Category: Hayley Miller


Archive for the ‘Hayley Miller’ Category

Nov 10 2010

Week 11 Responses

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1. On Monday’s class we were shown a graph that demonstrated how video games were receiving more profit in the market than movies were beginning around 2006 and 2007. We also learned that 67% of all Americans play video games. My question relates to why this is so. Why are video games becoming one of the top markets today and why video games over movies? Well, I believe it has something to do with the fact that the users have control when exposed to the video game interface. They are able to manipulate and move objects, including avatars, around to do things that they normally wouldn’t be able to do in real life. Also, video games can be played on numerous monitors and interfaces including computers, hand-helds, arcade machine, iPhone, iPad, and TV, etc. This gives users a variety of options to choose from that suits both interest and convenience. Not to mention, video games do a wide array of cross-promotions with other industries (including the movies), and are able to produce advergames that bring in a lot of revenue. Video games can also be used for numerous reasons, including psychological vicarious, entertainment reasons, as well as educational, even advocacy, reasons. Therefore, the video game industry offers a wide array of options to the population to supply their interest, as well as opens up opportunities for them to play on a variety of different modes at their convenience. Although other industries may be attempting to do the same thing, such as streaming movies from your computer via Netflix, so on and so forth, it is more difficult for other industries to keep up.

2. In Professor Schells DICE address, he discusses this notion of media divergence, rather than media convergence that we’ve all heard about and previously discussed. This notion was rather a new one for me, but thinking along these lines, media divergence makes just as much sense as media divergence. I say this with hesitation after reading Ian Bogost’s response to Schell’s speech on Gamasutra. This response makes me mroe skepticle of Professor Schell’s arguments and theories. However, I do suppose its possible for both of them to exist as technologies evolutionize over time. While some conglomerate, others emerge and specialize in detail, and then converge again, and so on. I believe it varies on the company and the market that they are trying to get in on. Some companies, like Apple, can do both. They created the iPhone which represents media convergence at its finest, but they also specialize in computers. They keep building newer, more specialized versions of computers, especially laptops (such as the new MacBook Air) which opens up their markets to even more customers. It all depends upon the platform. In regards to the video game platform, there are multiple technological devices that can be utilized for gaming purposes, and therefore can be thought of as a single marketing device, such as specifically for a Playstation console, or it can be released to play on both a mobile device via an App and the computer.

3. As video games become more and more dispersed and involved in American daily lives, it is not a surprise that the US military would create the VAE project in hopes of interesting disconnected youth to join the military. I am unsure of the intensity of the morality issues involved with this project. However, I do know that dehumanizing war is wrong. With this said, it happens in everyday entertainment, including movies and TV, and not just through video games. After viewing the video today and reading the article, I realized that the military is just trying to reach out to a different demographic through the use of these games because they, too, realize the resonating effect it has on many Americans. Whether or not it actually persuades them to join the army is difficult to tell because many of the people who go to these areas and play these games are  probably already familiar with the army and have some interest in joining the cause. I do not blame the US military for implementing this new type of entertainment as a potential recruiting technique. Actually, it is very similar to the ways in which the military attempted to use movies when they were first invented to gather support for World War I and World War II. Many soldiers were fired up after viewing some of the war footage and propaganda back in the 1930s and 1940s so much so that they were glad to go overseas and fight. This time they are using video games instead of movies. The interactive interface is what is really causing such an overwhelming protest due to its realistic capabilities. Although many may be upset by this use of persuasion via vicarious entertainment, I don’t blame the military for utilizing the project in support of their cause. After all, it does make sense. If it works, then people are gonna try it. In regards to governmental outlets eventually trying something similar involving an interactive gaming interface, I don’t doubt it will happen sometime in the future.

Nov 07 2010

Framing Questions Week 11

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1. Recently we talked in one of our classes about how video games are more popular than movies today. My question relates to this notion. Why are video games beginning to topple over movies? Is it solely because of its interactive foundation or does it have a stronger vicarious nature that is supplied by the interactive narratives? Also, how is this fact affecting both industries?

2. In the movie clip, Professor Schell discusses how media technology actually diverges, instead of converges. He states that it’s like the galapagos island species, and that it really continues to adapt, grow, and specialize (for example, the Flip video gadget). Is this true and how does it affect technology companies? Also, he discusses how Facebook has adapted interactive games and features into their site in order to gain more revenue through online purchasing in the virutal world. With this being said, could this be a possibility of a future trend in online businesses?

