Assignment Blog: Week 9

In dealing with the article "Social Realism in Gaming" by Alexander R. Galloway:

Normally when I hear about a new videogame being realistic, it is more in the sense of the virtual reality we talked about a few weeks back where the requirements were that it be subversive, allow suspension of disbelief, offer up sensual experience as well as in depth interaction. Primarily, realism sought through an attempt to make visual, audio, and possibly even tactile experience as close as possible to something that the human senses would accept as being close to real with plot lines that could engage the mind. The week after that, we talked about online identity, and a new form of "real" life lived in games where virtual interaction was in some way substituted for life in the "real world."

On the other hand, this article has a different definition for "realism." The above examples would accept a game with dragons and people who fly because visually the game shows this to you and the storyline and rules of the world permit it. Galloway would rather look at "realistic" games as ones that have some sort of "congruence" with the actual world in which we live. It's not just about fooling the senses.

One of the most interesting features of the article, I felt was the story of Toywars. From the graphic shown in the article, the graphics appear to not be at all great, and are at best lego men with gasmasks in a 2-D world:



Yet, Galloway defends it as a game that had a real socialist critique: eToy.com who had its domain years earlier and supported its own version of (potentially semi-pornographic) digital art was literally sued off the internet by late-comer eToys.com an actual toy retailer who feared its customers entering the wrong site. Ultimately, eToys won, but the Toywar that developed on the web, of which the MMOG was a part may have (and Galloway suggests it directly did) led to the financial plummet and eventual bankruptcy of the legal victor. In this case, the game achieved realism by making a real commentary on the world and then actually affecting it.

As an interesting side-note, it appeared that eToy (no longer online - nor is toywars) pushed the boundaries in a number of areas, getting in trouble for securities fraud with its version of coporate "shares" and pushing the question of whether digital art could be considered real art. More here.

Another critique was on the game America's Army. Offered free online as a recruiting tool by the American military, there can be no doubt that its graphics are some of the best available in such a format:




And just as a laugh on the side, I enjoyed this: "the virtuoso photorealism of detailed texturing, fog and deep resolution available in the army's commercially licensed Unreal graphics engine. " *L* -- the visual effect of realism made as faithful as modern technology will allow by a graphics engine named UNreal :D

But anyway...Galloway criticizes the game as realistic graphically but not "realist" in that it misses the mark on social critique, portraying the world as it isn't really is with America touted as the ultimate country and supporting a war that really doesn't have much support in the real world.

Instead, he favors other games for the realist quality, including the Hizbullah's Special Force and the Syrian Under Ash.

There can be no doubt that Under Ash in particular fails the realistic test if we are talking about graphics:



But Galloway argues that it has more realist qualities, offering a real critique of current events and offering more real interaction. Indeed, its probably worth noting that in this game the player is not a fairly anonymous heavily armed soldier (as in America's Army) so much as he is a 19 year old boy named Ahmed. Galloway compares it to a documentary, and others agree calling it a modern history.

Yet...I can't help but wonder. As an American playing Under Ash, I suppose it would give some perspective into the Palestinian world. Would playing America's Army give some of the same experience to a young Syrian? With all the propaganda flying around would he get some of the (albiet biased, but I'm sure Under Ash is biased some as well) feel of what it is to be in the american military? Then it would have some of the same achievement of being realist and offering "congruence". Certainly Under Ash offers a social critique showing some of the atrocities and making the player start by throwing stones, but, having not played either, I can't say that America's Army doesn't have some criticism of Iraq, or, at the very least, offers so much insight on American military experience that one could not criticise the very thing it is supposed to promote. I'd be interested to know if the reason Galloway and others talk of the real world congruence of the Palestinian game over the American version is because of the fact that it is a seldom shown insight to us whereas the other is common and loses its novelty and has messages so subtle we miss them because we see them every day. Anyway, just a thought...

So, ultimately, it brings about the same question we've been grappling with for a long while now: what constitutes real? Sensual experience? Suspension of disbelief? Ability for meaningful interaction? Or congruence and critique of the actual world? Clearly a topic that can be debated for a very, very long time.

Assignment Blog: Week 8

Due to job interviews with the military technology complex I am choosing this week as my off week :)

Assignment Blog: Week 7

Imagine for a moment there is an intelligent being who one day got bored and decided to create something that wouldn't just lie there...it would move around, reproduce, evolve in totally unpredictable ways, becoming years down the road who knew what for it had infinite possibilities.

We'll call that being God and his creation Life.

Seriously though...Whitelaw's article about artificial life - isn't that essentially what we are trying to do? All life is creative in some way - reproducing, shaping its environment: that's what it is to be alive. But to make a creation that is not just a copy of ourselves that is capable of the same thing...well that makes us Gods.

Not that there's anything wrong with that :)

If we are to make a creation and truly want it to be a type of Life it has to be something that will be self evolving, unpredictable, with an unknown end. We, as its creators may be able to interfere in its development, but if it is not at least somewhat uncontrollable, then it is not really life.

Whitelaw refers to this type of unpredictable development as emergence. Traits and aspects emerge that were never planned and may in fact seem spontaneous.

Much of our own evolution did not occur slowly. A mutation can achieve what thousands of years do not. If it is a poor mutation, it generally dies out quickly, but if it is an advantageous one and can be replicated in the next generation, it will continue on evolving the species by these little evolutionary hops until the end result may even be completely foriegn from its origin.

Do we want to create life? Why not? As I theorized above, it seems to me that all life seeks to create something, adapt its environment, etc. We as humans are a particularly curious and interfering lot...why not want to make a form of new life?

And virtual life makes complete sense, really. We have to start with our own understanding of the world because there is not much else, but we can't just replicate ourselves as that is just as easily accomplished with a few minutes of biological coupling followed by 9 months of gestation. Instead to create new life it must be something separate and novel.

