When playing video games there are many boundaries that we have to stick too, we are in a chosen environment for example a shopping mall or a school, sticking to chosen rules, creating areas for each players. When playing games, players have a selection of decisions to make before starting, for example whether they are playing in single of multiplayer, and whether you decide to purchase the newest Xbox or PlayStation and if you are going to take it on or offline.
When playing games, many of you are in the "zone" and it could take a long time for you to snap out of it. Tension grows as the game gets harder, and adrenaline always begins to rush. Gamers often use manuals or the internet for hints to complete their games quicker, an idea I have not really understood.
We then get the people that decide to cheat and ruin the whole target of the game, and sometimes ruin it for others also, usually for the pure fact that they have become bored. They can do this by either:
Friendly Fire: You will go around shooting people on their own team.
Hacking: They will usually go into other peoples account, and generally make the game a misery for that other poor person.
Keyboard Warriors: People that may also call them selves "trolls" and spend alot of time sending unpleasant messages to innocent players.
Because during gaming you have a certain amount of power that does not usually affect your outside life, alot of players will generally end up doing whatever they please.
Glitch Hunters are another type of gamer, who spend there time hunting round the game to find out various problems within the game and then going on to fix them.
"In video games, a glitch is a programming error which results in behavior not intended by the programmers. Glitches may include incorrectly displayed graphics, collision detection errors, game freezes/crashes, sound issues, and other issues. Some glitches are potentially dangerous to the game save data"- Wikipedia.
Emergant Game Play-"play strategies that have not been foreseen by the designers. Allowing the player character to scale sheer walls, proximity mine climbing brings with a realization of the arbitrariness of the game’s topological constraints and an understanding of the discontinuity of game space.” -p.119 - - Wallhacks and Aimbots, Kucklich in Space, Time, Play
I remember whilst playing my James Bond games, that there would be times where I would be able to jump through walls, and fall down escalators, which I'm pretty sure was not meant to happen during the game.
Intellectual Property"Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literaryand artistic works; discoveries, inventions, words, phrases, symbols and designs." - Wikipedia.
Universities are a typical information bank, copyright of course helps this. However Digital Culture has created alternatives.
Open source provides us, the public with free access so source codes, such as web pages and programs. We also have free rights for certain software. And when we type PHP on the web, you will find that people will give you back a better source code, all open source websites contain PHP codes.
Various examples of open source software:
Linux- A server that works on being reliable.
Apache- Makes servers work e.g. HTML.
PHP- Facebook.
"Source code and object code refer to the "before" and "after" versions of a computerprogram that is compiled (see compiler) before it is ready to run in a computer. The source code consists of the programming statements that are created by a programmer with a text editor or a visual programming tool and then saved in a file. For example, a programmer using the C language types in a desired sequence of C language statements using a text editor and then saves them as a named file. This file is said to contain the source code. It is now ready to be compiled with a C compiler and the resulting output, the compiled file, is often referred to as object code. The object code file contains a sequence of instructions that the processor can understand but that is difficult for a human to read or modify. For this reason and because even debugged programs often need some later enhancement, the source code is the most permanent form of the program."
Hacker Values- Computers enabling us to see how computers work.
Homebrew Club- “As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? One thing you do, is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?” - Bill Gates, 1976
Problems with software- Bug and viruses e.g. email spam and hacking.
We are all a majority of the time using open source movement, using sites such as Facebook, Google and of course Breo for University. I know for a fact that I enjoy using these sites the most, for the pure fact that its completely free to get any information I need. However one site I used to use was Firefox, it is continuesly growing over the years as I see, but Google Chrome and Internet Explorer are the main personal web servers peoples use.
Open Source technologies allow us to see and share imformation, helping to improve source codes, therefore creating cultural connections.
Open street maps - “Open Street Map is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.” - Open Street Map
Everyone in this world enjoys a good game, it's a well known way to relax and have fun, unwind from the day with friends.