3. In regards to the Huntemann and Payne piece, involving interactive video games that allow you to live vicariously through the characters, is it right for the military and for corporations to dehumanize violent experiences such as war to gain support? Also, is it a subtle type of drafting technique? Specifically regarding the VAE project, is it right for them to use this interactive feature to interest and motivate teenagers to join the army? Is it possible that  other outlets, including the government and major corporations, will attempt to gain support and attention via similar interactive platforms and subtle messaging?

Nov 03 2010

Week 10 Responses

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1. I do believe that attitudes and and personality would affect users motivations and behaviors to change their Facebook privacy settings. In my research, two personalities popped up a lot, introvert type personalities and extrovert type personalities, and were tested amongst several different factors. Although in my reading, privacy use did not come up specifically in regards to these two different personality traits and their different behaviors, but I would guess from reading similar material that introverts would be more likely to guard their information considering it has been found that they include more of their basic information on their social networking site than does an extrovert. Most extroverts, also, have been found to broadcast more to their friends and be more open to public forums, and therefore, I feel would have less of an issue with the privacy and security of their site.

2. I do feel that educators should be open to social networking site. I do not, however, feel that they should replace Blackboard because Blackboard is specifically meant for educational reasons, whereas social networking is used for all sorts of different reasons. It would be overly complicated for teachers to try and utilize the network for class syllabi, assignments, etc. The use of social networking could, however, be used by educators for memorandum purposes and group purposes. Social networking sites are beneficial in dispersing a great amount of material over a wide network. Therefore, educators could set up a group for their specific class, and almost use it as a way to pass out documents or spread interesting websites related on the subject. It could also be a potentially useful way for teachers to hand out reminders on assignments or meetings. This scenario, I realize, is a bit ideal. Many teachers may abuse the network and use it improperly to get dirt on students in scenarios such as why they may have missed class, or what they were doing in their spare time instead of doing their assignment, etc. Some information, I agree, should remain private amongst the users of Facebook. Facebook began as a networking tool mainly used by college students for social connection purposes. I don’t necessarily feel that it should remain that way, but I feel like it should still be an open college forum where college kids can still be college kids and discuss parties, drinking, or whatever it is they find interesting as college kids, without receiving negative consequences by authority or university administration. If there could only be a balance or maybe even an exclusive social network meant specifically for educational purposes, so that the two sources could merge towards developing another beneficial tool that could be used for teaching purposes.

3. In regards to Wikileaks, I am unsure that I would induce the entire blame upon our counterculture for the reasons why the information dispersed by Wikileaks haven’t become more popular or induced change like the change that took place back in the 1970s after the release of the Pentagon Papers. I believe most people are very skeptical of the government and therefore don’t know whether or not to support Wikileaks or be terrified by a possible Wikileaks backlash. I think many people are either shocked by the information, ignorant of the information, or just simply refuse to acknowledge the truth within the information based upon their personal relationship with the war. I also believe that the media, and the ways in which they frame the stories, are also to blame, to some degree. With that being said, I believe that the media has helped promote Wikileaks just by the sure amount of coverage that they provide Wikileaks and their previously leaked information. They may not hone down on the information they should, or portray it for what its worth, and use it to frame it in a different way, but I feel that overall the fact that they are creating awareness at all is a foundational start for the media in relation to these heavy subjects. To some degree, I also believe that they may tweak the stories a bit as to not unnerve the overall public into dismay. The media has a policing duty to behold, as well as a duty to maintain the peace, while dispersing information with this much alarming depth. Morally, I feel that, in regards to sites like Wikileaks, the media has the obligation to disperse information to all of it’s citizens, regardless of whether or not they believe that the public can handle the truth. It is not up to them to decide these matters. On that note, I am unsure if the entire public could handle such dirty information that is produced by the military, including military secrets. Military Officials state that the release of these types of information is not tactical or safe for a nation who is currently at war. Unlike these officials, however, I feel that the public deserves the right to know, as long that information doesn’t put anyone in harms way.

Oct 31 2010

Framing Questions Week 10

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1. In regards to the article “Facebook privacy settings: Who cares?” by Danah Boyd and Eszter Hargittai, they found that most people care a little bit to change their privacy settings to some degree and that this correlated with their frequency use of the site. But as I did my own research discussing social networking behaviors, I found that different personalities amounted to different types of behaviors on the site. My question is in relationship with these different types of personalities (introvert and extrovert). Does personality of an individual affect their attitudes and behaviors in regards to privacy on the Internet? Are more introverts more prone to set their privacy settings, whereas extroverted people might be more likely to not care as much? Overall, does being outgoing or shy affect these privacy settings modes on these networks?