The virtual realm with its ability to both interact with us on a meaningful and understandable level and also its virtual alienness seems perfect.

Is creating new life possible? Quite possibly. We don't know we can't...we get closer all the time.

Is it a wise thing to do? Well, new life owes its creator for its existence whether it appreciates it or not. But it is quite possible new life could evolve into something dangerous and scary and incompatible with its maker.

The creation might turn against its creator; we are not invincible, though we are playing at being Gods. But if we were created, could we also kill our God? Some would say we already have...

Could our new life live side by side with us? Maybe...it seems possible. Can we live side by side with our God? Hmmm...well there's a religious question for you. But it's not something we can really be familiar with because most of us don't see God as controlling and interfering with everyday life. Regardless of religion, most of us believe our God has allowed us at least some degree of autonomy. So we might be able to do the same...culture our life but then remain removed from it, aloof.

Or...maybe, just maybe we could wander a brave new world together, remaining human, interacting with intelligent machines who in turn share our world as equals (rather than a separate world where we do not interfere) and have freedom to live in it with us.

Assignment Blog: Week 6

Gosh, is it really week 6 already? Huh...how'd that happen?

Anyway...well, this week is a bit hard to write since it feels like last week's blog entry adressed a lot of the same themes, but oh well...

*L* plus I've procrastinated starting this...because I've been too caught up in my own on-line life. It's not as gripping as it once was, but maybe I'll talk about that.

Of course I'm not actually going to introduce you to my online self - as others feel, my privacy is important. I think back to those students who get in trouble because of things on FaceBook and MySpace and articles about how such things can even haunt a person when trying to find a job, or attracting stalkers, etc.

But, neglecting the Cyborg Manifesto, I do sympathize with many of the people described in the other two articles.

The nice thing about an online life is twofold - (1) it's possible to reinvent oneself. It's hard not to have a bit of the RL personality come through, but nevertheless physical details, socioligical info, etc. are fluid, not set. It's possible to express parts of ones personality that can either only happen on a fantasy realm or that are contrary to the rl face. And more importantly it's possible to experiment and feel safe doing so. (2) You can chose who you associate with. It's possible to find groups of people interested in a very narrow topic whereas in rl it may be hard to find even one due to geographical limitations. It can also allow for a great variety - instant association with people in different situations and locations who one would not otherwise have the opportunity to meet.

My own online life is very like that...actually, I don't play a character per se. Rather my alter-ego is a reflection of my real one...just a much more opinionated and uninhibited one. *L* and it's so hard not to just write the name...It's true that when I'm writing as Amber speaking about my other life, I often refer to her in the 3rd person. She is me, but outside me. (In fact, she may not even be a she...I once participated in a study where over 90% of people thought I was male based on my vl name and people outside the fandom often assume I am male unless I tell them otherwise *L*). She hangs out with a group of primarily women aged 17-60 who are writers, united by love of a certain tv show. But we are much more than that...we tend to share thoughts, ideas, little stories from our rl that our virtual ones can examine. But through our stories we can explore much, much further all sorts of ideas and actions, letting the characters we write do those things we are curious about, but do not, ourselves do. In a way...those are also virtual lives, more akin to the the game lives described in the article.

But even so, it can be incredibly demanding and time consuming. I recall applying to grad school. I had to go "on sabbatical" for 2 months just to have the time...complete with a going away party...allowing myself to be back on my forums only on my birthday. Yes, my online life is a bit different than the gaming lives...but it has many of the same elements. exploration, friendship, getting involved in the lives and problems of others and talking over bits of mine that i wouldn't dare mention to most of my rl friends...sometimes ABOUT my rl friends *L* It feels safe...there is a freedom of participation and association. Friending and defriending is at will, the virtual life can be entered or exited on a whim. Friends are made from common interests and lack of unwanted judgment. Though one does start to value those online friends enough to still develop a code of behaviour so as not to lose them, similar to rl.

Another activity I like participating in is watching ljdramaz or "kerfluffles" from the sidelines...fights in the fandom, if the terminology is unfamilar. There's a voyaristic pleasure from watching those even though they are sometimes quite horrid. There is one I recall...

W, very popular writer in the fandom, but one with fairly low self esteem wrote a fic (story) for a ficathon (where authors write stories for other authors based on requests) wherein the demeanour of a character named Oz was compared to a blue raspberry Popsicle. kk, a nosy little bitca, read the story and noted that her friend gl had written a story with a completely different plot a month earlier featuring Oz EATING a blue raspberry Popsicle. The P word...Plagerism flew. And W was horribly upset and others got involved. Sides were formed, thousand word essays were written, people who had never met were suddenly the best of friends, and those who had been busom buddies now split in two. One of the more interesting things that came to light was that gl had a habit of breaking up past friendships by subterfuge and also of borrowing large sums of rl money through paypal and never paying it back. People who had split due to her meddling years ago were now talking and realizing this and reunited...yet kk and gl were popular enough that others stayed with them. Nevertheless by the end of the kerfluffle, our corner of the fandom was forever reshaped.

A very good example of this is also illustrated by a book sold at the UW bookstore (one of only about 5 venues) called "When the Fan Hits the Shit" about an international scam involving the Lord of the Rings fandom that started out with a pair of online fans in the same forum i roam (LJ - livejournal) and ended up defrauding even the actors from the movie.

Anyway, the point is that virtual lives and real lives can be equally engaging, and can get incredibly tangled. One thing that I found interesting in the pdf article was the comment one person said about having multiple lives in multiple windows, the rl only one of them...and often not the most interesting. I often feel this way myself...which always seems just a bit sad. How can text seem so much better? Huh. Back to the Ryan article about text = vr i guess.