But whats the difference when it comes to play open games, and video games. Well with normal games such as, Football, Rugby, Golf and Netball, you have space and freedom to move about and do what you want, however when it comes too video gaming you have that one area you must stay in, and you can only stick to the rules as told.
Game playing is of course a extremely social thing to do, and can set you up into different social groups, especially during school, say you played chess you would be seen as a "nerd but if you then moved on to play football you would of course be a "top lad". Gaming is an extremely integral part of our society, they are an expression of our identity and human nature.
Roger Caillois - Man, Play and Games looks at the sense of playfulness, playing and gaming is important to who we are and how we learn. Playing is an unstructured activity and games are defined by rules and experiences.
Gaming is a very good way to learn, you can learn morals and new skills through gaming.
However Video Gaming is not the first time people have played.
When archaeologists explore an ancient society they find all sorts of items, however finding games is a very good record when discovering how people and groups lived.
Its said that Dice were among the earliest of items used to "game", and was used throughout Asia even before recorded history." The oldest known examples being a 3000-year-old set unearthed at an archaeological site in southeastern Iran. Notable dice games have included Hazard, a game popular in Europe from the 14th through the 18th centuries, Chuck-a-luck, a related game also known as birdcage, Craps, which replaced Hazard in popularity during the 19th century, and Sic bo, a Far Eastern Chuck-a-luck variant which evolved into a popular casino game in the 20th century." - Wikipedia.
Now when I was younger I remember constantly sitting around playing board games, Monopoly, Snakes and ladders, the works. But what about the extinct board games? "Among the earliest board games discovered by archaeologists and historians are a number of games the exact rules of which have been forgotten, with rules sometimes being completely unknown today and sometimes being only partially understood, although in many cases proposed or theorised rulesets for these games have been offered by historians and board game manufacturers. Among the earliest examples of board games whose rules have been lost is senet, a game found in Predynastic and First Dynasty burial sites in Egypt (circa 3500 BCE and 3100 BCE, respectively) and inheiroglyphs dating to around 3100 BCE." - Wikipedia.
When I was younger, I was the typical gamer, apart from the fact my uncle had bought me every single James Bond game for PlayStation 2... I would also play Wii, and create families happily on Sims for hours on end, I also remember them incredibly creepy toys, Furby's which would like to talk to you for hours on end.
I find that gaming, in the long wrong, could actually make or change aspects of our personality, for example, girls when younger enjoy to play with dolls, and usually grow up to dress up and act girly, boys play video and well turn out like boys....
With such games as Grand Theft Auto, you are in a typical "gangster" culture, so games therefore, also allow people to be involved in cultures they only dream of (I hope).
Violent games such as Call Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto involves alot of engagement, most people get sucked into the games and forget about the outside world, spending hours on end completing surreal quests. But could this make you miss out on a lot of important things in the real world? Is gaming turning us all completely stupid by spending too much time online? Its apparent that gaming can improve the mind, but I guess that is dependent on what you are actually playing.
Different types of gaming may be:
Agon: Athletics (Boxing)
Ludus: Checkers, Fencing, Football, Chess
Alea: Counting out Rhymes
Ludus: Betting, Lotteries
Mimicry: Masks, Disguises
Ludus: Theater
Vertigo: Horse Riding, Helicopter
Ludus: Mountain Climbing, Skiing.
Overall, even though gaming could seem harmful too us, it continues to get proven not to be, they will constantly stay popular within our society for a very long time.
Think forward 50 years time, are you seeing a world of Robotics? Maybe even your best friend is a Robot? Your cleaner is a robot?
The root origin of the word "Robot" was "Slave" a device that can do the jobs we do not enjoy doing, but could this device get too the same intelligence level as us? A worry and theory that you may have seen in many "end of the world!" movies.
We can already interact with Artificial Intelligence online, using Xbox, Playstation or Wii we are welcome into a world where we can explore animated galaxy's fighting against or with Artificial Intelligence, online robots which almost learn from us to either help us out, or fight against us. Another point I would like to push onto, is since when did gaming become so masculine? I believe that girls were the Queens of designing made up games in the playground. Many games online and offline, are now designed for a much more masculine audience.
