What?: Machiniming

Just a bit of an update and a revisit to the old debate that machinima causes amongst gamers and gaming creation companies/publishers. Should companies allow it to continue if it may end up costing them money, especially if it is a political statement?

I love machinima I think it is great, some have gotten really high tech now, and a New York institute has even been created. But gaming companies have a new worry; I am going to term it “MACHINIMING” (finally weighed into New Media Authors favourite pass time, making up words). It is a game created within another game. Why not, I say. It seems like a natural progression from machinima.

I can’t quite work out what gaming companies reactions will be to it though, because I am not sure if the machiniming game has to always be played within the original game, or if it is a new creation on its own.

I guess the lecture series will have to be updated to include it next year. I place my coining of the term under creative commons share alike licences. Just for you though Christina!

What?: Reflections Of A Weblog - the journey to the end

The variety of blogging subjects and the adaptability of the medium has constantly surprised me throughout this unit. I believed we discussed at the beginning the affect that blogs were having on current events and news dissemination, and how it was challenging mainstream media journalism. Fine; but that is all a bit academic for me. I have most enjoyed stumbling across blogs that describe what people are most passionate about. I have seen blogs dedicated to celebrities like Aishwarya Rai the Bollywood star, blogs about sexual fetishes (which I won't link to) and even a blog about the newest technology employed in vented air conditioners . It is enough to make trainspotters and all those Trainz enthusiasts seem almost normal. But the pinnacle of my enthusiasm for blogs is that you can create a blog for a minute (like my lost blog in cyberspace), a period of months (per our assignments) or for a lifetime. I have seen blogs that have been created for a specific event like a wedding, or a trip overseas, or an impending operation.

And although I cannot for the life of me find it now, I discovered a blog that a new English mother had created for her new born baby girl. Instead of a baby book, or a series of letters, this mother was posting about the adventures of her new daughter, and addressing them to her daughter. She gently described the first smile, the way that she felt in her arms and the particular new born baby smell that had filled the house. These entries may not have stirred emotions in an unconnected reader because they were specifically created for her daughter, a gift for her on her 16th birthday. Imagine that! 16 years worth of accurate and detailed memories of your childhood. I don’t believe anyone would keep a journal about their child for that long, but I hope this mother keeps up the blog. To coin a term for it, blogs seem to me that they could eventually become the hard drives for storing our lives.

One of the most important aspects of blogging that separates it from a paper journal and even a diary is the immediacy which the content is available to be read. At a very basic level it allows the author to automatically share their ideas / opinions / experiences. And unlike if they were written on a piece of paper, the expressions and ideas cannot be lost in a blog. Another difference that separates blog’s and paper journals is the ability to allow the reader insight into the background of the issue, or similar opinions held by other like minded people. The humble hyperlink allows the author to expand on an issue, without actually having to write it in their own words. It also allows the author to provide access to where any material was sourced from. And for us students, it makes referencing a whole lot simpler.

As a communication medium blogs are fantastic, as a medium for news dissemination, I believe they have a long way to go. I do believe that it is important to recognise the difference between the two. Until there becomes a way for readers of blogs to be able to access some reputable information that accurately represents the authors knowledge of the events or news, readers will still need to read posts with a wary eye. In the case of blogs, it is important to remember that the word author is not short for authority. However, with regard to personal blogs, I cannot praise the increased ability for communication enough. I wish I had possessed the knowledge, or conviction, to create a blog during my various world travels. I feel it is much more personal than group emails, and often more in depth than personal emails. I found that when writing the blog, I felt more compelled to arrange the information in a interesting and enticing way. This was not because people I knew were going to read it, but because of the intoxicating idea that people I didn’t know were going to read it.
I will add that this also caused a palpable amount of stage fright, often ending with my cursor hovering over the delete button whilst I cursed my stupidity.

And who reading this cannot truthfully say that they do not feel that pang of excitement when they see that someone has left a comment on a post. Somehow, it does not even matter what the person says, just that it is a physical mark on the blog that it has been read by someone else. The very idea that someone, with no brute force necessary or expensive bribery, would wish to read my work continues to excite me. Sad, but unfortunately true.