The one bad thing about online lives is when they die. Because it's such a fluid forum, sometimes people just...disappear. Often they are missed, but no one knows...where did they go? There's often not the satisifying finality of a body. Just a missing url or a blog that hasn't been updated in ages. But sometimes, virtual lives do end. People announce they are gone (though they sometimes come back) and that's always jarring. In our fandom it's called psueocide, and it's really frightening how much such a thing can cause the others in the fandom to mourn as one of our own is lost to the demands of a rl we never knew...

The other thing that has occasionally happened (why many of us have at least one rl contact) is that a person will die for real and the fandom finds out about it. I remember the first time that happened...and that was the creepiest thing of all...because I found out the person had died before I ever read their blog. Friends on my flist (friends list) were mourning so I went to visit the blog and right there at the top was a post by a cousin saying the person had died in a car crash. Of course we have no way of knowing the truth of that, but we assume it's real and it certainly feels that way. So I was able to meet her the day after she died, scrolling through posts of the weeks of her life, her thoughts, art she had done, stories she had written, silly, colorful little things...of a person who no longer existed. I even wrote a few comments on entries...ones that she would never receive. Very, very weird. In the rl people often just die. They might leave a few pictures, they might leave the products of their lives, novels, paintings, businesses, but short of a diary (which is private) there is no public log of day to day thoughts...in the virtual world, that's exactly what there is. Rather than looking back and reviewing you feel like you can in fact meet that person. In rl you meet people who are alive. In vl, you can meet anyone who has ever been online. Even though that person is no longer there...

In fact...here is the post I wrote that day (names truncated to protect my own vl):


5:36 pm - Not even sure what to put here....
Huh.

Well, I'm friendslocking this and disallowing comments, just because
it feels so much like I'm tresspassing to post this at all, but I need
to write about it (hopefully, it's not in poor taste...I don't think
so, but like I said, I just really need to get this out)...I'm sitting
here at work, and EB IMed me about something...

Just last night I was in a philosophy class talking about death...how
most people don't really think they're going to die...they know it
abstractly, but don't really let it sink in because it's just too damn
scary. Then we talked about how death is the end. That's it. At that
point it no longer matters because the game is won or lost as the case
may be, and all the moves that one made in life are now set in stone.
(This was in ref to the soul, actually...it's a Christian class--I'm
at a Catholic college, so sue me) Then I went home and actually made
post about it to the class message board that was a bit irreverent and
had a link to Common Rotation's song "Gone Dying"...(opening line "I'm
going to die someday") So weird to think about that at this moment...

Because here's what EB IMed me about. Someone died. It wasn't
anyone I knew or had EVER even had a brush w/. But I went to her LJ
anyway, and read the post her bf had to make at the top to let the
world know (makes me kinda wanna give my passwords out just in case).
Now that alone didn't mean much to me; as I said, I'd never met this
person in chat, seen a post of hers on LJ, read her fic, or any of
these things before. I've read obits in the newspaper and those don't
really mean much to me either, unless the name is familiar.

But then I started scrolling down. Yesterday preety was alive. She
posted, laughing about a Bush quote. Before that, she wrote about an
earthquake, seeing Val Kilmer, and (in my opinion, the most sadly
ironic and creepiest of all) about someone plagerizing her fic in
which she joked about her own death with comments like:

-----------------------------

"when you decide to plagiarize and steal certain segments of a fic
from another writer, please make sure that they're either dead or
experience complete immobility in their upper body region"

"my supposed friends there dubbed me dead after the forum closed down
and thought that it wouldn't hurt to use some segments of my fics and
incorporate it into theirs"

"Between school, work, RL and trying not to kill ppl that go around
stealing segments of stuff you've written because they for some reason
unconciously dubbed you dead, things are a little tough to handle
right now."

-------------------------

This makes me think of all the times on the internet I've made
comments w/EB "Well so-and-so hasn't posted/updated for a
while...they must be dead." Meant in jest, of course, but you never
know.

Anyway, it's just so WEIRD. With the obits, it's just there in black
and white. Someone died, the services will be held, they were survived
by, donations to... but this is so very different. This is the cap to
entire collection of preety's thoughts...she laughed, she gave
huggles, she wrote fic while drunk, she had a cute mood scheme, she
squeed at celebrities, she got angry, she hugged her flist, she made
Chicago references, she drew an AWESOME picture of Toby McGuire, she
wished her friend a happy birthday in large sized font and offered
drabbles that probably never got written, whined about her new job,
complained about Spander, made and posted her first icons...

And she talked about how she felt when someone died:

----------------------------------

"I know that you're all tired about some of the things that go on in
my RL, but my dad just got a phonecall today from his sister with news
that my grandma's sister had passed away this morning. See, the thing
is that I truly loved her and she loved me but the problem was that we
weren't as close as we once were when I was a child.

So, after recieving the news, my dad went into grief-mode and my mom
started crying and all woe is me.

I wanted to cry and say something besides "i can't belive it" and "I'm
sorry" but nothing happened. I felt so bad and kinda heartless.

Then, just now, my mom started reminiscing over her father, my grandpa
( he passed away six years ago). She quoted some of the things he used
to say like "How are you doing today, sunshine?" and "No smile lights
brighter the sky than yours" and I started to freakin' cry. So strong
and bad that my chest hurts.

And I wonder, it's six years later and half a lifetime away. Does it
ever get easier?

Do you ever actually talk about that loved one without feeling like
someone's crushing your heart?

*sniffles*

*sigh*"
------------------------

I've got this pit in my stomach now that won't go away.

I don't know her, but LJ is such a living format that I can look back
through posts made just this month, and feel like I am actually
touching a little dynamic piece of her that is so very vibrant and
alive.

But then I go back and read that last post from the bf and know she'll
never post again.

I don't even know how I feel about this...odd grief. It's like she
said about how her mother talking about those things her grandfather
said made her cry...her LJ makes me cry...not because I loved her or
knew her, but because of what a person was and did and will never be
or do again.

