If the accessibility of the internet is contingent on a somewhat exclusive language, whomever develops that language wields a relatively great deal of power over the inclusiveness of its user base. And it seems that those “building” the internet tend to be young – consider the protracted case of Brian Reid, and allegations of Google’s preferential treatment towards younger employees.

But the internet might be offering certain freedoms, as well – increased ability to disseminate information cheaply and efficiently has allowed grassroots activism and entrepreneurial potential that might not have existed prior.

In response to LandofAshes’ blogwatch

For somebody who’s not yet gotten around to Bleach, and whose experience with Naruto comes down to having seen some friends’ cosplay pics from a couple years back, this was a blitz.

However – I’ve got enough background with anime and manga to know that it wouldn’t really make all that much more sense if I DID know the characters, storyline and strictures of that universe. As she puts it – “It’s kind of a strange story because a.) it’s Japanese …,” which is to say, quite accurately, that American expectations for plot logic simply do not apply. It could often be argued that when it comes to anime and manga artists/writers, plot, internal consistency, and certainly realism are not permitted to get in the way of art.

Commentary on general fan demographics is always fun – as she puts it, “They’ve never met and they’re mortal enemies….” I’d disagree to some degree here, though – I have a hard time believing that most of your average forum flamer population’s anything other than a bunch of trolls, blowing up their reactions to larger-than-life proportions in order to… …well… I suppose it’s in order to have something to do. There’s always the oddball who does, but….

A week following Wired’s Game|Life

Follow a blog for a week and record your experiences.
First – I’d forgotten the number of writers behind Game|Life, and realized that my choice was an entirely stupid one, despite the (mostly) playful subject matter. There have been ten posts today alone. Not a credit to my sensibility.

On the other hand, it’s generally cheerful and has the sort of lax diction and subjective tone that masks its relatively (usually) professional demeanor. So as I read it each day for a week, it didn’t feel as if it had been piling up so weightily behind me.

So there were a few common themes between the posts that can be imperfectly categorized as such:

– Direct game information: releases, updates, rumors
– Gaming-culture related studies, news stories, and media
– Technological developments that might become relevant to gaming on the whole
– Interviews with game developers

What I learned was often information I’d probably come by without reading the column, but later and through different channels, probably by word of mouth via face-to-face communication or online communications from friends. Some of the more notable headlines are directly related to my own personal gaming interests, some of it more relevant to other interests, such as psychology and sociology with relation to technology, or intellectual property. For example: I was thrilled, though not terribly surprised, to hear that Miyamoto Shigeru mentioned working on new Mario and Zelda games, and shocked but delighted that a Fatal Frame title is due to debut on Wii; there was a study published showing men and women demonstrated similar skill levels in playing video games but that men indicated greater motivation, and a new documentary (Second Skin) will be focusing on the social reality of virtual worlds in MMORPGs.

Some of the stories did not as heavily intersect those interests I actively pursue, and in the era of internet “narrowcasting” I doubt I would have heard about them. I’m in no rush to purchase the newest Smash Brothers game (though I probably will eventually), and so if I heard much about the expected delays I probably would’ve glazed over the news as irrelevant-for-the-moment. I haven’t had the problem myself, so though I’m glad to hear Nintendo’s Customer Service actually lives up to the name, I doubt I would have heard about how they’re offering repairs to users whose tobacco habits clouded the disk reader’s lens. I don’t play Warcraft, so the advent of “Battlechat” over mobile was an obscure, if curious, tidbit; I neither own a DS nor visit theme parks, so the new Disney Tour Guide technology employing Nintendo’s most recent Game Boy reincarnation fit into the same category.

I’m actually rather fascinated with the relative value of virtual commodities, such as game currencies, but I wouldn’t have taken the time of day to get past the headlines about police refusing to investigate virtual thefts, or how gold-farming schemes have gotten one firm banned from WOW. Two tangentially-related real-world crimes – the death of a teen following an attempted PSP theft and the murder of an infant at the hands of her father after she damaged his Xbox console would have gotten my attention, but I personally don’t tie those stories so much to gaming as to general violent crime – the reason they popped up in the Game|Life blog likely had more to do with lawyers’ attempts to connect the crimes with the negative impact of a (scary new) particular form of media.

Reading a blog is nothing new, here – but I think that this was the first time I made an active attempt to check one daily, rather than being drawn to the content by whim. It’s also one of few impersonal blogs I’ve read – the report format that comes with news-related content usually makes me feel too separate from the information to bother really thinking about it. I’m inundated with news of all kinds from everywhere, everyday – it’s hard to make anything particularly special.