Reflective Blog Post

Self-directed Learning / Personal Blog Posts

There are many ways I have investigated and developed thinking about specific topics in digital culture this semester.

Some blog posts that document my learning include:

1. nonfiction book review of How We Became Posthuman

2. fiction book review of A Hazard of New Fortunes

3. adapted repost of an essay from a previous course about virtual reality

4. review of Nyssa Silvester's chapter about echo chambers in Writing About Literature in the Digital Age

5. conscientious recap of social proof

6. group project proposal (later combined with LBP group)

7. research on the benefits of video gaming (which informed the LBP project proposal)

8. midterm self-evaluation

Some Google+ posts that document my learning include:

1. posts about comments I made on others' blogs (Shelby Boyer, Greg Williams, Allie Crafton)

2. posts about Web 2.0 sites (Khan Academy, Netflix)

3. current events posts (internet and the election, international web regulation proposals and commentary, etc.)

4. posts about social media (YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Blogger)

5. prior art posts (V for Vendetta kinetic typography, LBP 2 Final Fantasy 7 level, LBP 2 Back to the Future DeLorean, LBP 2 Missionary level)

6. academic digital culture posts (Dwyer's "Building Trust With Corporate Blogs")

5. extensive comments on others' Google+ posts

*Books, articles, videos, and research materials I've looked at in my self-directed learning process are all included above.

Collaboration

Contributions to my group:

1. wrote proposal

2. scripted video pitch

3. contacted BYU video games club and organized meeting for social proof

4. got Daily Universe article published (after our group experienced some complications)

5. recorded, scripted, edited, and narrated 3 gameplay walkthrough videos mid-semester to show our progress

6. obtained social proof from expert LBP 2 level builder/YouTube user omegafalcon

7. found and posted several instances of prior art

8. posted a quality midterm recap to keep us on track

9. produced a quality LBP 2 level ("The Mission")

10. recorded, scripted, edited, narrated, and produced our final product

11. brought in PS3 and presented our published LBP 2 levels in class (with Casey)

12. variously represented our project's progress to the class and other entities

Contributions to other groups:

1. critique of the Badges group proposal

2. research identifying potential sources for social proof and an extended G+ write-up for Badges group

3. several in-class comments and feedback given to the Chaotic Connections group

Contributions to class:

1. regularly contributed to class discussions

2. represented our group to the class on various occasions

3. missed few class periods

Others' assistance

Early on, I engaged in conversations on Google+ with (and had a lot of help from) the following people: Allie Crafton, Katie Cannon Wilkie, Gwendolyn Hammer, Rebecca Ricks, Nicole Black, Greg Williams, and Casey Deans. Allie Crafton was particularly helpful and engaged in more than a dozen separate conversations with me. Later, I continued conversing with these people but gained more help from Heather Andersen, Grace Kim, Joshua McKinney, and Nyssa Silvester (a former student). I am thankful for the insight and diligence of these individuals; they were integral to my learning this semester.

Digital Literacy

Before this course, I thought I was fairly well versed in digital culture. I've always been kind of a computer hobbyist and knew some things about programming and hardware beforehand. However, the idea of "consume, create, and connect" was completely foreign to me. I was almost exclusively a consumer, as I assume many of our classmates had been prior to the course, and my efforts at creation and connection were superficial and unguided.

I feel like this course taught me to use technology purposefully. It taught me not only how to use digital culture mediums but, more importantly, how to respect them. Gone are the days when I'll jump on Facebook and spout random drivel. Treating digital mediums with as much respect as traditional literary mediums has driven me to produce work of equal quality, detail, care, and attention. It has prevented me from wasting time on what I previously considered to be purely entertainment mediums: internet, television, video games, smartphones, and tablets. I now see these as concerted production and connection mediums, and while there was a period of adjustment after I made that realization, I enjoy them more now than I did before. I have come to realize that unique principles of digital culture such as various liquid stages of publication, RERO, social proof, DIY movements, collaborative tools, open source sharing, badges, gamification, and a focus on visualization can make us better thinkers and vastly improve society.

Individual Questions

Check out my individual questions below. Enjoy!