It's just so immediate...that same feeling I had when someone in my
high school died, (3 did out of a class of 124) even if I didn't know
them very well, because it made me think about others around me and
myself...any day any one of my LJ friends could just stop
posting...would I even know why?




*hugs EB close...*I love you more than you know, girl






==============================

ADDED LATER: *points to icon*

Yep, not my normal (avatar). This is my first post using an icon other
than my default ever, actually.

This is an icon by preety, and a rather beautiful one at that. I
saw a post a few weeks back in which she made her first set of icons
to share. So I took one, and now I'm showing it off. Reading her LJ
made her seem so very alive, and for a moment she affected my life
just a little bit. This is really the only memorium I can think of...

Nintendo Acapella, Stomp, and WOW Coulton

Hmmm...well these are only vaguely related to class...but it reminded me of Thurtle's music choices, only more tolerable :)

Anyway, the first is a clip I've always loved. Talk about humans imitating tech *L*:

Seriously cool.




And then the rhythmic stylings of the music group Stomp who find rhythm (fit in your own comment about interconnectedness and networks here) in every day life and activities. The kitchen one has ALWAYS been my fav!



Also, um, this isn't at all rhythmic, but how's this for web enabled human networking?

Johnathan Coultan is a comic music genius who writes a "Thing a Week" (literally a new song every week) and supplies them to the world via podCast. Then Mike Spiff Booth (aka spiffworld), another geek genius who is Program Manager at Adobe animates them using graphics from World of Warcraft. This particular song (not even my favorite, but a good one) is well known to me, because one of my friends works for Google (which now owns youtube...the place these vids are released) and rumor has it the google nerds sit around and watch this vid repeatedly. *grin* So...that's only about 4 degrees of separation, right? And one more makes you, whoever is at my blog reading and watching this :)



(if you like it, go check out other vids by spiffworld on you tube. He does a LOT of coultan songs with WOW images!)

Assignment Blog: Week 5

Networks...

Hmmm....what to say about them?

I have to admit that of the two articles, my favorite was the Barabasi, primarily because the Castells on the Space of Flows was a bit repetitious but seemed to be primarily about physical space leading to networks, while Linked by Barabasi was more about virtual and intangible, but had to do more with personal connections...and an interesting mathematical theory.

It was interesting to note that most things that occur in nature or otherwise tend toward set mathematical orders. That's true of course, but I for one don't often think to think about it. Power curve vs. bell curve...an inverse exponential basically...it's not too surprising that there should be models which allow for extremes rather than always models which exclude them. Of course like with any model that mathematicians (or economists...they're particularly bad) try to fit to real life...it never exactly fits because it never exactly accounts for everything.

Barabasi's model, he admits, is a bit weak...relying on the twin laws of growth and preferential attachment. Yet...it DOES better represent what's happening than other previous models have. It can be improved on...letting links decay with age, etc. Of course my point is that a model can never account for everything. Talking about movie stars, what about pairings like Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller who rarely appear in a movie without the other, thereby ensuring they would share most links in the IMDB? Definitely not random and not described by preferential attachment based on popularity, but rather by preference for a specific node. Another example I can think of...an existing network pattern from one medium inserting itself in another medium. When the New York Times went online, it already had a high readership. Those already online who read the paper version were likely to then attach to the internet version. Those who join the internet later that are familiar with the paper version are likely to do the same...again, preference based not on the popularity of attachment to the NYTimesOnline but on previous experience with a related node in a different network.

*cough* anyway, tangent aside, the model is workable...a better way of explaining. Is it important that the network concept be explained down to the latest detail? Well, if you want a network to become predictable (and models ARE all about predictibility, hence why the first economist who can make a truly good model of the stock market will be a very, very rich person) they yes, it should always be made better and better. But I think this model captures the important point. Attachment in a network is not random. Nodes exist and can be explained, and furthermore are quite essential for the functioning of a network if interconnectivity is to allow both multiple paths AND only a few degrees to get from most points to most other points.

And of course the internet is a very, very interesting basis for discovering and exploring these types of networks. It allows people to connect like never before. When the london subway was bombed on 7/7/05, I had a friend who was on it (and survived, thank god). But I've never been to London. They've never been to the US. In fact I don't know if either of us has ever been to a geographic location the other has visited ever. But I know her. She is my friend. When she was shaken up after, I was giving virtual hugs. Likewise, I got to be in Rome for the election of the pope...because I "knew" people who were. I know people all over the world, and they know me. But...none of us have ever met. With the web, suddenly connections aren't existing by accident or simple chance of location, but rather entirely by seeking out common interests. This allows larger and larger nods and diversity of nods than ever before. Here comes the true virtual city. And, another aspect is that the web allows greater analysis of non-virtual networks. Databases, such as IMDB allow cataloging and comparison with greater detail and speed than ever before...very nice :)




Another concept I thought that was interesting. Obvious, but interesting...the idea that the most connected nodes are those that have the most impact, and that those only connected to a few places essentially do not exist. It's true, I suppose that without connecting to other people, one tends to have very little impact in the world. At the same time, those websites with almost no one linking to them don't really have any impact, and if they ceased to exist...no one would notice. So, save for the page's creator and possibly one or two others, that page does not exist. My poor blog *pets it*. I try to post here and make it healthy and robust! But if no one visits a link to it, if no one comments, isn't it just wasted data on a blogger server somewhere? And I'll just leave that comment hanging...and abandon my blog to an existential crisis until next week :)

Sometimes I wonder...am I the only one not suffering postmodernistic exestential angst? Am I the only one who wants to be separated from nature? Who wants to be plugged in? Who doesn't mind pulling away from human toward machine? I don't feel lonely, I don't feel alienated or depressed at all. Why do you? Just wondering...