Another issue that could develop as robots develop is work running out for humans, robots have already taken jobs from humans, usually jobs that could be hazardous towards humans, but could it get worse? I am currently studying to hopefully one day become a Magazine Journalist, and I am starting to begin to think about whether it would be possible for machines to take over the story writing, would all news and articles end up being put online instead of in papers? A question that every worker now needs to take into consideration, seeing as Robots could be built to take our jobs, and do them better.
Robots in the beginning were science fiction, but as time goes on, and we as humans become more and more intelligent, the idea of robots living within and around us is deffinately becoming more realistic. Look at Drones for example, Wikipedia eplains it as being "powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload". Now who decides who takes control of this device? A very dangerous device in itself.
What happens when these robots go wrong? Theres the theory of Robots "Taking over the world!", now hopefully things won't get that dramatic, but i'm talking about Robots becoming such a key need for a lives in the future that we end up as couch potatoes with not a single thing we need to do ourselves anymore. Be honest, the human race is already becoming lazier by the day, hooked to mobile phones and computers, relying on cars to drive us places instead of walking, so do we really want to give up all our normal human behaviour?
In the video I have uploaded to my blog, we can already see the developement beginning over Robots with extremely human features. It is of course a very exciting idea, but should we worry? I think not for the moment, instead I believe I will enjoy the exciting idea of such a developement.
Whilst researching on Wikipedia I even found laws created for Robots, obviously for if a stage comes when Robots can actually understand the idea of laws. They say:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
A robot, which has been seen on such shows as Big Brother, is 8 foot, and after I watched this robot on TV, I would say is extremelly intelligent in the way it does thing. It communicates with humans by talking to them and carrys out human activities such as hoovering. I have found this amazing video of the friendly giant, Titan.
We can also see that these sort of 8ft robots seem to be coming into fashion, seen as funny and friendly creations.
So in years to come, will we see ourselves walking the streets with 8ft tall silver friends? I sort of hope so.
Surveillance: Is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting.
In our community today, we have constant devices at our reach, for example laptops and mobile phones, we see this as a good thing as we upload to our friends all the amazing things we are doing every moment of the day, but is it really a good idea when random people can read this as well? People we hardly know can now find out almost anything they would like to know about us. With websites such as Face book, people can now see where we currently study or work and even where we live.
But is this the greatest threat of surveillance? Not many people know, but when out in public they are having their every move watched, a majority of our popularity is completely oblivious of this, only knowing that we are being watched in certain places. This is of course good for catching criminals in robbery's and attacks, but what about our normal everyday privacy?
In the link below, we can see a young girl that got sacked for uploading comments about how she was bored at work. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7915049.stm
This just shows how much an impact social websites can have on your daily lifestyle just by writing the slightest wrong thing.
Another new, and slightly worrying add to Face book, is the option of allowing people to see your exact where abouts when you update your status, allowing everyone to know where you are at all times. A good idea if something terrible happens to you and people need to find out your whereabouts, a bad idea seeing that stalkers could be the reason behind you going missing.
Whilst scanning peoples opinions on whether they found surveillance fair or not, I found this page on Yahoo, http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070829181118AA7wtEk. Someone had quoted that video surveillance as "The eye witness that doesn't lie". On this page many people respected, but also pointed out CCTV is not good when it violates peoples private life.