2. In Boyd’s article, “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?” she imposes this question of the educators role and whether or not they should play a role in social networking sites. Considering that many businesses have used these sites as new portals to post their ads and market themselves, should professional educators utilize these portals as well? Being that students already utilize the sites to contact others within their classes about assignments and group work, should teachers also utilize the site for classroom reasons? Or should the social networking site stay separated from the educational forum due to privacy reasons? A New York Times article I read for my own research posited the question of whether or not it was right for campus officials at a university to stalk people and events on Facebook in attempt to bust up parties and arrest underage drinkers. Considering the social networking site is used for an array of different purposes, should educational awareness and connection to administration be one of them or would that breach students privacy?

3. While reviewing some of the stories on The Guardian’s Wikileaks page, the question of why hasn’t the release of the documents been appraised by everyone, rather than discriminated against has been raised. Therefore, I,a s a US citizen have many questions involving the release of the Iraq war logs and its effects on our society. Is it really our counterculture that is, at some degree, to blame? Or rather is it our media that is to blame for why these leaks aren’t being bolstered about properly in a way that would entice the American public to get involved and protest? Why is the government blaming Assange when he is only the man who set up this web portal in which private documents are filtering through? Could this be because some things are better kept away from the American public who, maybe, in the grand scheme of things, truly couldn’t handle the truth even if it was given to them on a golden platter? Would the truth be too brutal that it would unsettle the public to a dangerous degree, especially for the troops that are posted in Afghanistan and Iraq? Morally, what should or should not be kept private and away from the public when it comes to a site like Wikileaks?

Oct 27 2010

Response Questions: Week 9

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1. Traditional journalism companies and even companies in general that have connectional ties with citizen journalists, I don’t believe can afford to not acknowledge the persistent contemporary pervasiveness of citizen journalism and therefore need to recognize their benefits instead of trying to compete. Big players like CNN and BBC, therefore should maintain their citizen journalism portions of their site, such as CNN’s iReport. In the article we read for Monday, “Social news, citizen journalism and democracy” by Luke Goode, it stated that (1) alterity is always relative and (2) the political economy of citizen journalism is in flux with large-scale commerce and advertising dollars (and in some cases traditional media corporations) and therefore are encroaching steadily into this area. Therefore, I think it would hurt mainstream sites, such as CNN and BBC, if they did not include the citizen journalism portion of their site because it draws in viewers and dollars. Therefore, instead of focusing on ways to beat alterity, more mainstream news companies should be observing and learning how to incorporate citizen journalism into their sites. I also think its more beneficial for citizen journalists to post their material on these mainstream sites, not only for recognition reasons, but also for credibility. Therefore, this situation is more of a win-win than the other alternatives.

2. Today we covered the topics mentioned in my second question. From class, I learned that political websites are more of what is called “infoenterpropagainment” which is a whole mixture of things. Essentially, in my notes it was described as meaning, “politicians and media blend political information with aspects of propaganda, including media or political bias, and present it to the audience in a way that entertains.” Therefore, I feel that even though the web may present itself as a more personal, transparent experience while connecting with a political figure on their page, it really is just another platform stage in which to get across their political agendas, whether that be their support for the next election or the next bill they wish to sign. Although, in some ways, the Internet has made it easier for the population to become closer in a public forum when discussing political ideas, as well as the feedback loop to change into three way interaction. It has also helped voters determine political figure’s personal character and personal life more so than ever before. I realized this after watching how McCain, during his presidential election, was inconsistent in his personal marketing strategy when it transitioned from preliminary nominations to the national election. If it weren’t for the Internet to store this information within the same portal, YouTube, than I would have never known both of these videos, that promoted very different messages, had ever existed.Therefore, I will have to say that the Internet is great at documenting tool for political information and multimedia because it not only stores information, but allows available access to the information at anytime. This allows people to make more of an unbiased judgment about certain political parties and political figures because they have an unlimited amount of resources, regardless of branding, at their fingertips.