Assignment Blog: Week 4

I can't help myself...this week I HAVE to choose to post about the reading by Marie-Laure Ryan, “Immersion versus Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory” found at http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/ryan.html (um, yes, I just cut and paste that from the syllabus).

I've always found it fascinating just how "real" a "virtual" world can be. I realize that Ryan is comparing it primarily in a literary context (which I'll get to below) but first my own thoughts.

Most of the world has now seen or been forced to see "The Matrix" with the fantasically expressive actor (*cough*) Keanu Reeves (seriously? does the boy have more than 2 facial configurations and one tone of voice?-yet don't get me wrong, I do love his movies). That, of course, would be the modern view of a virtual world becoming so immersive, so exclusive of the actual, so in and of itself Real that it is accepted by all (or nearly all...save those "outside" the Matrix) as the real world. Indeed it plays on the senses, has that special mix of predicatability vs. randomness that Ryan says is important and which mimics real life enough that it becomes indistinguishable (earlier versions of the Matrix not plausible enough because they were too 'ideal' were, in fact, rejected by the captive humans) to the point that humanity is able to live its entire existance in this "Matrix" without ever experiencing life outside of it.

I don't want this blog to wander off on a tangent, but I once spent a considerable amount of time analysing in this case which world was real. Even if a few people disagree, if the majority agrees one version is the real world, who's really right? Don't the few then represent the "insane"? Treating the non-initiated as disposible, trying to destroy majority's world and superimpose the other (admittedly crappier) world they favor, aren't they exactly the terrorists that Agent Smith claims them to be? And that just wanders down the black hole of defining what is really "REAL". fun, fun, fun. :) Not to mention the question of...can we chose our realities?

Anyway *cough* away from that movie...Ryan defines "virtual reality" broadly, exploring it not only in the sense of a completely sensually immersive computer generated world as the term is coming to be associated with, but as any created immersive situation that can be experienced as at least temporarily real.

The primary requirement, of course, is that of (at the risk of repeating this word too often) immersion. That is, the mind has to get involved in the story occuring around it and accept it. There must be a sense of surroundings, situation, etc. In my own mind, immersion should also involve a sense of history of the situation...an understanding of the "plot" if you will of what has previously happened to put the current situation and future events into context. Anyway, as Ryan says, the main thing about immersion is placing onesself into the new reality...not just observing it. "one cannot be both immersed and a removed observer at the same time." This involves the concept of suspension of disbelief. Unless you can accept the new experience as "real" it's not really a reality for you, is it?

Immersion can be greatly aided, of course by sensual experience, but Ryan claims that this can be simulated by mere description...by literature. In fact that seems to be one of her primary explorations in this article...how literature represents a virtual reality of its own, one which existed long before computers were dreamt of.

Of course for literature to be immersive, there is the primary requirement of imagination to help it along since the experience is described in words and has to be interpreted, unlike the "ideal" virtual reality that is so convincing to the senses that it is experienced as real because we have to actually struggle to develop the disbelief that would remove us from it. (Ref: the Matrix)

Another thing aspect of experiencing a virtual reality is that the reality must both have a set of "laws" or rules which are unbreakable and predictable so that intelligent decisions can be made and frustration doesn't set in as well as an element of surprise and unpredictability or interaction becomes rote. Literature can certainly create this as can any constructed world with an intelligent creator.

A third element, however, mentioned in the critique in the latter half of the article is interactivity. This means that you can make decisions and perform actions that actually have consequences and effect future events in the reality. Unfortunately, this is where a literary work often fails. A story that has been written in standard form is decided with a set beginning, middle and end before the first sentence is read. The only hopes for interactivity are to read halfway through and then finish writing the story onesself or some such.

Though there have been attempts to make some sort of fusion of interactivity and text..."choose-your own adventure" and others...now especially with the advent of hypertext where readers can chose to jump from one page of text to the other based on chosing which links to click making it possible for individual readers to have completely different experiences.

However, text stories (and many others...television, and even video games) are still primarily author controlled unless story is not limited, but generates specifically based on reader choices. Ryan calls this "freedom of interactivity" where the experiencer is able to make any choice that does not fundamentally violate the rules of that world. (You cannot just decide to fly or be a pig or whatever unless unaided aviation or animorphing are facts of the world...)

Text is often compltely devoid of this, but increasingly new mediums are developing it more and more. Clearly even the most advanced of our present virtual realities cannot completely achive this however...but that doesn't mean that even without this ability we cannot have a real experience, one that is virtually real ;^)

But the question of how "real" can virtual reality be is already amongst us. There are already fantastically complicated games (granted most are still played on a computer terminal) wherein the graphics, the sounds are fantastically rendered and the world is a self-generating land where many, many players can interact as different characters. Characters who are created and then live "virtual lives" that are suspended but not terminated when the user leaves the terminal. And the user in many ways actually is their character. They interact with others as that person, they talk, and present themselves in that persona much as they put on clothes and go to the grocery store to talk to people in this world. There are stories everywhere of people who meet, fight, fall in love, etc through such platforms before there is ever any face to face meeting.

Because of this, these "virtual lives" are often just as important to players as real lives. And sometimes those boundaries cross...several issue in particular that're coming to the fore right now are the concept of "virtual property", "virtual economy", and "virtual crime."

As for virtual property: these characters that have been built up, their virtual weapons, clothing etc. have so much value in the virutal world that people are willing to pay for them with real money, often buying and selling online for sometimes thousands of dollars. An example of this is given by this article. It describes a woman Veronica Brown and her online personal Simone Stern who create and sell virtual clothing for characters in the game "Second Life" under the label Simone! Designs. Simone sells...Veronica makes about $60,000 a year. But with the ease with which pixels might be copied, she has an interest in protecting her designs...so how is the court to deal with it? Should real world property rights be ascribed to something that only exists as data? At least some countries are already saying yes. But how far should that protection go? That is just one of the questions causing these lines to blur...