In an article a found on line, which explains how all tweets are going to be handed over to the government for "Interesting information" and will be treated as "Historical documents" shows just how little privacy we are actually getting these days. The idea that the public posting about family issues or trips they will be taking are seeing as "historical documents" absolutely bewilders me. They comment at the end of the article saying "In the electrconic age, privacy is increasingly becoming a quaint concept of the past" which I find completely true, to keep something private these days is extremely hard no matter what lengths you go through, it seems that everyone around you knows everything about you. http://www.naturalnews.com/034356_tweets_surveillance_government.html
A second article I found totally discriminates the use of Cameras, explaining to us that cameras don't actually do the job they are meant to when it comes to catching criminals, saying that half the time you can't actually identify the faces on the screen, and calling the police "lazy" for not actually monitering them at all times. A part of it also explains a deliberate sign on crossing a privacy barrier by saying " Their inevitable misuse is another cost; police have spied on naked women in their own homes, shared nude images, sold best-of videos and even spied on national politicians." A obviously very worrying quote, which almost wants you to keep your curtains shut at all times just to get some sort of privacy for yourself. http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-25/opinion/schneier.security.cameras_1_cameras-cctv-footage-police-officer/2?_s=PM:OPINION
The video above is a very graphic and interesting video online of someones concept on what they think the streets will be like in the future if surveillance carrys on like it is now. Could this really be the future we are set for? Fun right?
Surveillance Society - Liberty's position on human rights and privacy
Databases - The government hold personal information thus, this raises questions about data security and how secure is your personal information?
State Surveillance - Highly intrusive state-sanctioned surveillance powers currently do not require judicial authorisation and increasingly large numbers of bodies have access to surveillance powers, including all local authorities.
National DNA Database - Over 5 million people have their DNA stored, many of whom have never been charged with, let alone convicted of any offence. It is the largest per capital DNA database in the world.
CCTV & ANPR - There is very little regulation of visual surveillance, even though there are CCTV cameras, automatic number plate recognition and technology which captures and store images is commonplace.
Criminal Record Checks - Vast numbers of employers have direct access to individual criminal records, including unsubstantiated allegations.
Whilst researching I also read up on a type of surveillance called "Disease Surveillance", this monitors disease within a community, it helps notice to patterns which happen through diseases. By doing this hopefully the spread of diseases will minimize.
During the SARS outbreak in early 2004, for example, the Beijing staff of the WHO produced updates every few days for the duration of the outbreak.[1] Beginning in January 2004, the WHO has produced similar updates for H5N1.[2] These results are widely reported and closely watched.
Technology and art is and carries on to change and constantly evolve other time, from cave painting, to the famous artist Van Gogh, and now onto animation. With programmes such as Photoshop and AutoCAD animation is now free for everyone to explore and create. I remember creating animation myself at college, I wasn't the best at it, but it proved to me that now anyone could become an artist at a very small price.
With the use of Kindles, Ipads, and Sony Readers forever growing, books are taking a downfall, proving that traditional media is constantly changing to suit the up rise in our society.
Max Bense (Stuttgart School, Informational aesthetics)-"any artefact as an object for aesthetic analysis and mathematical evaluation. The aesthetic object was a complex sign that functioned in a process of communication." http://dada.compart-bremen.de/node/800)
"Nam June Paik (July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist." - Wikipedia.
Nam June Paik used technology to manipulate what you usually see on a TV screen and created it is own. He would constantly invest in robots and media objects.
Pascal Dombis- (born 1965) is a digital artist who uses computers and algorithms to produce excessive repetition of simple processes. - Wikipedia.
A comment that Frank Popper makes about Pascal says :
“ “It is interesting to note that Dombis sees his interactive computational methodology as a kind of arte povera within new technology. Certainly, Dombis uses the computer for its original and primitive essence: a powerful computational tool that can reproduce simple calculation incessantly. But because Dombis writes his own algorithms and programs, he can control his germinating art work. It helps him too in his creative process by exploring other computer language techniques and making programming mistakes that turn out to be new explorations in his geometric hyperstructures”. - Wikipedia.
Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabonowitz took a deep interest in satellite arts in 1977.
Orlan looked into using the body as an art form, this was seen as cosmetic art, and begins to question the idea of beauty. http://www.orlan.net/
As technology allows us to open our imaginations more and more, and create things that are completely surreal to the real world, items continue to expand. In Japan they have realized the growth and the amount of time people use on their mobile phones, therefore as books are clearly becoming a thing of the past, they have begun sending novels to mobile phones, obviously a lot shorter than the normal novel. The novels are delivered in tiny chunks. This is deffinately making good use of the new technology of today.
http://youtu.be/TGxDvMzY_2M <- The following video explains the story.