3.  In response to my third question about crowdsourcing inducing innovation in the political realm, in which I believe I touched a little bit on this in my second response, crowdsourcing allows for three way interaction between political parties and the population in regards to political agendas and the like. In class we have briefly discussed how Iceland is currently in reform after their economic collapse and how they are currently building and using a similar procedure to gain governmental support for parties and political agendas. Traditional political feedback would usually consist of a supporter or constituent handwriting mail or telephone calling a political figure, which would then usually be responded by that figure’s team, rather than the figure themselves. It was rare to have a political figure address you personally. However, on the Internet, in public discussion forums on their websites, it is now capable for political figures to address the needs and concerns of their constituents more easily. Although Iceland is just now currently experimenting with this, I hope that the process works fairly well between the governmental body and the people because if so, then a new form of direct democracy may occur and may possibly catch on by other larger nations. Although it may cause problems and has the possibility of becoming another fifth estate political watchdog, it is still an alternative to representational democracy, and therefore it may actually be more beneficial with the people. However, with this said, it is always easier in smaller groups (aka smaller nations) to agree than it is for larger numbers of people. Therefore, it could be successful in Iceland, while completely unsuccessful in the United States.

Oct 24 2010

Framing Questions: Week 9

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1. As some traditional news media sites allow spots for citizen journalists to post their stories, how would changing this around to where citizen journalists had their own portal site for their stories (alterity) impact the citizen journalism movement? Would it be more helpful for content gatherers, both for traditional news gatherers as well as information seekers, to post in a specific web portal their stories or would it be more harmful to have it set up this way? And, if more harmful, in what ways? Or should traditional news sites maintain the mesh of citizen journalism and traditional journalism thats set in place by some news outlets (such as CNN’s iReport)?

2. In the second article, “Interactivity and Branding, Public Political Communication as a Marketing Tool”, I found it interesting that the researchers labeled the politicians and political parties as brands when it comes to marketing themselves on the web. Considering last week we discussed how news organizations may need to begin leaning themselves more and more to this idea of branding their stories  in order to induce a possibly needed “pay wall”, I was wondering if this same relationship is involved on political sites. If a politician’s website brands itself differently in attempt to accommodate supporters, how do they do so that differentiates them away from other sites that may contain political stories involving them? And if politicians attempt to brand themselves through more of a perceived brand characteristics involving style and behavior, how do they do so that sets it apart from what others could read about from other sites? Do these sites possibly offer more of a transparent view involving the politician as opposed to traditional news sites?

3. In the third article, “Shadow Governments: An Icelandic Experiment in Participatory Governance and Social Change” it discussed the ways in which crowdsourcing induces innovation in some circumstances involving governance. How does this differentiate from traditional political feedback? And how does this new way of providing feedback through sites such as the Shadow Parliament and Nation Builder site, change governmental views on direct democracy? Is it possible that more sites like these will be popping up in the biggest of the world’s developed, leading nations and change the ways in which democracy works? Or will these sites in other nations still be considered more of a “watchdog”  or another political “estate” over the political realm?

Oct 21 2010

Week 8 Response Questions

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1. In response to my first question, I am still unsure of the reasons in which advertising via cable news hasn’t dropped like it has via local television, network TV, radio, magazines, and even online. My guess would be that businesses know that television reaches the most number of people in an unavoidable manner. Although there are millions of Internet users around the world, there are some people who still do not have access to the Internet, but may have access to cable TV. Internet technology may not have fully caught on like TV has due to economic divides, locations,  and many other  reasons and therefore, businesses may feel more comfortable paying for their advertisements to be put on Television. Another huge factor would be that online advertising and other types of advertising are easily avoidable. People can simply change a radio station, flip the page in a magazine, and close out the annoying online ads. With cable television, however, people stay tuned to their favorite television shows so they don’t end up missing anything, meanwhile they are forced to view the ads. The only reason I can think of that network TV and cable TV may differ on this subject would be that now people enjoy tuning in to specific channels, like the Discovery Channel, that caters their interest more so than general network TV.

2. In response to my second question, as I see it after our class discussion and reading the articles, as the Internet has changed the ways in which people receive news, news stories are no longer held in high esteem and attributed to the professionals, but are now considered more of a commodity. These commodities can be found, usually, on various sites on the Internet. It’s the ways, in which you brand that commodity (example: the New York Times), that will entice the users to actually purchase those commodities. However, overall many Internet users are still not willing to purchase information from the Internet, despite whether or not the site is one of their favorite sites. Therefore, businesses are going to have to figure out other alternative ways, if the pay wall doesn’t work for them, to sell their information in order to sustain their business. One possibility, as I mentioned in the question, is to be funded by nonprofit organizations or to possibly collaborate with amateur citizenship someway somehow. Another possibility would be to collaborate with other online businesses to form aggregate sites. This way, people would be able to customize their information through these aggregate  sites and find which one’s contain the most information they tend to look for. That way more people might be willing to purchase subscriptions from these sites if they allow for generalization and/or customization. An example of this would be Digg.com. I think that many alternative models of online economics will be needed to sustain the various journalist businesses that are making their way and want to sustain themselves online. Without these alternative models, people may be forced to pay for certain information on certain sites, regardless if it is usable to them or not in the future in order to gain the overall general information that they seek.