There is also the concept of virtual economy. If a player has invested hours and hours of life on doing virtual work to better something that belongs to them virtually and then sells it for virtual currancy that then allows them to buy other virtual items, suddenly not only virtual property but virtual currency has value. (I myself have a thriving Neopets account where I rake in about 50k-75k "neopoints" a day and am currently saving up to buy a Rohane Plushie...quite a valuable little virtual toy that I'll put in my virtual gallery for other players to see and for my Plushie Guild (a bunch of us who collect these virtual toys) to "oohh and awww" over :) ) In fact some have wondered if all this spent virtual work leading to virtual products and wealth might actually be taxed in real money.

These two factors, of course, can lead to real world crime which can turn deadly. There is more than one case in which virtual property has been actually stolen and lead to actual violence and/or murder. Here's one that made headlines.

And then there's the concept of virtual crime, with gangs of characters ganging up on others to kill them, steal their clothes and weapons, even the concept of cyber rape (I believe this account is fictional, but there have been actual cases and actual lawsuits from this). How should this be punished? By other players? By the game makers and moderators? By the real world courts?

Brave new world time...how do we deal with this?

The system depends on where you define your boundaries

Just a comment: It seems to me category of the system (open, closed, or "cybernetic") is really just a matter of boundaries. If you have a "system" consisting of a "plant" (engineering model) with feedback and input and output, just include the feedback in the plant model and you end up with a system with just input and output. Zoom out again and include the inputs and outputs as part of the system and then you have a closed system.

I would suggest we DO live in a closed system consisting of the entire universe...

Notice that in general as long as there can be found an element within the system that has the features (input output feedback) the system boundaries can be shrunk down so that the process works in reverse. That's how I see it anyway...

Assignment Blog: Week 3

Weiner's "Cybernetics and Society" -

Technology has let a lot of djinnees out of bottles...similar to something I noted in the previous week's readings, one of the general themes of technology in the last half of this century or so seems to have been to find ways to monitor, control, and protect ourselves against what was developed before. No doubt the atomic bomb is quite the little djinnee...sure it was made to protect the US (and because we thought Germany was close too) but now everyone (except Iraq) seems to have them, and some of these little emperors (*cough* Kim Jong Il */cough*) don't seem to be the most stable, logical, or trustworthy individuals.

Weiner talks about the the rational behind letting computers dictate warfare. One thing he mentions is that computers are more effective, better decision makers, etc. when they bridge the gap between just being logical processors and between being learners. It's true, I think, that a learning computer can, no doubt, be more effective simply because there will always be some situation that it wasn't programmed for, something outside the scope of its algorithms that requires adaptation for better response, not to mention the possibility of correcting mistakes.

But...it would be kinda nice to have a situation where war became a simple mathematical equation...then our computer and our enemy's computer could just compare stockpiles and troop numbers and efficiencies and so on and decide who would win before the bloodshed ever started. Now the trick would be to get the humans to subjuggate themselves to the computers' decisions...

Which, of course, is the fear of learning computers. If reading the dry, overly thought out tomes of Azimov has taught me nothing else it is this: if computers get smart enough, they might start making decisions we don't like at all...I do recall the short story where the computer decided the best way to fulfill the command to protect the humans was just to take over and not allow them to do anything at all...(or, more scarily, and Out Limits episode in which the computer [also an adherent to the 3 laws of robotics] decided the biggest threat to humanity was humanity itself...)

And yet...how cool to have an entirely alien mind created by us with which we can truly converse as two intelligent beings? Reading the other reading for this week (very cool reading choice, btw) about the "hardware hackers" of the 70s it almost seems to me thats what many of them ultimately dreamed of...why they bothered to flip all those little switches and solder together all those chips and parts.

It almost makes a person wonder if a benevolent computer wouldn't be WORTH submitting to...*L* which considering the Hacker Ethic seems a lot about freedom and anti-establishment would be a pretty ironic offspring.

Anyway, back to Weiner. Feedback. I've taken entire classes with that as the main word in the title (engineer?) and the one thing that I've had drilled into me is that it's the method by which actual output is compared against and corrected toward desired output. Dry definition, no? And yet...

Computers without feedback are nothing but input/output machines. For a given input the output will always be the same (unless altered by errors..."bugs" in the machine). But a learning computer would evaluate the results of an action and compare them against some ideal and adjust. That's how Weiner's chess playering machines work...they adapt, knowing thousands of chess plays, but knowing also that they must have some variety to avoid being predictable by either talented players, or in today's competitive chess playing where machines are built to play against machines, other computers. If a computer wins, it can analyse how and reference it for later. If it loses, that is perhaps even more instructional, because it can learn it's opponent's strategy much as a human would. In fact, Belle (first computer with a master's ranking), Deep Thought, Deep Blue and others have been besting humans now for about 30 years. Here's a nice timeline. Betcha some "hackers" had fun with that!

The other aspect of feedback is that it is something humans also use. We rely on our senses to test our environment and react to it. This leads to other possibilities. Not only can computers utilize feedback for their own purposes...but, as talked about in the early part of this article (well, the first pages in the provided reading, not the numerically first ones) it allows them to do something even more exciting (and scary) and that is to take over the feedback functions of humans as well.

New methods of "hearing" for the deaf, for instance, relating speech via a machine to the sense of touch. Unlike current methods of learning to hear and speak, this would allow them to not only hear those around them without relying on a visual line of sight, but also would allow them to "hear" themselves so they could adjust their own speech to something that sounds more normal to those of us for whom hearing and speaking are connected, not two entirely separate things.

Now taking it one step beyond Weiner...this device could easily be a non-learning machine which simply takes soundwave input and generates predetermined output that corresponds to a calculated algorithm. But couldn't this also be better as a learning machine? It could evaluate how well its signals are recieved and utilized by its user for self adjustment and could then adapt itself to "amplify" sounds that the user seems to not be picking up. Just a thought...