And what would the magic 8 ball tell me about my misadventures with blogging?
Will I keep up this blog? Probably not. Will I venture forth to blog anew in the future? Probable. Was I more successful at keeping a blog than I was at a traditional journal? It is decidedly so!!

Understandable answers actually. I think I am slightly hooked on blogging now, but probably only as a tool for sharing information with people already in my acquaintance. Strangers still scare me. As I have always had a problem with handwriting, mine proving to be illegible even to me, I have finally been introduced to a medium that allows me an effective means of communication, and I plan to use it.

When?: History Always Repeats

There is one thought that always bangs against the side of my head when I hear the strict technological determinism argument purported by authors like McLuhan and Adams Innis. And that is; what about all of the technologies that were created, but did nothing? Had no affect on shaping society? In fact in most cases you will find that it was society that shaped them, by turning it into something more applicable or useful etc.



I do have proof, take for example, Morton Heilig’s Sensorama. Heilig has been called the “father of virtual reality”, and for good reason. By 1962, he decided that he was going to rock the film world and create a machine that played film, for all the senses. He wanted individuals to feel as if they were actually existing within the film. He used tiny bottles of scents and a fan to create smell, wind and heat to create temperature, surround sound and even had some extra bits to excite the viewers touch.

Sounds a bit like an old arcade game, doesn’t it. Funny that, because that is exactly what happened to this amazingly constructed piece of technology. It became a mildly popular arcade game, but it certainly did not rock the film world, or shape society.

In fact, it was society which shaped it, many years later the idea was revisited and it spawned the idea of virtual reality. Virtual gaming equipment was the biggest adapted technology from the idea, with the gamer, using a head set and wearable technology, able to physically feel like they were in the game.




There are other examples of new or changed technology that plainly won’t shape society either. Like the German based design artists who decided that a woman’s bra would be the perfect place to have an inbuilt USB drive. Don’t know about any other women out there (or guys who wear bras, I am not judging) but I wouldn’t fancy whipping my bra off every time I wanted to connect my USB to the computer. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue in the Computer labs at uni?

And yet the author of the article cannot seem to praise this idea enough. Looks like author P. David Marshall is right, mainstream news (and for that case blogs too) cannot seem to get enough of any new developments in technology, no matter how impractical they are. Everything seems to be heralded as the next big thing – which is a slightly technological determinist argument. Yet history repeats, and many technologies don’t catch on, or at the very least go through many stages of change. I think the Bra Drive might just be one of them.

Why?: Correction of Mistake

I must apologise, in my reference to walled gardens, I intimated that our unit was being made to operate within the walled garden of Blogger for our assignment. I believed Blogger was a walled garden because it only allowed people with Blogger blogs to post comments. I have just discovered that there is a setting that allows a blogs author to choose who can leave comments.

In my technologically disabled defence, this setting is set to default to only allow Blogger members to post comments. And I must conclude from this, that to an extent, Blogger is still attempting to construct “walls” around there site, reminiscent of the opt-in, opt-out debate.

Who?: The ever growing and needy Cult - apply now

One thing that seemed to reoccur many times in our class chat sessions was the speedy adeptness to which we (the royal kind, and mainly those studying CI) take to new technologies. In fact I believe it was discussed how people would be “no one”
without their iPod, or “lost” without there mobile phone. I find this an amusing idea, because as much information as we can store on these devices, you cannot store your personality. Therefore you cannot ever be “no one” or actually metaphysically “lost” without it.

Or can you?

The more that these devices improve, the more that users rely on them. Therefore, it is possible that one might probably be incapable of functioning without one of these devices that they have invested so much time and social shaping in.

To be honest I would not know. I don’t belong to the technological cult that P. David Marshall describes everyone is wanting to join. I don’t own an iPod, or any mP3 player. I have a mobile phone that was the newest technology back in 1998 (perhaps 97), but is now woefully out of date. The way I see it, it still calls and msg’s people which is all I will ever need it for. I don’t use it that much anyway, It takes me over 3 months to go through oldstyle $50 of prepaid credit (without any caps or turbo charges). I don’t game, blog, post to flicker. I barely remember html from when I learnt it 8 years ago.