3. In response to my third question, I believe that some news sites may be following this trend of specializing their news, for example by making it more localized or specific rather than general. Many local level news sites, of which include an international news section in their newspaper, may want to focus more in detail on local news online if they are trying to force a paywall. That way they would be able to charge their users for this news because their local news stories would be less of a commodity or even a brand, but would supply the individual reader with information about their area with much greater detail than anywhere else. Therefore, this would be more of an incentive for people to want to subscribe and pay for the information. In comparison with citizen journalism, however, I believe that local new businesses would still be able to sustain themselves depending on the amount of stories that they provided. A citizen journalism site may only be able to provide a select amount of information, whilst an actual business would have the professional resources to provide an extensive amount of stories on different local subjects.

I wouldn’t go as far to say, in response to the second portion of my question, that this could connect to the reasons in which people do not have a particular, favorite website. But rather, the aforementioned reasons are the reasons in which people have a lot more to choose from, and therefore may only skim headlines. If, for example, a local newspaper, of which had an online website , were to supply specific local stories in great detail, local people would be more prone to purchase and read it considering the story would relate to their proximity. Personally, I believe that skimming all relates to people’s relationship with the stories, no matter how broad or local and that overall most people will probably tend to read generalized headlines and specific headlines unless it captures their attention. Therefore, if there is a connection between websites becoming more specific and people not having a favorite website, I believe it would be a very weak one.

Oct 19 2010

Week 8 Framing Questions

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1. Why is it that advertising via cable news percentages wasn’t affected nearly as much as advertising via local television, network tv, radio, magazines, and even online due to the economic recession? Is this because cable news was more resilient to the changes, anticipated the changes, or refused to alter their business model despite the changes? Or is cable news still the most popular form of gathering news information for most people and therefore didn’t have to worry as much as the others? And why did online ad revenue also fall?

2. Is it possible that a new trend in online marketing may force businesses to , as Rupert Murdoch put it, “everything his company produces would go behind paid walls” or be funded by nonprofit organizations? And if people refuse to pay for these sites, what would be its alternative? Would people begin looking elsewhere, or is there a possibility they would stop looking altogether? And, considering bigger online news organizations, such as the New York Times, offer more generalized information backed behind huge resources and staff, is it really possible that people can divert away from paying for this information once they realized the limited scope of some of the citizen journalist sites?

3. On this website it mentioned that new online journalism models, as opposed to traditional media are trying to become more specific and narrower in their news. Is one of the reasons behind this because it is a way for news organizations to keep up with the amateurism and citizen journalism found online? However, could this model also somehow be connected to the reason why many people stated in the survey that they do not have a particular, favorite website? Is it possible that web news stories are becoming more specific, and less broad to the point that people are merely fine just skimming the title and disinterested in reading in detail? Or does it merely have something to do with the demographics and accessibility to these stories based upon their specific audiences?

Oct 13 2010

Week 7 Response Questions

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1. In response to my first question, in class we discussed several various companies that are able to thrive and maintain their multi-billion dollar statuses in a bit-economy, including Microsoft, Second Life, and Google. These companies were able to find alternative ways to receive revenue and maintain their high standard in the commercial economic world. Google does this by selling ad space to other companies. Considering that Google is the number one online website, many companies are willing to purchase ad spots on their pages. Therefore, for Google this is an incredible market opportunity that they use to receive millions of dollars each year. Another online company, Second Life, engineers its software so that people can still monetarily purchase good that are “digital” through digital channels. People are able to both produce digital goods in the virtual world to sell, as well as purchase goods for their virtual characters and businesses. Microsoft is another multi-billion dollar business that has accepted this bit economic system. They are able to tempt users with temporary free trials of their software enough that people believe they must have it. Therefore, Microsoft has been able to maintain their commercial hierarchy with the use of this bit economic system as well. I’m not sure if a barter system would work online to gain monetary gain, but it would be a great way in which to gather specific items that you wish to obtain. For exmaple, Noise Trade is another online site that uses this barter trade model and is fairly successful. Obviously, it is not as popular or well known as the other multimedia giants.

