Losing a Husband to WOW

Last week as a finished the last couple chapters in Julian Dibbles ,Play Money, one comment he wrote really stuck with me. As he briefly commented on the collapse of his marriage, he causally said the main reason for this separation was not because of his business in UO but for a variety of other reasons. I find this hard to believe, that after a year of him obsessing over a multi-player computer game that it couldn’t have had some effect on his marriage in the long run. I was also shocked to see how in “Second Skin” the term “World of Warcraft widow” was used to describe someone whose husband had essentially abandoned them for thousands of wizards and fictional creatures online. How could these women be ok with this, was my first question. How could they let their husbands or significant other, spend hundreds of hours online socializing with their virtual friends instead of spending that quality time with them? I know that when your in a relationship with someone there is always compromise involved with letting the other person do what they love but where do you draw the line? Also isn’t this one of the main indicators of someone who has an addiction, when they start to lose everything they care about in their lives. You see this all the time with alcoholics and people with substance abuse issues. One man in “Second Skin” makes the bold statement that he tried to hide his gaming from his current fiancée because he was worried about how she would react. Isn’t that making the situation worse. If she were to turn around today and lash out of him because of his excess time spent with his virtual friends then I feel he really would have no right to retaliate because he wasn’t up front with her to begin with. This term “World of Warcraft widow” is probably used to a certain extent in a humorous degree but in the end I feel it should be used to describe a much sadder reality for these people. It shows how even the gamers who do have meaningful relationships in real life are abandoning them for an online world. They are cutting off the contact with the “real world” and in essence leaving it behind for their new virtual one.

A New Type of Community

            Through out my childhood I was continuously surrounded by video games. Either from a commercial on television boasting the greatest next thing to my brother sitting in front of the computer for hours playing the new madden or hot new multiplayer game out at that time. I dabbled here and there trying some of the new games out and I have to admit I was quite taken by the Sims. But sooner or later with out fail, I would get bored and leave the disk to gather dust on top of our computer table. I would always wonder to myself when looking at my brother or fellow classmates, how could someone sit there for hours engrossed in a game that essentially, in my ten-year-old eyes, had no purpose. Reading Play Money by Julian Dibbell, all these questions came surfacing yet again. Reading pages after pages of someone entranced in a video game in a way opened my eyes to the virtual world that thousands of people live in every day. I can see the relationship that Dibbell was forming with other avatars online and how essentially that was becoming part of his life. How could you not consider someone you talk to for hours a day not part of your life. From reading Play Money I believe multiplayer games have a different sort of pull on people than say the normal sports game or single player games. These new found communities like Ultima Online and Everquest have thriving economies and complex interpersonal relationships. One quote that stood out to me from Dibbell writing states.

“There were strong, compelling pleasures to be found in wanting a thing you couldn’t have, especially a thing as lovely as a “fusion with fiction, a true Dreaming.”(Dibbell,150) These people playing Ultima Online are merely dreamers who are looking to escape into a fantasy land and maybe get away from their old lives for just a bit, but the question remains when does fantasy fuse with reality? People spend so much of their lives all encompassed with these games. Where do you draw the line and say enough and log off the computer after 15 hours of slaying dragons. So from all this self-contemplation and reading of Play Money I still have not drawn conclusion yet about these online communities. I feel unless you truly commit yourself to joining, then you will never know. They are places where you must experience it first hand in order to pass any judgment or criticism.

Project 2 Draft

In The Master Switch Wu tells a cautionary tale about a potential future of society. He deals mainly with the corporate America side to the future, showing how with huge mega-corporations in control, could lead to the potential downfall of our basic human rights. Gibson in Neuromancer tells a little different of a tale. Neuromancer shows us a world where many of our rights are taken away but not in the same way. Neuromancer is a scary depiction of what our future may become. From simstim implants to cyberspace this shows us the fate to which we all may come to one day. However startling both futures may be Wu seems to be onto something. Looking around at Richmond’s campus today you can see his vision coming true everywhere. From block flash player on my iphone to the censored Internet on campus we can see the cycle prevalent so many places we look. However different these two ideas about the future of our society may be they also tie in together almost perfectly. They both deal with the dependence that a society has or will have on the Internet or “cyberspace.” Gibson shows us more how we can be affected from it and Wu is more with the effects of who has the power to control that medium which we are so dependent on.

One of Wu’s stronger points through out The Master Switch was that with the new medium of the internet the power behind it is too great to be placed in the hands of one major company or even several company’s and the larger corporations get a handle on the information outlet then in the end they will censor towards their best interest. As evident at the very end of The Master Switch the Internet is much too powerful of a device. “This time is different: with everything on one network, the potential power to control is so much greater.” (Wu,pg 318) 

This wary prediction, that once someone get control of the Internet the control over our society will be unimaginable is a fair assumption.