My friends (in reference to my phone) have asked if I am making some sort of protest, in an attempt to be retro. Doubtful, I only still have the phone because it still works. I am slightly old fashioned from the school of “if it ain’t broke ….”.

What is sad though is that my mother belongs to that cult. She is only recently indoctrinated, though. Last week I bought her an iPod nano. It’s tiny, I couldn’t believe how small it was. She loves it, more than me I believe and I am starting to suspect that she has actually named it. In fact, I am well aware that here love for the iPod is that kind normally reserved for a first child, or a dog. So she got me thinking…

… should I get one?

I don’t know, cults still kind of scare me.

Where?: German engineering just got stricter

In Germany the government and the police are going to be employing a new technology. Mobile phone jamming. In this drastic new attempt to reign in riots and criminal activity, prisoners and people at sporting events may be subject to having their mobile phones jammed, so they cannot transmit any outgoing msg or calls, or receive any. Essentially cutting them off from the network.

Is this right, should a government be allowed to cut people off from a legal network that they have connected themselves to. And does this technology now allow dictators to essentially cut all of their citizens off from mobile phone contact. Essentially isolating them from the rest of the world.

Democracy could suffer, for the simple reason that mobile phones have proved to extremely useful in allowing people to connect and rally around a cause to protest. The fraudulent elections of Nov 21 2004 in Ukraine would not have been overturned if it were not for mobile phones.

This new addition to the privacy vs. security debate is going to seriously rough up some feathers. Because, if it is allowed, how connected are we really?

Where?: The pace of change in Burkina Faso

The pace of technological change is something awesome to witness. But while for most of us it simply means that the new iPod / mobile / PDA we just purchased is outdated before it is even out of the wrapping, there is a whole other consequence of the exponential power of technology. The changes that it affords the fourth world.

Whilst we debate, and to and fro, the effects that Wellman’s ideas of the “social affordances” of technology on are our own lives, the citizens of some least developed countries are navigating a giant leap forward, thanks to technology. We have been discussing ad nauseam what affects interconnectivity to networks has on offline communities, and whether or not offline communities suffer because of the increased time spent participating in virtual cultures or technology assisted networks. And at the end of it all we can prophesise about a few trivial changes that the social affordances of computerised communication networks allow us. We may be able to save time because we can ring our friends while we are on the go, we can foster more friendships, with less real contact, by keeping in touch with people through email/msn. Or we don’t have to talk to strangers anymore on public transport, because we can carry around our own music systems that weigh less than 1/1000 of what the old boom boxes weighed.

For us the fact that we can now check our email messages on our mobile whilst streaming a podcast to our iPod saves us so much of our precious time. But really, these small changes in technology are not really making a huge lot of difference. Why, because we still have the option of using a uni computer, an internet café, a payphone, free wireless connection etc. Our social access to computerised communication is so intense that we do not realise what the differences are that it is making. Hell, most of us don’t even use the applications that our newest mobile phone allows us.

All of this is because we are spoiled for choice. Yet it was this change to social structure that Wellman chose to exemplify in his essay. I think there are much better examples out there to signify the rise of networks, and the changes to social structure they cause. He touches on the idea about the change to the fourth world, but he doesn’t expand, so I will for him.

Burkina Faso is a small country in Western Africa, previously a French colony. It often rounds out the bottom end of any international “lists” created, ranking countries for wealth, GDP, economic growth. It is what is considered the poorest of the poor, in the fourth world (Least Developed Nations). In 2002, some of the major towns finally received access to electricity, a monumental achievement and already a huge leap in the living conditions for most of Burkina’s citizens, who had only received sanitation some years before. But what is even more amazing is the technological leap that followed close on the heels of electricity and before running water.

It was the spread of mobile phones. These people, most of whom had never even seen let alone used a landline/payphone, were now granted access to a mobile phone. In a very small town of Sabtenga, a rural community, still living in the family collective style, there are now 10 mobile phones in a population of 5,058.

