Category: Alison Hydrick

Earlier in the week I proposed a question asking if there will ever be restrictions regarding virtual worlds since so many people are becoming addicted to them.  Following the class lecture today I am almost sure that restrictions on these games will never be created because, like so much else in our society, it’s about the money.

Why would people in China stop their gaming workshops?  They are creating products that aren’t real and in return, they are getting real money.  Furthermore, they are getting more money for their services in China than someone in America, doing the exact same thing, would receive.  Furthermore, if virtual money in some of these worlds is worth more than the money in some of the world’s more prominent countries, then no one would shut down this type of organization.  (This also says something about how pathetic some of the economies are, if virtual money is worth more.)

However, there is a big difference between what normally happens and what should happen.  If these virtual worlds are destroying relationships, causing people to become more violent, adding to weight problems and hindering people from doing well in their jobs or schools, then a change needs to be made.  No matter what the monetary rewards, if an activity is damaging emotionally, intellectually or physically it should be stopped-not monitored or cut back-but stopped.

While this could possibly be comparing apples and oranges, take other things which have regulations, like drugs.  These substances hinder people emotionally, intellectually and physically and they are therefore removed (as much as possible) from society.  The drug market has a huge, and profitable economy, and it was still regulated.  Thus emerges the question: Can something that technically isn’t real be regulated?  Would the government spend its time creating rules and regulations for something non-tangible?

We’ve heard so much about the progression of virtual worlds and people becoming so addicted to them that they quit their jobs and spend all their waking hours in these worlds.  We even learned about how Korea has rehabilitation camps for these things.  Will there ever be restrictions in virtual worlds?

For my research project, I studied cyber-churches.  In these websites people practice their religion in a virtual world, specifically a virtual church.  Since churches have already entered the virtual world, what’s next?  Will people be able to get legit college degrees from virtual colleges? Will their professors be avatars?  Virtual doctors for diagnostics? Virtual lawyers?

One of the articles stressed the importance of knowing how to use virtual realities.  Since these mediums are growing and gaining popularity, will this information be taught in schools one day?

(Coming from the perspective of one with very little personal gaming experience)

1.) Several years ago, news of child armies were reaching our headline.  We learned how armies were desensitizing children to violence and death in order to make them good child soldiers. The United States was in an uproar about this.  Is desensitizing children to violence and death in a virtual environment any different (except for the obvious fact that people aren’t dying in the process)?

2.) I recently saw a report on the news discussing how the educational performance of a child correlates to how much gaming they do.  ie-more gaming=worse grades. (This study was for younger children.)  So, if the Japanese have more games being released in their society will we see a shift in the educational status of young Japanese students?

3.) Since video games are becoming more popular than movies, one can’t help but speculate the future of interactive media as a whole.  Ads are now being released on videogames.  Is a “Minority Report” future really that outlandish?

In relation to SNS, people created different online personas for themselves depending on the people who will be viewing their profile.  Will this “online alteration” spread to the government and it’s idea of transparency?  If so, will the transparency of the government be truly transparent or just well created manipulations of the truth?

Most people can agree social protocol for relationships between students and teachers online needs to be created.  What would this protocol entail?  Should student-teacher relationships be more casual online than they are in person?  What does this say about how the Internet is challenging traditional authority roles?

On privacy, will privacy concerns fade as younger generations grow up?  In my experience it’s my parents and grandmother who are more concerned with privacy online than my brother or myself.  Since younger generations have grown up with the Internet, how will concerns in relation to privacy change?  Do younger generations really care about privacy?

While I have no doubt that citizen journalism with eventually have an impact of democracy, (and could argue that it’s already starting it) the question to comes to mind is one of reliability.  For political issues, many people turn to “professional” sources.  How will people begin to sift through the rumors and the truth in citizen journalism in relation to political matters?  Will there be a ton of conspiracy theories floating around, or will reports remain accurate?

Citizen journalists are typically those with access to technology, however, a significant portion of the United States are not in the financial position to have access to this technology.  Would the rise in citizen journalism cause a severe bias in agenda setting as the agenda would be set by those in better financial situations?  Would only having voices of certain socioeconomic statuses cause a slant in reporting?