Hypertext is of course the idea of linking us to information and choices. Hypertext stories online have choices, and are often thought to not have an ending. We are the ones in control of what happens throughout. However I would much rather have a Beginning, Middle and End. When reading linear, you often concentrate a lot more, however I find that when reading information on the Net, I seem to scan the information and don't take it in as much. Hypertext culture is characterized by personal choise, we decide what happens and how things end.
With the internet, we are enabled to look at text in many different ways, authors with such websites online can produce and experiment with their text, often making it alot more interesting and eye catching.
Theoretical discussions focus on reading with no end. Hypertext deffinately gives the reader more power, allowing them to make all the decisions.
However with so much to choose from these days, digitalism and technology means that artists now produce things with meaning, whilst writers usually write about their experiences. Producing things with meaning usually means that into the idea of intellectuals a philosophical ideas.
Overall Digital Aesthetics are already a deep part of everyone's culture, and will continue to be questioned.
Inetellectual Property allows people to own the work that they have created, for example, Brand, invention and design can all be legally owned, of course the owner is granted certain rights. Intellectual Property actually goes back as far as 1867 with the founding of the North German Confederation, who allowed legal power over the protection of Intellectual Property. The rights that come with Intellectual Property allow owners to certain rights and allow you to claim ownership and protection over your own creation.
Copyright is promotion of learning education and arts. "Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
With copyright you basically have the right to prevent others from creating copies of your own work. However in such countries as the USA you can give your rights to someone else, for example say your a singer you may want to give your rights to the producer so he can duplicate your music and sell copies and finally give you some percentage of the finances afterwards. However usually you will find that copyright expires, therefore anyone can use it without expenses.
Various moral justifications for private property can also be used to argue in favor of the morality of intellectual property, such as: Natural Rights/Justice Argument: this argument is based on Locke’s idea that a person has a natural right over the labour and/or products which is produced by his/her body. Appropriating these products is viewed as unjust. Although Locke had never explicitly stated that natural right applied to products of the mind,[23] it is possible to apply his argument to intellectual property rights, in which it would be unjust for people to misuse another's ideas.[24]
Utilitarian-Pragmatic Argument: according to this rationale, a society that protects private property is more effective and prosperous than societies that do not. Innovation and invention in 19th century America has been said to be attributed to the development of the patent system.[25] By providing innovators with "durable and tangible return on their investment of time, labor, and other resources", intellectual property rights seek to maximize social utility.[26] The presumption is that they promote public welfare by encouraging the "creation, production, and distribution of intellectual works".[27]
"Personality" Argument: this argument is based on a quote from Hegel: "Every man has the right to turn his will upon a thing or make the thing an object of his will, that is to say, to set aside the mere thing and recreate it as his own".[28] European intellectual property law is shaped by this notion that ideas are an "extension of oneself and of one’s personality"
But lets not get theft mixed up with copyright, if copyright was anything like theft would it not be dealt with properly like theft by the law? Therefore copyright would never exist as much as it does today. I can guarantee that if you put a group of people in the room who are regularly using their computers, almost all of them would admit do downloading music illegally.
Tim Berners-Lee who created the World Wide Web and also made it free, when it became free the web grew and become a lot more popular. It was free for people to share and enjoy.
A video that you often see at the start of DVD's or in cinemas, works in an effective way too hopefully stop piracy and people filming movies in the cinema. It also gives messages out that should shock the audience watching, trying to explain that piracy is just as bad as another other criminal activity.
http://youtu.be/R2S70Wl80Zc
I begin to wonder, if in the future there will ever be such things as CD's and DVD's, you can easily watch films for free on the Internet and download music illegally.
A story I found online explains that you could find yourself in jail for 10 years for illegal downloading.
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