When looking at opinions and beliefs about the future this fear is up there as the scariest. The short story When "Sysadimns Ruled the Earth" by Cory Doctorow is another fictional representation of what will happen if we place so much power in the hands of one device, the Internet.

“We are in charge of the most important organizational and governmental tool the world has ever seen.” (pg 22  When sysadimins ruled the earth)

While this is only a fictional story about a small group of people who after a nuclear attack strive to keep the Internet alive, its still holds some importance and we can look to this story as well as a foreshadowing of what happens when we put so much into one thing. In the story it also explains as well how the “bad” guys in the story organized and pulled together in order to destroy the world. The quote above is exactly what Wu is talking about and what he fears. He fears that since the Internet and the network is becoming so powerful and such a controlling force that if the power to control it gets in the hands of the wrong people then it could be detrimental to the world. The Internet, which is a place where all your media can go, is a fountain of information and of power.

“The Internet by 2010 had become a fledgling universal network for all types of data: phone calls, video and television, data, a potential replacement for every single information industry of the twentieth century.” (Wu, 256) In this passage for the most part Wu was merely trying to suggest how the Internet had become to this day, however if you think about Wu is foreshadowing a scary but yet exciting future as well. A future where every piece of intellectual property can be found on one medium and which would be in essence, the center of many peoples lives. 

Imagine all of time people could save going to one place for pretty much everything. You can already see this happening with schools who are switching their teaching methods to involve students with their own laptops which have all of their textbooks uploaded directly to it. In many ways the world is already evolving the way Wu predicted it. Practically all of my friends have some version of a smart phone where we have not only texting and calling but internet, email, games and much, much more. The scary thing is what happens when this fails or service goes out? Would our society be able to continue on with out the Internet?

In Neuromancer we see through out the book Case’s punishment in the beginning and reward in the end is essentially access to the brain-computer interface to access the global computer network. In the quote from Neuromancer it is referencing the loss of the access to Cyperspace.

“For Case, who lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the fall…The body was meat.” (Gibson, 6)

This passage indicates that you aren’t anything with out the connection to cyberspace and that source of information, you just “meat.” What a scary though that you couldn’t be anything with out the Internet, that you had no substance. This also can be considered an extreme case even in Neuromancer because Case was a cowboy who devoted a majority of his life towards cyberspace. I’m sure that if you go out into society today you could find people who, if you took away the Internet than their whole identity would be stripped from them but that’s not really the point. The point is that if society gets to the where people could take away that access by damaging your physical being we’ve sunk to a new low. This ties in with Wu’s fear about the major corporations gaining control of the information outlets than they might have the power to take away that outlet for their own personal gain. You can see this today through Chinas privacy and Internet laws. While they’re not damaging their citizens physical being to keep them off the Internet I’m going to speculate to say that who know what would happen to those people if we had a system from Neuromancer. Would the Chinese government go as far as permanently damaging their citizen’s minds in order to keep them out of Cyperspace? Well never know but the future that Wu predicts shows how in many cases the power hungry mega empires will not stop at anything in order to get ahead of the competition and keep their revenues high. For the most part these huge corporations don’t even care about the betterment of society and promotion the development of future inventions. When Steve Case, CEO and president of AOL was asked if would do anything differently regarding the merger between AOL and Time Warner his thoughts were. “Case has a different vision in hindsight: “I would have bought Google.” (Wu, 268) Case doesn’t go through the process and think to himself I really should have come up with a product which was as revolutionary as Google. No he simple wanted to shut the process down. 

This behavior is a startling vision of what’s to come in our future. A future where copyrights are abundant and Mega corporations control the airwaves. With the way the Internet is headed this is a very probable assumption for he future. Just looking at Apples products which have almost a cult following and yet we see their company closing their products off more and more to the public. However I feel if we take some action and the general public speaks out and will not stand for this then something can be done. We need to keep the Internet a free and open medium where many people’s creative juices flow naturally.  And while having all of your information on one super network as we’ve seen in Gibson tale of the future that isn’t always necessarily a good thing. We need to make sure were careful as to how dependent we get on the Internet because one day we could wake up and our minds are messed up permanently in order to keep us from accessing information out there. Gibson and Wu are very much related in this aspect because both show how unless we change something soon if we don’t break this dependency then this is what the future holds. A future of censoring and restrictions, the type of future which is terrifies me to this day.  

                                                                   Work Cited:

Wu, Tim. The Master Switch: the Rise and Fall of Information Empires. London: Atlantic, 2010. Print.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 2004. Print.

