Posts Tagged: economy

Old school games from the 1980’s had an innocence. Dig Dug. Centipede. Joust. The Mario Games. They all had a simplicity to them that seems novel and maybe even boring compared to today’s games. Current video game culture still retains a place for ‘cutesy’ games, but as video games become more mainstream, the best selling games seem to be more violent, more over the top and more aggressive.

1.) Does this change indicate a change in popular culture that is reflected in video games? If video games are more violent, does that mean Americans feel more violent?

2.) Does this change reflect the increased developing capacity brought on by cheaper and cheaper computing power? Were these violent tendencies always there and just remained unexpressed in video games because we did not have the capacity to realistically render it?

3.) Is there a link between economic well being and the kind of video games we enjoy? The 80’s were a time of recession and uncertainty (relative to the 90’s) In those times, games were more innocent and ‘family oriented.’ The 90’s saw economic boom times – our games became more violent and aggressive and stayed that way through the early part of the 21st century. Now, however, as times again become rough, there seems to be a return to family oriented, ‘fun’ games. Do we crave ‘fun’ games more during hard times? Is their a psychological need these games fulfill that are linked to our feeling of existential well being?

It’s all about “freeconomics” and it’s being driven by the technologies of the digital age as the price of bandwidth and storage continue to drop.  Free started in the twentieth century by companies giving away something that encouraged purchases of other goods.  Now that we have entered the bit economy, free can really be free.  For example: while bloggers don’t post ads on their sites, they hope to enhance their reputation and by doing do get more paying work in return.  In today’s world a reputation’s credits can turn into cash.

But free does not simply apply to the digital world.  Advertisers have been known to pay some or all of the cost of publications.  Free versions of services sell premium versions.  Bands give away music to in return for paying shows.  The idea of free is becoming much more prevalent in today’s economy and industries need to learn to adapt to this growing economic trend.  This is a time period when we will see which companies fail and which companies “get it”.

The most difficult part of this new economy is to get users to pay anything at all.  The enemy of “free” is waste.  You are less likely to waste something you pay for and, in this sense, free can cause more harm than good.  For those of us that have more money than time, we would rather pay to have something done for us than do it ourselves.  It’s a time saver.  A successful example of this is iTunes.  Prices come with guarantees and free typically doesn’t.  Producers in the digital realm will find themselves completing with free.  It is not going away any time soon.

Google is a company that understands the world of “freeconomics”.  They first invented a way to search online that gets better as the web gets bigger.  Their next idea allowed advertisers to create as that matched keywords or content and bid against other advertisers to obtain the most prominent positions.  They then created other online products to extend their reach and only added ads when it made sense.  As a result, Google wants information to be free because as the cost of information falls it makes more money.

But lower prices can be disruptive.  The free classifieds site Craigslist has taken billions of dollars our of America’s newspaper companies since it’s found in 1996.  With technology, the notion of scale can also make a difference.  If only one out of thousands of Wikipedia visitors decides to create an entry on the site, you still benefit with a pile of information from around the world.  Microsoft’s Encarta CD encyclopedia was put out of business and they put traditional physical encyclopedias out of business before them.

Week 6: Sociocultural Contexts of Interactive Media

Remix
– Lawrence Lessig

1. Lessig outlines two cultures – the read-only culture (RO) model of the past and the read/write culture (RW) of the present digital age.  He uses the concept of blogs to explain how consumers redefined their relationship to the content industry through comments and tagging and that we now posses the digital tools to expand upon production.  These comment features have made their way to media news sites and jumped to a new level in dialogue.  If the internet is a source of free flowing information, should media outlets be responsible for comments left by readers on their site?  Or should reader content be monitored, thus going against the free flow?

2.  Today, digital culture permeates our lives to such an extent that it is hard to come up with anything we would deem as “new”.  The current generation will quote content from various sources to create something “new”.  The combination of content may be different, but can this remix of pre-existing content really fall under the category of new?

3. Lessig describes our sharing economy as not being regulated by a metric of price but by a set of social relations.  While Wikipedia has proven that this type of economy can be successful (people are in it because they want to be), should this mindset be applied to all internet content as a whole?  In what realms does a sharing economy not work well for all parties involved?

4.  The book offers 5 steps toward more efficient copyright law (deregulating, clear title, simplify, decriminalizing the copy, and decriminalizing file sharing).  Although these may all be thoughtful suggestions, I believe most people see copyright violation as trivial and there will always be a way to find pirated material unless more strict punishments are put in place.  Should the government simply revamp copyright laws or is stricter enforcement the real problem?

Applied Mass Communication Theory: Chapter 9
– Rosenberry and Vicker

1. The First Amendment sounds absolute in its wording (Congress shall make no law).  Did the founding fathers really want us to take this amendment as literal as it sounds?  If they were observing us today would they be satisfied with the various tiers and levels of protection we have placed on different types of expression?

2.  Privacy is a hot topic in today’s digital world, especially when it comes to social networking and e-commerce.  However, should the government put laws in place that make up for people’s personal choice of providing identifying information on a medium that was built on the idea of free flowing information?  We provide this information at our own risk and to satisfy needs to associate with the internet.  Is it our own fault that the world can read so much about us?

3.  As media and technologies have advanced over the centuries, society has changed with it.  Has law kept up with all the changes and adapted adequately?