In this country where the snail mail system is notoriously unreliable it now allows communities, who had previously been almost completely isolated, to connect to networks that allow them communication with other towns and villages in Burkina, but importantly with the rest of the world. It also allows them pure liberation from the place and situation that they are living in.

Not only does this mobile access allow them to be networked, it improves the situation of the whole village community, as efficient communication allows them to participate in better business, giving them more income. This community has not suffered from being networked, if anything it will allow it to thrive.

Where?: Everything's Bigger in Texas

It becomes obvious why anonymity is important in virtual communities, once it has been taken away. The secret is out.

The author wishes to note that it is hard to virtually depict sarcasm: so be warned - this is a joke

When?: Random Bite

Internet advertising spending in Australia is expected to exceed $1billion dollars this year alone. Already it has hit this figure in other economies world wide. As internet advertising increases in importance, it will be interesting to see the changes in the ways that products are advertised. Will influential bloggers start reaping revenues by renting out space on their sites to advertisers? Will MMOG producers increase participation with major companies to advertise in the online games? Is pay-per-click responsible for the increase?

How?: Walled gardens and Sticky clicking

I was rather surprised that when Chris gave her lecture the other week on Walled gardens, and the ways that firms, and software try to lock you in to their product, nobody mentioned Banks. They are notorious for making the switching costs high, and the procedure to do it is long and laborious.

In fact, keeping customers in your page is what e-business is all about these days. The "Stickiness" of your page is an important factor, when web designing. The whole idea is that the longer you keep people in your site, the more chance you have of getting their business. In this vein, businesses are setting up websites which resemble “hedged mazes”, with lots of sticky clicking on internal links involved. It makes the process of going “back” harder. Don’t know about anyone else, but if I were stuck in a maze, that would make me frustrated, not eager to buy.

A good example of the walled garden approach is before your eyes right now. Blogger. If you wish to comment on this piece that I have written, you must be a member of Blogger, to sign in and leave a comment. Word Press only requires a current email address for comment leavers. Blogger have decided that if people read blogs (using blogger) that they would like to interact with, then they must set up a blogger blog themselves – thus expanding the blogger community. From there, because the amount of people who use blogger is so large, new bloggers will see the benefits of joining with blogger first off, as it enables them more interaction.

Interesting thought, the whole exponential membership thing, wonder if it is working out for them.

The author in no way condones or expects you to become a member of Blogger and subject yourself to a Walled Garden, just to be able to leave a comment

Who?: A selfless techno wizard: Andrew Mee

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank Andrew, one of our fellow KCB201ers for pointing out problems in my blog’s template. Not only did he spend his precious time trying to access my blog, but when he couldn’t, he trawled through my source code to see where I went wrong. He then emailed me with the corrections that I needed to make to fix the problems, and with a note saying that I could contact him if I required anymore help.

I am writing this because I know that we occasionally read each others blogs and I felt that this selfless act should not go un-noticed. I think it is also a good demonstration of how virtual communities aren’t that different from offline communities. Occasionally everyone needs a bit of help, and there are always good Samaritans there willing to lend a hand, or fix a source code. So if you have read this, and know Andrew, praise him for his selfless deed.

Indecently, Andrew is also a very talented member of our Unit class. His blog is insightful, well written, relevant, interesting and funny. If anyone is looking for what the 7 standard will be for our blog assignment I recommend clicking on this link to visit Andrews’s blog.

Who?: Those only found in the virtual world

Just came accross a blog about a woman, who is all but lsot in the "real" world and has only communicated with the virtual world for the last six months. She goes by the name of Wandering Scribe.

This woman lives in a car, on the edge of a wood, with nothing to do but blog. Check it out, it gives an interesting perspective to the importance of a virtual existence for many people. Similar to that woman Sal was talking about in her lecture, the one disabled in real life but was a primo in MMOG.

Link to a press article about her in the BBC

What?: Community Participation Task

Volunteers are a special breed. Especially those who travel across the globe to participate in areas or projects that they are passionate about. But for Not for Profit organisations (NPO) and Non Government Organisations (NGO) it is often difficult to find these impassioned people ready and willing to offer there skills for next to nothing (and often less than nothing). That is where Idealist Organisation comes in. It is a website, and global community, that aims to match organisations looking for volunteers (and paid staff) with those eager to help.

