GANGBUSTERS

Rushkoff starts out by saying programs are designed with a bias towards the programmers. Thus, to be involved we must learn to program as the only way to give ourselves choice. I do not agree. In an ideal world we would all read binary code like computers and be able to write our own websites. We do not live in an ideal world.

I am in a class for web-design (as I may have mentioned before) and let me tell you 99% of the public would/could not learn that with a gun pressed to their head. Sure we can tweak out little Tumblr accounts to have different colors, but does that mean anything? Is that a choice or just an illusion of one? Instead of suggesting we all work to understand the specific mechanics of the internet, I suggest we first strive to understand broader strokes. Many people do not even understand that the internet is based on code and designed by people for people. Also that those people must be payed is not accepted. I know spending a few dozen hours making a website for a company is not fun for me, for most it is a job they need pay for.

The other assumption Rushkoff makes it that programmers design software for themselves. We have a whole new generation of programmers coming into the world now. These programmers (most) have studied usability and do design their work for humans, average humans, and not other programmers. Rushkoff is not doing programmers justice. Doing the job of a programmer does not mean just knowing the language of a computer, it is a degree that takes as much study as the next. To say that we all need to be programmers to be on the web is like saying we all need to be artists to paint our walls.

I grew up in the woods, so guys in high school tended to be really big World of Warcraft fans just because there was not much else to do. I never played myself but I knew the lengths players go to to get these characters and work through the game. Who would have known people were smart enough to get money out if it!

We watched a short documentary about Gold Farmers. For those who do not know, these are people (ofter in Chinese sweatshops) who play as basic players doing the same basic things again and again to earn gold as that character and then can sell that character online for real money, changing WOWC money into real money. When I first realized how it worked I figured it was brilliant. If someone is willing to pay for it, it just creates another job. The further the movie progressed the more I realized how much race comes into the argument.

For those WOWC devotees the game is much more than a game, it is reality. They live for it, some even find love on it. To be able to buy gold without work when it is intended to be worked for it a capital offense. Groups have formed vigalantee-like parties to hunt down Gold Farmers within the game to kill them. Not because the Gold Farmers kill players in the game (which they really don’t, they kill the same troll over and over….) but because they have violated the WOWC way of life. When you simplify it down, they are outsiders who are disrupting tradition. When the layers of language and culture differences are added the issues seem to be familiar….

I kept thinking that because this money is in the real world, it breaks the boundaries. We can no longer think of WOWC as a game. Those who live it are attacking others because they largely do not sympathize or understand them. Many of the sweat shop workers do these jobs to support families and feed themselves, no harm is done the actual players. It almost seems like the classic battle waged by a native people against immigrant populations. Were they able to communicate things could be so different.

I go online and I try to be who I am in real life. I try to keep my lingo and stances the same but in all honesty it is a battle. Why? Rushkoff says that when you go online ananimity gives many people a false sense of entitlement to act without consequence. The consequence, in short, is that most people act like the most vile versions of themselves because of it.

When Planned Parenthood was in danger of having their funding cut and so many people were posting pictures in support I know my worst side came out. I saw a person post a few pictures of dead fetuses and it turned ugly. I ended up sending a few enraged messages…. Real world me, normal me, would have never had the guts to do that in person. I normally give people the benefit of the doubt and respect different views. Normally being the operative word. I do not feel bad about doing what I did but I also feel it was not me. I was being me magnified. My views were still there but I felt more free to act on them.

However, I was not misrepresenting myself. I believed all of those things I was saying. There are plenty of people who misrepresent themselves online on purpose. We all know this is wrong, you should at least try to be yourself online (magnified or no). Should be all be accountable for every misstep we take on the web? Should we have to be held accountable? Here is the rub, enforcement. I know I get a little nervous when ideas of “Big Brother” arrive on the scene. The government can certainly not force us all to act ourselves online, the task would be both monumental and step on a few amendments (I think). So in the end, no matter what Rushkoff says, it is in our hands. It comes yet again to the obvious and simple conclusions: don’t be stupid. Be yourself online and don’t trust that people are being themselves online. Do not trust there is candy in that panel van.