1. According to N. Katherine Hayles in How We Became Posthuman, what became a "technological artifact and cultural icon" after World War II? [See my blog and GoodReads posts]

a) information

b) identity

c) cyborgs

d) video games

2. ________ ________ theory is the idea that "an excessively personalized internet environment limits a user's exposure to throngs of opinions and resources available to otherminded users." [See this post]

3. In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki points out four essential characteristics of a smart crowd. What is NOT one of these characteristics? [See Allie Crafton's blog post]
a) attentiveness
b) diversity
c) independence
d) aggregation

4. Although video games become more popular every day, their lack of even treatment by academia, popular culture, and the media contributes to a stigma that causes users and nonusers to ignore or underutilize the cognitive, social, and creative benefits of the medium. [See my post]

5. Shelby Boyer's post on the military's regulation of soldiers' social media consumption (and the consumption of their friends and families) not only asks us to reexamine internet regulation, but forces us to face the reality that it is impossible to completely enforce regulations on a decentralized platform. [See Shelby's post]

Midterm Self-Evaluation

My self-directed learning over the course of this semester has relied on consuming from class lectures and discussions as well as online resources; creating via brainstorming, moments of inspiration, and flexibility in synthesizing ideas; and connecting with the social proof of others.

The influence and role of other students has been essential to my learning process and project selection. For example, my literary work (A Hazard of New Fortunes, by William Dean Howells) and subsequent blog post touched briefly on the idea of echo chambers. I became more interested in the idea after receiving feedback from Professor Burton and several classmates who seemed to connect with echo chambers more than the other ideas in my post. Subsequent blog posts on echo chambers benefited from the input of Nyssa Silvester (an enthusiast or expert on the subject), which got me really excited to learn more.

My excitement over the feedback I was getting combined with more self-directed interests in virtual reality and cyborgs (initially stemming from my nonfiction book review of How We Became Posthuman), which led to my blog post about the potential benefits of video gaming, particularly with the connective capabilities of new games. All of this culminated in my choice to participate in the Little Big Planet 2 project.

The ideas that have most intrigued me and which I'd like to continue to learn about are echo chambers, virtual reality, crowd sourcing, regulation (or deregulation), corporate influence, and production bias, specifically as these concepts relate to Little Big Planet 2, of which I'm a big fan.

Little Big Planet 2 Project Proposal

Description: Little Big Planet 2 is a game with the slogan "Play, Create, and Share." Using the unique medium of Little Big Planet 2, we propose to create a level immersing users in a sort of learning environment. Our LBP level will teach users the study-based benefits of video gaming in a fun, friendly manner. The level will show how video games are in a position to promote creation and collaboration, now more than ever. It will also encourage users to make creation and collaboration a more fundamental part of their gaming experiences. Throughout the level, we plan to use digital culture vocabulary and concepts (these we'll explain in simple terms).

Project Members: Casey Deans (group leader), Grace Kim, and Brandon Healy. Heather Andersen is an advisory member.

Social Proof: The evidence of social proof for this project will come from our classmates, peers, and enthusiasts and experts in the gaming industry, including Martin Andersen, Evan Andersen, and others.

Literature Review: See Heather Andersen's blog and Brandon Healy's blog for a discussion about the benefits and consequences of gaming.
Casey: Reality is Broken, Persuasion
Grace: Cybernetics, Howl's Moving Castle
Brandon: How We Became Posthuman, A Hazard of New Fortunes
Heather: Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Northanger Abbey

Format and Audience: Our project will be formalized as a published level on Little Big Planet 2 with an accompanying YouTube video walking users through our literature-based, digital culture world. The audience will be our peers and classmates, enthusiasts and experts who offered social proof, academic literary communities, and those who play or would like to play LBP in the future.

Success Criteria:

1. Number of users who access our level online
2. Amount of social proof we obtain
3. Number of YouTube hits our LBP walkthrough generates

Prototype: All of our prototyping has taken place in Little Big Planet itself. Our group is currently testing the game's limits and unlocking increasing flexibility for the game environment. Screenshots will be forthcoming.

Thanks! Please leave feedback below or on Google+ :)

Cognitive Benefits of Video Gaming

Heather Andersen's blog recently asked an interesting question about video games: "Can certain video games improve brain function and athleticism? I hope to find out." You can find my attempted answer below.

I'm not sure about athleticism (maybe some Wii Fit games would help out?), but there are many studies showing how video games improve particular aspects of brain function, including visual acuity, spatial perception, the ability to pick out objects in a scene, working memory, reasoning, and strategy (more so for pre-adolescent players).