2. In response to my second question, I believe the simple answer would be abundance. As there is an over abundance of the material used to make semiconductor chips, the prices of each chip, despite the holding capacity, will go down. Therefore, despite its unbelievable individual power or bandwidth, the prices of each chip will decrease. This does not take away, however, from the total overall cost of the gadget. As better storage, processing, and bandwidth qualities increase in each chip, and therefore in each gadget, the price of the overall gadget will increase as well. The overabundance of unlimited goods online in the digital world is an example of this economic model. The more you have of something, the less the individual something’s worth, especially when it can easily be copied, rendered, or manipulated. As we said in class, we need to move away form the scarcity model of thinking about economics, and look ahead to the abundance economic model that the digital world supplies us.

3.For my last question, I once again asked about this notion of the gift economy in relation to the negative consequences that may occur due to this type of model. Overall, I’m not sure that an economic model defined only by a gift-like economy would be helpful overall. I believe that given too much freedom, people will both cause and endure chaos. This is a natural response of humans and a reason why many governments are put into place. An example that was discussed in class is YouTube. Although YouTube isn’t necessarily the worst outlet that gets taken advantage of by hackers, it is still prone to what the book calls “waste”. Whether this is good waste or bad waste is debated in the book. However, it is still waste that is caused by the freedom that YouTube allows people to post videos. Therefore, countless numbers of worthless videos are uploaded onto the site making it more difficult and overwhelming for users to pick out the good ones from the bad ones.  Overall, I would have to say that the gift economy is ideal, but far from practical.

Oct 10 2010

Week 7 Framing Questions

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1. In  Chris Anderson’s book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”, he discusses that the term “free” in a commercially based market, really isn’t free. Businesses typically don’t want to give anything away for free, because then their business won’t thrive. Instead, it offers alternatives, or built in incentives, before making an item so-called “free”. On pg. 19 of the book, he discusses several ways in which corporations market a “free” item in order to actually sell you their products. But my question is, if, in an ideal world the commercial industry turned into a truly free economic system like the bits system, how would anyone be able to thrive economically? How would business be able to support themselves and their monetary gain? Or  to perform this truly free system, would the economy have to change entirely over to a “barter” system again in this digital age?

2. While reading Ch. 5 “Too Cheap to Meter”, I discovered that the reasons behind everything digital being “free” is solely economically based upon not only free access to the Internet, but the actual material that is used to create computers processing units, thanks to Moore and Mead’s Law. I read that the chips price will decrease in time due the semiconductor chips doubling their number of transistors every eighteen months. Therefore, I’m wondering why this is. If something increases in the amount of storage, or rate of data processing over time, why would the price decrease in that product, considering the material is elemental? Wouldn’t that make the individual chips worth more, therefore,one could potentially double the price rather than halving the price? Based upon the typical economic model that price is determined by demand, quality, and quantity, then which one directly effects the price of semiconductor chips? Are more being produced to supply the demand of the computer market, and therefore decreasing the products individual worth? Or is it the quantity of chips that build each computer, in which increasingly possesses better storage, processing, and bandwidth qualities over time, making the price of each chip decrease?

3. Like Lessig, Anderson also discusses the gift economy on Pg. 186. Specifically, the idea of “cognitive surplus” as discussed on pg. 188, talks about these spare cycles, or energies that humans have now that they didn’t beforehand when we had to labor in the fields in order to sustain life. These energies we are now using new, alternative ways to occupy our time and interest to release this energy.. He goes on to imply that the outlet that many of us use to dispose our leftover energy is the Internet and that we do it with a deeper kind of fulfillment than we get from the hours we spend at our jobs. Therefore, my question is, what about the negative aspects of the gift economy in relation society overall?  For example, Diaspora, the new online social network that is promoting itself as open source personal web server with hardly any monitorization, is already weary of these aforementioned possibilities of which could make it entirely unsuccessful. Even Wikipedia, a collaborative, free source open to the public, has countless numbers of hackers and people who are deliberately trying to destroy its web pages. Therefore, my question is, would a gift economy be able to stand strong overall, in the face of a society including deceitful people? Or would a gift economy be misused, abused, and ruined by these corrupt human beings?