Is it still technically citizen journalists if there are professional editors sifting through articles choosing what is posted or where things are posted?  Does this not opent the door to the problems with professional journalism that were the catalysts for citizen journalism to start with?

While people currently turn to major news sources for big events, (September 11, elections, etc.) will people turn to random citizen journalists for the same information?  IF professional journalism declines and citizen journalists fail to form “professional” organizations how will society respond to getting news from “average joes”?

If citizen journalists fail to form organizations and professional journalism continues to decline I think society will respond well to receiving their news from average citizens.  Take the London tube bombings for example, the masses had no problem seeing the video a citizen took on their cell phone and viewing this raw footage as hard news.  However, I think news as we know it will change a great deal if only average citizens do the reporting.  There will probably be far fewer lengthy, textual articles and more pictures and videos.  Furthermore, the quality of the images, video and writing will go down because average citizens can’t afford top quality equipement like professional organizations can.  I don’t think the masses will take this decline in quality badly.  On the contrary, I think the masses will view footage and picture of lower quality in higher esteem than the professional media because these images will obviously reveal truth, and there will be no questions of someone editing images or video to change meaning.

Community activities were reported as the largest area of uploading activity in relation to citizen journalism.  While all forms of news are struggling, what about the hyper niche markets?  If journalism transitioned to hyper niche topics could the financial situation facing news outlets change?  Would people pay for hyper niche topics since this is a fairly untouched sector of the journalism industry?

I used to work for a small town, weekly paper, and this publication is not declining like other larger news publications.  On the contrary, it’s thriving.  This paper is doing so well because it is the only place to get hyper local news.  People do pay for this old-fashioned paper, and I think of newspapers separated into different publications of hyper-niche news people would pay for this information as well.  If larger papers like the Charlotte Observer split up their paper into different publications, like an arts and entertainment publication, a financial publication and a news publication and focused everything in these publication on things relating to Charlotte people might be willing to pay for it.  Hyper-local publications aren’t just for small towns, but in larger towns like Charlotte people might not be willing to pay for all the news currently presented in the Observer.  Chopping up the paper, localizing it and selling it in separate sections might just work.

In the Overview section of the reading, the online economics survey section discussed how online advertising is struggling because people fail to even notice the advertisements online.  Banner blindness is now a common trend in the online community.  How can online advertising change to be more effective?  What are some other ideas?  It seems as though all advertisers try to advertise the same way online, but this isn’t working and not many solutions are being discussed.

This issue is one plaguing online advertisers, and they have started down the track to finding solutions.  Online advertisements are starting to resemble advertisements on radio and television.  Youtube, Hulu and Pandora now have advertisements mixed in with their content.  It’s possible that a great majority of websites will soon make people site through short video or audio commercials before they can continue surfing the net.  We do know that putting textual advertisement on webpages doesn’t work because people don’t even see them.  Video and audio advertisements might be the solution.  If a video ad pops up on the screen and doesn’t have an exit button, there is nothing the user can do but sit through it.  This method of advertising would be extremely annoying, but it would get attention.  Furthermore, the ads could be very personalized to the user based on their online buying and search habits.

While people currently turn to major news sources for big events, (September 11, elections, etc.) will people turn to random citizen journalists for the same information?  IF professional journalism declines and citizen journalists fail to form “professional” organizations how will society respond to getting news from “average joes”?

Community activities were reported as the largest area of uploading activity in relation to citizen journalism.  While all forms of news are struggling, what about the hyper niche markets?  If journalism transitioned to hyper niche topics could the financial situation facing news outlets change?  Would people pay for hyper niche topics since this is a fairly untouched sector of the journalism industry?

In the Overview section of the reading, the online economics survey section discussed how online advertising is struggling because people fail to even notice the advertisements online.  Banner blindness is now a common trend in the online community.  How can online advertising change to be more effective?  What are some other ideas?  It seems as though all advertisers try to advertise the same way online, but this isn’t working and not many solutions are being discussed.