A New Kind of Addiction

        

           On a normal day in my life I’ll wake up, usually get dressed, turn my computer on, wash my face, and then log onto Facebook. Facebook has become something that is now integrated into my life, like texting and talking on the phone. It is a medium where I can communicate with people, who I’m not necessarily good enough friends with that I have their phone number. Or simple it’s somewhere I can send a message to an old friend that’s not urgent enough to get answered right away via text message but still has some value. On Saturday the 5^th of February I began tracking my use of this new and ever addictive portal. This is a brief break down of my day. At 11 I got up and went to breakfast, then headed off to the library. For about 4 hours, I sat there in B1 committed to doing various assignments that had piled up through out the week. As I leafed through Neuromancer, I casually checked Facebook. I had a strict system, read 10 pages and then take a short break. This short break usually if not always consisted of me going on Facebook. It’s clearly amazing how much can change in ten pages. After leaving the library Facebook which iis always opened on a tab on my computer, is constantly refreshed as I go about various chores I need to do and don’t worry because if I’m not in my room chances are my friends are down the hall on their Facebook too. Before I go out and leave for the night I spend about 40 minutes actually sitting down and responding to comments and messages left to me through out the day or the previous day I haven’t gotten around to. When I come back for the night I check Facebook really quick, just before I go to bed. 

As you can see this Facebook habit of mine has gotten a little out of control. However I do think there are some major pluses. With Facebook you get to correspond with people you wouldn’t normally talk to. You also get to share your experiences via pictures and status updates to keep others apprised of your life. I feel that Facebook gives us everything we need in terms of communication and media at this moment in time. We haven’t created a “consensual hallucination” as seen in Neuromancer, because at this point in our lives and in society it isn’t necessary and if anything it’s a little unnecessary. One of the main points of Facebook is that it helps you connect with people you wouldn’t normally call on the phone or text. You have hundreds of “friends” but more than likely not all of those people are actually your close personal friends you would chat with for hours. The “Consensual hallucination” seems so much personally than even a phone call, that you would only want to go through that experience with someone you were very close with. Society at this point has created the devices already where if you want to be in close contact you can be, but if you want to talk to 50 of your closest acquaintances that’s a possibility as well. 

What Have We Become?

            Global warming, an issue that to this day is on forefront of many government official’s and citizens minds. Many have heard the common concept of keeping the planet clean in order to provide a better tomorrow for our children and grandchildren. At the rate were going this seems highly unlikely if not greatly improbable. With clean air alerts in china and huge amounts of people running around with masks covering their faces to try and keep healthy, this shows how for the most part were not moving in a positive direction.. When reading Neuromancer by William Gibson, this scary foreshadow of the future kept bringing to light the shape that the planet had become I couldn’t help but realize the parallels to the world, which we live in today.

“the air had gotten worse; it seemed to have teeth tonight, and half the crowd wore filtration masks.” (pg 15)

      In the quote above it shocked me to see the similarity of today’s society. There were many times in my childhood when I was listening to the radio or watching television and the newscasters said we were on high alert for the quality of air. Global warming and the breaking down of our planet is a problem weighing heavy on many peoples minds. Gibson in Neuromancer was writing a cautionary tale of what he didn’t want the world to become how scary it is to see that in many ways it already has. While some aspects in the book may be a bit of an exaggeration

“Then a mist closed over the black water and the drifting shoals of waste.” (pg 44)

Our water hasn’t necessarily come to this, but everyday when we do nothing we are getting closer and closer to Gibson’s fictional story. We should have taken this and tried to learn from it, not only from a social aspect but also from an environmental stand point as well. If in the 80’s when the book was released, the whole world stood up and took notice, then who knows the effect it could have had on the planet today. All I know is that many people read Gibson’s book and instead of looking at the many negatives that could be derived from the text, such as the black water and harsh air, instead they looked to the high tech machinery and an easier way of life. If anything we need to take Gibson’s advice now and start reversing the damage created to the planet so that one day we don’t wake up and we really are living in Neuromancer.

Land of the Free

       Land of the free, this is the motto that most Americans live by. Many of us have heard it in elementary school, in presidential addresses and scattered through out common day life. So what happens if this wonderful land of the free turns into land of the copyrighted and censorship? This idea thoroughly scares me. When reading the The Master Switch by Tim Wu and “Open Code and Open Societies” by Lawrence Lessig this idea of controlling content on the Internet kept popping up. Instances of companies trying to control the flow of information to turn a profit litter the Internet highway. Before reading these two documents it hardly crossed my mind what information I was receiving on the Internet. I would download music when available, sometimes illegal and sometimes not, and when a site wouldn’t load or the every common statement “Flash not supported” appeared on my iphone I would strike it up to technological error and continue on with my day. Since being informed im personally scared for the future and what it will bring. The emphasis that companies put on content is astonishing. Companies are so afraid of losing control over their prized content that they are losing the very core of what the internet is, to share ideas through a medium which is open to the whole world. If this medium starts to close than can we really be called the land of the free? Especially when the government is putting more and more restrictions on the distribution of content throughout the Internet. One Instance in Lessing’s article which really shocked me was how when the Canadian company iCraveTV wanted to distribute television through the Internet to Canadians.  However, when a few Americans tapped in and reached it too, it was apparently against the law because of the copyright rules in the U.S. What a contradiction to our founding principles, that Canada somehow has freedom of content and freedom of the internet to an extent and yet in the U.S the copyright laws are becoming so constraining and so limiting that we are seeing out freedoms slowly and slowly slipping away.