Though this, of course, leads us once again to a scary point...rather than controlling the machines we are again giving up control to them. And when you see all the "Pod" people with their white wires and their pdas and their laptops and their cell phones, etc, etc, etc aren't we already doing that? At worst, are we so intent on becoming cyborgs that we'd just become a brain in a machine? Already most of us rarely walk if we have a real destination in mind. It's easier, faster, allows us to go further if we use something outside of ourselves. And we barely even notice...if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you put it in tepid and heat the water slowly it will stay until it dies...and at the same time, there is something seductive, appealing about all of it. We're limited by our physical bodies. Shouldn't we be able to use technology to not only allow those with disabilities to effectively navigate the world of those without, but to elevate us and improve us all? *cough* okay, I don't know where that sermon of mine came from, but I'll leave it.

So there...Wiener in a nutshell - learning machines, feedback, machines in to command, control, and communicate both to control technology and to do a better job than we mere humans ever could...

---------------

And this is completely unrelated, but rather than making a separate post, can I just say how much fun the Levy reading was? Some thoughts:



Community Memory *L* yep! Looks like a bunch of hippies :) Seriously though...check out the links to the April flyer. Very cool. I'm thinking Levy used this as a reference for his book since it contains the bagel and free clinic searches!



The Altair. Seriously...you have to program in BASIC every time just so you can program it? AND you have to build it yourself? *wow* I am so not a hard core hacker. If this is what I'd had to work with, the computer would have never advanced. Ever. If this hadn't hit the trash by now it'd be collecting inches of dust. Here's just a snipet of Assembler code I wrote for an 8800 [Motorola Buffalo, not Altair] in class once:

 ORG  $C000 ;program starting addr.
 LDDA  VX ;load the value in VX to Accu. A
 TAB   ;transfer the value to B for later use
 LSLA   ;multiply VX by 2
 LSLA   ;multiply VX by 4
 LSLA   ;multiply VX by 8
 SBA   ;subtract VX (stored in B) from 
;value in Accu. A so value = VX*7
 ADDA  #120 ;add 120 (decimal) to value
 STAA  VY ;store value in Accu. A to VY
 LSRA   ;divide VY by 2
 LSRA   ;divide VY by 4
 LSRA   ;divide VY by 8
 ADDA  #25 ;add 25 (decimal to value)
 STAA  VZ ;store value in Accu. A to VZ
 SWI   ;return to Buffalo
 END

All that does is make VY=7*VX+120 and VZ=VY/8+25. And that's not even in binary, nor did I have to enter it with switches! eek!

Though, uh, I do have to admit, the to input numbers in VX [that code's not shown] it was done with switches and to output VZ [also not shown] that was done with red LEDs both in binary which then had to be hand translated back to decimal...even after the code is written, it was easier (and more reliable, since switch errors are even easier than addition errors) to just compute by hand than to do it on the Buffalo.



Sol. MUCH more friendly looking. Still, I'm not trading in my laptop any time soon. And I never understood why they chose green text for the old machines. Is green easier? It hurts my eyes...



And the Apple II! Aw, how cute! It even has a joystick :) But then...what's the point of a computer if not to play games *L*

Can a computer control you?

speaking of Wiener's comments that we all know better than to play with monkey paws or release genies:

Do not push the red button Please, don`t push it.

*hee*

Barefoot Gen

I value having had the experience of watching this movie, though it's not something I'll probably ever want to do again. (Though I did have a strange urge to watch grave of the Fireflies again). I think something like this is so incredible, so out of the realm of normal human experience that the very idea is almost impossible to grasp except in the abstract for me, or, I imagine, for anyone who has not lived through something similar.

Though the movie seemed a bit documentarish in places (trying a little too hard to introduce all the separate horrors) and melodramatic, there is power in the idea that it's a tale written in the perspective of an individual (and even more so that it's an actual biography). Watching a history channel special is one thing...it's informative, reading eyewitness reports is another, lending some of the horror. Having an experience, even an anime one can impart the feeling a little bit more.

The idea of so much civilian destruction is horrific (though choosing whether soldiers "deserve it" and civilians "are innocent" is another issue I'll leave aside for now) and that is exactly what "The Bomb" presents...it's why the generation before mine saw life as so precarious, knowing that when they did bomb drills in school they were doing pointless preparation for sudden life-ending violence.

So by sharing some of the horror, it can be made more real, emphasize the harshness the bomb represents, hopefully prevent it from being ever used lightly and perhaps from ever being used again. I'm sure I personally still have no idea what it was like and that I take it far too lightly. Still...it doesn't hurt to try educate me and others.

Yet, like the doomsday device (or whatever it was called) in Dr. Strangelove to me it seems actually more inconcievable that such a weapon could exist without eventually being put to use than that the horror of nuclear bombs would not stop them from being used again.

Still, after the two nukes dropped on Japan, some people hope, and I can too that the promise on the Cenotaph at Hiroshima Peace Park holds true:

'Let all souls here rest in peace,
for we shall not repeat the evil'.




http://rosella.apana.org.au/~mlb/cranes/peaceprk.htm

Assigment Blog: Week 2

A number of themes are explored in Paul Edwards chapters 2 and 3 of The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, but the primary purpose is to explore the development of computing resulting from and during the post-World War II era. This involves not just the actual form of the technology itself but also the reasons it took the directions it took in terms of political and military pressures and the decisions of individuals.