There are three distinct groups of people who are members of Idealist. Membership includes those working, or wishing to work, in the NPO sector, those who are consultants for NPO’s and NGO’s, and for organisations themselves. The website is split into these three sections, allowing Idealist to cater to each group specifically. One of the major assets to the community is that it enables a person looking to work/volunteer to create a profile that lists their interests, previous fields of work and issues they are passionate about. It also allows them to actively seek work online, through the community, by joining a volunteer database. This then matches the individual members to any member organisations who are looking for volunteers who are interested in particular issues. With almost 360,000 members, it is a great place to get the inside track on all volunteer issues, from organisations who exploit, to how to survive on a volunteer’s budget.

As well as providing global news on the issues relevant to the NPO industry, Idealist provides a forum for members to discuss issues and seek information. It is this that keeps members coming back. For the volunteers it is an invaluable tool that allows them to flesh out issues, garner more information and get access to first hand advice about companies, projects and future employers. This forum takes most of the guesswork and unknown aspects out of the volunteer industry.
This is what makes the community so successful, because it provides essential information, which volunteers cannot get in such volume anywhere else.

To access the community go to Idealist

To view the forums go to Idealist Community

To view just some of my posts go to Preventable Diseases and Evolution vs. Creativism

Who?: Global Governance Issues

Another interesting idea to come out of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was the applications from the US Government for regulators of domains in each country technical standards that would allow law enforcement agencies to intercept communications.

With ICANN being stateside (US) based, does this mean that it would only be the American law enforcement agents who would have access to intercepted communications? What an infringement on freedom of speech that would be. Imagine the amount of people on the US’s terror suspect list then! No wonder countries like Brazil and Iran are being so vocal about the fact that ICANN should be managed by a global body, like the UN.

How?: Free Share it, drive the moguls crazy!

I have always been fascinated by the fact that impermanent things can be owned. Music is one of those cultural nuances that suffer from impermanence. As soon as the note is played it disappears, it’s gone. However, playing that note again and again does not diminish its quality, or its affect on people.

When major music studios attempt to shutdown internet music downloading, all they are trying to protect is their bottom line. If someone is going to be listening to that music that they own, they want a cut of the cash. Despite their proffering that they are protecting the artists that they represent, the only notes that matter to them are the dollar kinds. Funny though, because I always thought that true artists wanted as many people to experience their works as possible.

Its good to see that the internet, coupled with the new creative commons licences now allows artists to finally give those middle men the cut they deserve, and chop them out of the picture. This format of right protecting allows the artists to have the say over how their works should be used. This allows for greater exposure and often global collaboration over new works.

Well one of the objectives of this unit is to actually immerse ourselves in the theories and technologies that we are learning about. So, in that spirit, here are some lyrics, quickly written down, created by me in the hopes that it will inspire some music genius or garage band to put them to music. Ill be Paul to your John.

Lets just say I was inspired by the evolution of the music industry, inspired to the point of rhyming.

Play it, on my Jukebox baby,
Jive to those used Polka beats,
Run the needle on the old LP’s
Until the pure notes feel the heat.

You prefer it to the DJ, maybe,
With his ego and the calloused hands
Literally scratching to be a hero,
Making his’tory with the one man band.

Free Share it, drive the moguls crazy,
Keep clicking to keep up the pace
Cut your web enabled perfect demo
Not to share it would be the waste.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia License.

How?: Random Bite

In Australia alone, you have a 1 in 8.145 million chance at winning the lottery. Bit of a long shot really, might as well play roulette. Considering the chances of contracting HIV or developing cancer are much higher, imagine the results if all lotto players spent their money on cure research.

However, you can play all possible number combinations in lotto for the small price of around AUD$3 million. Not bad for a guaranteed return of whatever the jackpot is, say $19 million.

Anyone got a spare $3million they can lend me, I would pay back interest.