We're Going to Save the World

          

                  Consumer desire, it’s something that can be seen many times when you watch television or open a magazine. The glossy ads calling to many, trying to draw them in and hook them on the next great invention. Many times when a new innovation comes into play, it transforms not only our daily routine, but essentially it alters what we except out of a device. Tim Wu’s book The Master Switch is all about communication and how these inventions are incorporated into society. In many cases these new inventions change not only our outlook, but in the end this can eventually change most peoples perception of what they desire out of a technology. One of the most interesting claims, which Wu brings to the table, is how new inventions involving communication can many times bring a new hope and a new way of thinking to the world. For Wu It’s the ever present idea that the newest invention is finally the one to cure all of society’s problems and make a whole new society.  This is also the start of the Cycle, which reappears again and again. Its interesting to see that in some cases the cycle brings about not only the hope of the new technology but it also, for some people, alters their overall material desires in life, letting many dream of devices that weren’t even a spot on their screen in past years.

” Better communication it is believed, lead to better mutual understanding, perhaps a recognition of a shared humanity, and the avoidance of needless disaster. Perhaps it is for this reason that the advent of every new technology of communication always brings with it a hope for ameliorating all the ills of society.” (Pg 36 The Master Switch)

            In the passage above, Wu begins his claim with the idea that every new innovation in the communication field comes with it hope and developments, which will, many people believe in most cases change society for the better. Through out the Master Switch, we see this with the radio and television.  These two mediums in many ways changed the way we interact with each other and how we find out world news today. For some people they allow for better communication and better forms of entertainment. It is also interesting to note that they are all essentially catalysts for one another. If you look closer at the Cycle you can see how each new invention, which was said to be the savior to communication, is in the end tossed aside as old media and then built upon. Just like with Cable it built upon the already withstanding structure of television.

“For the first time since its invention in 1926, television was suddenly a wide-open medium, with all sorts of notions of what it was meant to be and do.” (The Master Switch, pg 211)

                        For the most part each new invention is better than the last, or that should be their goal, and then all we have to do is wait around for the next great invention to come along. For many seeing these new “great” inventions allow us to dream a little more and see that many thing are possible beyond are wildest imaginations.

             Personally I have seen this occur many times within my life, with myself and with the people surrounding me. Many people purchase the best new thing only to be entertained for a few weeks and then look to the what else they could possible buy to make their lives better. Most major corporations applaud this way of thinking. With out this constant need to update and improve our lives based on technology many of these companies would be out of business. There has to be some reason for invention.

“They have to be inclined to invest time and money” (The Master Switch, pg 221)

                  Just look to Apple, with out people wanting to update and replace their old Ipods and computers than a huge chunk of their revenue would be removed. In my experience the people purchasing the ipod and Mac book already own an earlier version and they just want the next best thing, or to say they how it. This ties in with Tim Wu’s idea perfectly. He said that with the advent of new technology brings with it the hope of a better society and in essence getting rid of the communication barriers and inconveniences out of life. For many the new ipod or new, better cell phone does just that. I know when I purchase a new ipod or a new technology, the reason I’m doing so is because in some way or another I have it in my mind that the features will be better and it in some way I will get rid of some of the kinks noticeable in the last one. Other wise why purchase or update something? Why spend your hard earn money on something unless you are getting something more out of it? With cable and several of the new inventions prevalent in The Master Switch, many chose to purchase it because of the promise of a better quality of entertainment, or else why change from standard antenna television.

 “Cable, they believed might well prove more revolutionary than the printing press. with the capacity in theory to bring an unlimited number of channels of information into the home, it had the potential to heal American politics, revive local communities, and offer American direct access to the world’s knowledge and wisdom: a communication center of a breadth and flexibility to influence every aspect of private and community life.” (pg 176 The Master Switch)

New Technology usually promises something more and with it there's the hope of a better device and then in return, a better easier way of life. Wu’s concept of a better society through the improvement of communication shows us the start to the cycle. It show us how one of the only reasons to try to improve and try to become more innovative is to make your life better.