There can be no doubt that availability of funding and resources is one of the most important deciding factors in determining how technology develops and more specifically WHICH technology develops. However, it is not the only factor. As Vanevar Bush said in the other reading for this week, one important thing is the collusion of ideas. Information must get from those who have it or have discovered it to those who can use it and develop it further. Military projects often allow for such things by employing a wide variety of scientific specialties to work on the same project. On the other hand, the level of secrecy imposed can severely cripple the sharing of information. Other, less obvious things can also play a role. For instance (pg 97) in the case of SAGE explored in this reading where one of the reasons analog technology was not explored in more detail to try improve its accuracy rather than looking to digital was because MIT threatened to withdraw unless digital was used. (This reminds me a lot of the BetaMax vs. VHS and DVD vs. BlueRay contests where the winner was not necessarily the better technology but was the one that was better supported by other technology, public opinion, or executive choices.)

Chapter 2 highlights this evolution of analog computing vs. digital computing. Analog was originally used most extensively because it was seen as more reliable and had more useful forms of input and output. Digital on the other hand was originally hard to accomplish in real time and not all that reliable, but could do much more accurate/precise computation. In Chapter 3, we meet SAGE/Whirlwind, the military funded compromise that was supposed to blend the two in order to solve the problem of "air defense."

Before examining the readings conclusions about the effectiveness of SAGE however, I think another important thing to consider is the effect of human irrationality and perception on technology.

Technology as we know is not developed linearly. New inventions do not come into being because it was preordained that they should, but because there was a need, an idea, and some entity willing to invest in the resources. This isn't necessarily an efficient means of development since the solution may not be the best one, the need may not be the most pressing, and since the funds may or may not be rationally allocated, but alas, that's how it is. (If only engineers ruled the world!)

In the case of the time frame presented, this development occurred because of real human insecurity about wartime technology, particularly air missiles and the nuclear bomb. The latter had made a real impression on the human psyche, leading to the idea that technology wasn't just our plaything that we controlled and could play nice with...rather it was something UNcontrollable and threatening that we somehow needed to find a technological solution to. In fact, air raids were almost impossible to detect and launch any real defense against at the current technology level and with whole cities being reasonable targets, life itself seemed precarious in the era following the development of areial warfare. Some statistics given in the reading (pg 86) suggest that at best only 30% of attacks could even be somewhat defensible, and it would be almost impossible to mitigate even 10% of the damage of a nuclear attack.

Because of this very real fear, it lead to implausible assumptions and paranoia about the USSR. Government fear and political motivation lead to the overestimating of Soviet resources, spurring American furvor to develop increasing defense (and offense) against it. (pg 87-88) Propaganda used to recruit and engender support was often strongly worded and misleading.

And yet at the same time, though we wanted to rely on technology to protect us against its kin, we were also suspicious, afraid to give it free rein without at least some human oversight (which, considering the level of reasoning intelligence of a computer is only that at which it is programmed to consider various inputs, is probably a good thing).

So SAGE was just one solution to the problem...an attempt to take all various inputs and monitor war situations and launch necessary defense. In actuality, we find at the end of the reading that the truth is SAGE never did work very well...it was easily jammed by the numerous input and results showing its success were often fudged. (Okay if anyone is still reading this...I HIGHLY recommend watching Pentagon Wars starring Kelsey Grammar. Reminds me very strongly of this situation!)

In fact, the reading speculates (with supporting evidence) that it was likely SAGE was never really intended to work that well (kinda like the Star Wars of the Reagan era, I would argue), and that the real veiled intent was that any real warfare would take the place of America making a first strike on Russia. (pg 110)

Yet...SAGE wasn't an altogether failure. It helped to mitigate the fears that birthed it by providing some sort of seeming control to dissipate the helplessness that the nuclear and air raid technology created. Not to mention that even when it proved not very workable, some of the resultant technology became a firmly ingrained part of future technology. Modern computers would not be able to do the things they do without multiplexing, networking, parallel digital logic, and many of the other things Edwards gives credit to SAGE and Whirlwind for advancing.

Blogger...

Hmm, *pokes blogger*

so, I know have yet another blog journal thing. never used this one before, but since my favs weren't on the list, here I am.

interesting. Not exactly friendly for editing the layout is it? tempted to change the background, but I'm strangely drawn to the black...I also think I need to switch to writing in the HTML field only because it's really annoying me not to be able to code my own tags. Ah, yes, this is nicer!

So why did I choose blogger? It's a long story...an Epic one you might say. If interested click here and check out both versions (though seriously, tell me if you do, because I'm morbidly curious if anyone will, or if this pointless little post is being skipped entirely.)

anyway, hello to those who wander here. this is a blog set up specifically for CHID 370, so anything I post here is (in my strange logic) somewhat connected to that class in some way or other or at least is meant to be read by you, my fellow classmates and/or class facilitators (or if you're not, why are you here?)

I promise not to try make all posts so rambling...but I do tend to be a little stream of consciousnesslike, not to mention that I'm testing this place out, *pokes blogger again* and I don't want to hang out online somewhere without marking it territorily as mine which requires throwing a few words up on the screen.

Who am I?

I'm an Electrical Engineering Graduate student studying robotic control systems and trying to finish my degree. What am I doing in this class? Quite frankly, I'm fleeing from classes with insanely complicated math to hang out with people and talk about the effect of all this tech anyway. I would also say I'm trying to find a change of scenery, but since this class ended up in Sieg...*L* I have an office on the first floor of this building (or a cubicle anyway) and I'll be programming robots on the 4th floor all semester, so...mission not accomplished. Anyway, I'm hoping for something fun and interactive and the first day was a good sign ;^) Sorry, Dr. Thurtle, you didn't scare me away!

And this is a picture of me:



Yes, I do wear those sunglasses on my head 99.9% of the time. This particular picture was taking on Hawaii (the big island) on a lava flat. Believe it or not, I'm holding my hand all awkward like that because there's a massive bleeding gash on the underside where I cut it on the lava (it's sharp!) and am now dripping all over the rocks. More than you wanted to know? *L* too bad. You get to see me smiling through the pain!

First Post on a Virgin Blog

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