What?: MMOG's should be childsplay

Last night I sat and listened to a lecture about MMOG (Massive multi-player online games) delivered by Sal Humphreys. It struck me just how much the way these games like Ever quest and World of War craft were structured and controlled by the major corporations was similar to the way that we used to run a childcare centre I worked for.

When the kids would come in at the beginning of the day, they would rush in, eager to start playing with all the exciting new toys that they had never played with before. Often they would group up to play with a certain toy with other children or sit happily in a corner by themselves with some blocks, or a doll house. As expected, we often had to deal with sharing issues. Our response was to always remind the kids that these were our toys, and we had decided to share them with them, which means that they also had to share with the other children. At the end of the day, we still had total control over the toys, and the ability to send the kids to the naughty corner.

It seems that game playing doesn’t really change from when you are two, to when you are thirty two, or fifty two. Sal pointed out that often people rush into joining these online games without reading the end user agreements that the corporations demand they operate within. Just like our kids rushing into the centre, eager to play with all the new and exciting gadgets, eager to make friends.

And even though a player may spend years investing in honing an avatar for him/herself, at the end of the day companies like Sony can still take away the ‘toys’ if people are not behaving as Sony would like, and the ultimate punishment of the ‘naughty chair’ can be delivered at Sony’s discretion, effectively taking the player away from the ‘toys’ and their new found friends.

It also seems like players as they got older still retain that inner child belief that it is just not fair. Perhaps its not. There is one difference between childcare and MMOG’s though. Just like in MMOG, sometimes we would have small children in for up to 9 hours a day. That is a long time for a child. Occasionally they would spend the whole day crafting and perfecting a building block city, complete with dinosaurs, Lego men and the occasional farm yard animals. But regardless of this, at the end of the day, it had to be torn down, despite the time invested in making it, there was no way that the child could take it home, or that we could even leave it erected, the toys had to be packed away, ready to be played with again tomorrow. This is because we had a finite amount of resources. However, in online games, the content that end users create is not from a finite amount of resources, yet major corporations control the rights to ‘tear down’ any content created, and won’t let end users ‘take home’ or on sell their own created content. They claim they own all IP over any new content created in their world.

I would understand this hard stance if the corporation somehow managed to commercialize this end user content for future use, as after all they are a business, turning a profit. But if they are never going to do anything with the end user created content, why not let the user own it? After all, we weren’t so mean as to not let the kids take home their craft. Those sticky objects that the children had lovingly created and were proud of, we had no use for them, so why not let them get joy out of it. I think Sony and Blizzard could learn a lot from kids.

Check out this article to see a new business model that might set the future tone for MMOG

Where?: Random Bite

I once narrowly missed getting caught in an Avalanche in Switzerland. It happened just after this photo was taken.

photo by Courtney

What?: Random Bite

From now on, every so often i will be posting "Random Bites". Small info bytes that you can sink your teeth into.

Sometimes they will be about me, sometimes about culture, feel free to comment, share or if the mood takes abuse.

How?: "Hello... Can you hear me up the back?"

"i want my lawyer"

For those of you that recognise that quote from Usual Suspects, kudos. So why now? Why ever? I am not very technically literate and even struggled creating this blog to begin with (I forgot my username and password).

I guess it is fair to tell you that the creation of this blog was not from any epiphany or sudden urge to share my life with you all. As part of a university unit I am studying, Virtual Cultures, we all must create a blog. The unit is incredibly fascinating and the content evocative (John, should I have put that in bold to draw you attention to it more). No, seriously, what better way to learn about virtual cultures than to immerse yourself in them.

So, in the interim, you will learn about what I have learnt from virtual cultures (Be pleased, you are getting the info for free, I am paying to do the course), and along the way you will learn a little bit more about me.

Can you hear me up the back? Or do I need to speak louder…

Just finished a Sky Dive - had a day off so i thought i would make the most of it
photo by Courtney

What?: Structure of blog

Welcome. To ease you into the many deep and various folds of my troubled mind, I thought some structure might go a long way. It might also possibly stop me from ranting. To assist you, each post will start with with one of the great 6 questions of all time.

Either with What?, When?, Where?, Why?, Who? or How?. This will give you some idea of the nature of the the post.

In the meantime - enjoy!