Reading Ontology is Overrated I could not help but think about the choice to use a word that no one outside academia understands means something. In an article saying we need to stop applying categories to the internet in an attempt to simplify, they certainly proved a lack on interest in usability in wording it as they did. I felt like I was reading a scientific study and I was bored. Only once I heard the topic discussed in class could it be grasped. I understand information needs to be organized on the web for it to be accessible.  I love my itunes and I love my google. I want my information fast and easy. Yes a lack of Dewy-Decimal like system on the web makes sense. I get it. I was surprised to find that Yahoo was not as in on the game as Google, no wonder so few people use Yahoo nowadays.

The idea of a tag and getting the system to work for me had not really come to mind for me. I know SEO is a big deal. I am in a web design class right now and believe me it is pounded into me constantly. I never realized that one site linking to another makes it rank higher. We talked about how JC Penny cheated the system earlier this year and managed to get themselves to rank almost #1 on the Google totem pole for the holiday season. To be honest to me it seemed they got smart, they hired savvy hackers to add their links to sites irrelevant to their products but the links still made them rank higher. Goggle took swift vengance on them and knocked them waaaay down the list, where they should be. (I am a rather passionate JC Penny-Hater)

One thing I wonder is if JC Penny has figured out how to do this and they are not a tech-savvy company, are the companies with the tech savvy doing it too? How do we know? Google does their thing, making sure people are being honest, but with millions of websites, probably trillions, how can their magnifying glass be that big? Then the question can also become if they even have a rite to hold that magnifying glass in the first place. With new technologies come new problems and when more companies catch on to the problem I can see a deluge of JC Penny like problems coming our way.

I would like to do a media fast for weekends. I will give my laptop to a friend to keep for a weekend and not allow texting. Only phone calls on my phone. I want to see how my use of time changes. On weekends I have the most time availiable on weekends and spend the most time on the computer for entertainment purposes. During the week I have a lot of time spent on the computer for school but the weekends is where I waste time most.

I would like to observe my time for a weekend then fast for a weekend. Afterwards I would like to see the differences in my useage of time and how often I feel a need to log on.

Giving my computer to a friend will keep away the temptation and if I use a computer I will ahve to go to the library to do so.

Reading Rushkoff’s section on scale I was suprised by what he had to say. Right now it seems almost every business is online, if you are not online you must be missing out right? I thought that was the case, but then I read Rushkoff. As a child of the computer I just always figured that online would help business, but as it turns out you need a balance. Rushkoff talsk about how a friend owns a music shop and switched all of hs business online, without realizing how much business he would loose.

A few weeks ago I went to a bookshop (yes, I do not use Amazon unless I have to) and stumbled onto one on Halsted that really excited me. Books were piled in messy stack in the window and a grumpy old man was sitting at the counter. As an owner of a shop with so many used books from a plethera of genres and values I would think selling online would serve as an advantage to this shop owner. I wandered through the unkempt stacks and listened to a converstaion the shopkeeper had with another bookstore owner who walked in. The two men started to rant about the internet, so I listened even closer. They were talking about how they would have to be closing their dors soon because of sites like Amazon, which made me quite sad.

In the city there are, or were, Borders on every corner. These clean and organized stores, though often easy to find and can offer a lot of different merchandise, but there is something to be said for used books. It takes a true book-lover to spend a few hours sifting through stacks of random books, and you can find all the more interesting works that way. I search for those shops when I can. I live for that old book smell. While listening to this man rant at the counter I found an 1960s edition of Tolkien’s Leaf and Nigle, first edition. Can Borders do that? I think not. But I digress…

These men were so frustrated they were almost yelling about Amazon and the internet. “Tubes! they said, it is all just a bunch of tubes, who knows where they go!” I snickered a little at that, but they are not that far off. Clearly both men were not avid internet users, the store I was in had no website. I realized I had taken for granted the existance of these stores. Not many of my fellow students will adventure out of their apartment to find their next read, Amazon is at their fingertips. How can these men conpete with Amazon? My first thought would have been to go online and compete with Amazon, but after thinking about that Rushkoff said, I reconsider this idea.

Would going online help these struggling bookstore owners? Considering they chose their job for the love of it, for thier knoledge of books, this would be lost to them if they moved online. Though the stacks are unorganized, when asked this bookowner could find and talk about almost every book in the store. I pay a few dollars more for that. At Borders if I ask a question I am likley to get pointed in the direction of a computer. Foget about even asking about the books beyond where they are in the store. sigh.

A website would help, poping up in a search engine would be nice, but what few customers these precious stores have are there for the experience. However, what then will happen to stores like these? Can we even count on people to seek things out anymore? I wonder, for not the last time I am sure, how we have become so lazy.