Canned Goods

With no time to leave my prelims and teaching work, I thought I’d take a few minutes to share a couple video responses to Michael Wesch’s video.

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)

RE: The Machine is Us/ing Us

RE: The Machine is Us/ing Us

There were several others . . . for the most part, people simply trying to capitalize on the video’s popularity, and then there was the concise response of one woman looking into to camera for a few seconds and saying, I believe, “Blow,” at the end of the clip.

In my section of EN201, we’ve been talking about intellectual property, copyright, and sampling, and now, we’ll be focusing on Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture in preparation for their research papers on knowledge communities, lovemarking, grassroots creativity and transmedia storytelling. I used Constance Steinkuehler’s “Cognition and Literacy in MMOGs” as a model for research that puts, to quote from Scot’s rhetorical criticism assignment, “theory and artifacts into dialogue with the hope of animating and extending our understanding of both.”

One of my students smartly asked how a MMOG could be educational.

So, since we’re talking about Jenkins’ work, I’ll post part of a talk he gave in Second Life and let him speak to this:

Also, for more info on Second Life, I point you to one of my favorite programs of all time, CBS Sunday Morning.

One of my students, Andy, linked the following video from his blog this week. Games being one of my interests, I find the concept of taking advantage of human “cycles” for computation fascinating–basically, getting needed work done by layering it under a veneer of fun (If I could only get those hours of Super Mario Bros back). The bit on circumventing captchas was enlightening, too–reminding me of WoW’s “Chinese farmer” problem–Chinese working from China in WoW to sell the goods (loot) to Americans.

From the WPA-list, a great resource I recommend to anyone wanting another way to become more familiar the happenings in the field, as posted by Charlie Lowe under “teaching with drupal”.

I’m thinking about this as a project for my next new media and participatory culture course . . .

Originally posted as a reply to a post by David on “real virtual worlds,” I feel like I broke with blogger etiquette by writing a lengthy reply, so I’ll move it here and leave it up to David to delete it.

“I hear where you’re coming from, and I agree with you on many points. I don’t know if the footprint is really reduced–seems possible, though. Sounds like a good study.

As far as the technology breaking down and someone not making the teleconference–how many times have people missed an event because of weather, traffic, or mechanical problems? I don’t think we can escape breakdowns of technology.

And why do telecommuters need to go to the office weekly? Really, I don’t know. [ADD: here’s a story I learned of on Steven Krause’s blog about meetings making us dumber.]

But, playing devil’s advocate (or simply the role of synthetic world researchers and participants) I would have to take issue with you distinctions between “real” and “virtual” worlds. Many argue that virtual worlds are just as “real” as the f2f world. [ADD: In at least two “kinds of human culture that encourage human sociality” according to Jen Dornan in her post on Terra Nova; however, as she outlines, MMOs are missing several other kinds culture.]

Castronova on the economic importance of these spaces (I believe his research showed Everquest’s GNP [of purely digital products] somewhere between Russia and Bulgaria). Turkle would say that people are developing/playing with “real” identities in virtual worlds, and some people who meet virtually (through in-game chat) go on to meet f2f (a few marriages have been documented, too). [ADD: I agree with Dornan; virtual worlds don’t appear to have all the types of culture that we find “in every human society,” but they so facilitate people connecting outside the virtual world.]

So, these synthetic worlds can and do build communities (of a different sort perhaps) simply because people who share interests and values can find each other more easily than in the “real” world. And in my own experience, I met a number of players who played side-by-side with their spouses and children and would attend the WoW conference to meet each other in the “real” world.

I guess, it’s hard for me to make a distinction between the “real” and “virtual” since in every case we are dealing with people interacting with each other. If it’s that I may not be “myself” in that space and experiment with new identities, I’d say that I’m always doing that in the f2f world too.

But, I agree, that building a local, f2f community has value. There was a recent story about an elderly gentleman being found sitting in front of his tv–dead for a year. His neighbors never thought to check in on him. However, what I’ve seen in WoW for example, is that the community does notice when someone disappears (made all the easier by the technology that records/reports a players last time in the world).

Heck, my blog is the way I’ve built a community with other Comp-Rhet folks who share my interests (and going to conferences to get facetime is a luxury I can rarely afford). If I relied on f2f, I’d be very, very isolated.

Wow. I’m glad you made this post, David. It made me do a lot of thinking.”

I can’t believe it’s been more than a week since I blogged, but I’ve been buried in prelims reading and taking notes via Word. Annette has set up a wiki prelims that I’ll participate in by uploading my notes. But I wonder what changes will have to be made to my notes in the migration.

Anyway, since I just gathered another stack of texts from the library, I thought the moment right to ask these questions: “Must I read everything? And what does everything mean? I’ve seen a pattern in responses from those I’ve spoken to face to face. Basically, with the prelim exams changes here, we now have to read a core list of 40 items, with a list of 40 our own making–the old system required, I believe, 150 items from the standing lists. Of course, with all the writing required in the portfolio system we’ll leave, presumably, with a fuller understanding of the core list items (and our own). But is that really the case?

The old binge and purge exams apparently led to a lot of “read the intro, read the conclusion, and read a chapter from the middle that interests you.” And, you could always slide by without readings many titles. The new system, I think, is prone to similar problems. And, I’ll only speak for myself, here.

Under the new, write-a-couple-essays/portfolio system, it would be easy to simply not read many of the texts on the core list. In a 20 page essay, it’s difficult to include everything, and the faculty understands that you won’t necessarily include every core text in either of your essays. In many cases, I could easily get away with reading some review essays and using the B/ST.M Bib. I’ve used both to prep for reading.

I’ll admit to not reading every core list text all the way through; I’m getting the gist. I ask if this enough simply because during my reading I have been resistant to read a significant portion of a core list text (or two), but once I get going and thinking about the faculty question, I see why this item is on the list and understand what I’d miss if I simply read a review (or two).

These concerns go beyond my prelims in the direction of my future research and the need for interdisciplinary study. Can we ever read everything? If not, how much is enough? Who gets to judge? But, I agree, the has to be some kind of system set up to prepare us–for us to prepare. But what happens when those that don’t read everything get through?

We’ve all read the essays, where after, the author is taken to task by others. Then the others are taken to task by still others. Usually, all because someone missed some piece of information.

I’ve gone on too long already, but I’ll end with this thought, one I got by blogging about my prelims today—perhaps we and our students tend too often to see the work we’ve done (the results we obtained) and the work we draw upon as more than contingent (if that’s the right word for what I’m thinking). I can only do my best to do my best and keep working toward something more ___________ .

Not exactly the slickest work I’ve done, but while reading On the Ideal Orator I was struck by the bust of Cicero on the cover.