I've cited some articles summarizing studies below. Here are some interesting tidbits:

- Studies from Iowa State University and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York show how regular video game play improved the dexterity, speed, and error efficiency of laproscopic surgeons.
"One study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played video games were 27% faster at advanced surgical procedures and made 37% fewer errors than those who didn't"
"The single best predictor of their skills is how much they had played video games in the past and how much they played now. Those were better predictors of surgical skills than years of training and number of surgeries performed . . . So the first question you might ask your surgeon is how many of these (surgeries) have you done and the second question is 'Are you a gamer?"

- A pediatric neurologist at UC-Irvine's School of Medicine showed how Tetris expanded portions of the cerebral cortex of test subjects.

- Researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that World of Warcraft "encouraged scientific thinking, like using systems and models for understanding situations and using math and testing to investigate problems." They found that "86% of test subjects shared knowledge to solve problems in the game and 58% used systematic and evaluative processes."

- National Geographic summarized the findings of researchers at University of Rochester in New York: "Action video gamers may be more attune to surroundings while performing tasks like driving down a residential street, where they may be more likely to pick out a child running after a ball than a non-video gamer"
"action game playing might be a useful tool to rehabilitate visually impaired patients or to train soldiers for combat"
"people who play action video games can process visual information more quickly and can track 30 percent more objects than non video game players."

- Neuroscientists at MIT have called video games "stunningly powerful" for learning.

Articles:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2008-08-18-video-games-learning_N.htm
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/10/12/how_video_games_are_good_for_the_brain/?page=1
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0528_030528_videogames.html

Here's another article about a video game designed to help teens beat depression in New Zealand. It helped 44% of depressed teens completely recover, compared to 26% of depressed teens who completely recovered via traditional therapy: http://healthland.time.com/2012/04/20/study-playing-a-video-game-helps-teens-beat-depression/

Addressing BYU's study, there are several Pew Research Center studies claiming that multiplayer video games improve social experiences.

Most video game studies generally seem to agree that playing violent video games affects behavior in negative ways, and that excessive game play can lead to (childhood) obesity and other negative consequences, especially in the case of addiction.

Personally, I played video games growing up because they provided cognitive challenges that stretched my abilities, pushed me to improve, and offered emotional rewards (kind of like the feeling you get scoring a touchdown after hours of football practice). It was also fun to get together with friends and play Starcraft, Super Smash Brothers, or Halo. I don't disapprove of adult gaming, but only if you're in a position to handle it. Halo: Reach every other week on a Friday or Saturday night can be a fun, harmless stress reliever.

However, I think the amount of time children play video games should be carefully regulated by parents. Excessive play clearly affects moods, although I'm not sure how. I've noticed that sometimes when I start playing video games, it's hard to stop.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post, Heather!

Echo Chambers in 2012

The idea of the digital echo chamber definitely applies to our upcoming presidential election. Echo chambers suggest that when we, as voters, become myopic or merely reaffirm our own political views with the online content we digest, we experience several negative consequences. For example, we may limit our own perspectives. We may find it more difficult to relate with others. We may have more trouble discerning between facts and opinions. We may disengage with crowds. We may even lose cognitive function, at least compared to those who experience a diversity of thoughts and perspectives.

Proposal

I propose we create a class project aimed at taking steps to eliminate echo chambers in the 2012 Election. These steps would include (but are not limited to) the creation of a digital Wiki, eBook, or other publication to curate quality political websites from across the political spectrum into one simple location to inform voters on the issues. Each site we include in the publication would have a bio (with data like who made the site, for what purpose, when, how many hits it gets per month, general accuracy, party bias, etc) with a short, critical review written by a group member. Sites would be categorized by political issue (general, foreign policy, economy, gun control, etc). The publication would be aesthetic, colorful, and user-friendly. It would also be freely distributed, comprehensive, and easy to understand. 

The existence of this publication would fill a real gap in the online voting community by providing a quality, politically diverse website directory (with content reviews) from an objective, academic source. Increasing the diversity of quality information readily available to voters and encouraging diversity are two extremely effective ways of combating echo chambers.

Badges

I also had a tangential idea we might try. We create badges with each badge representing a distinct political view. This would divide the election into issues and move people away from voting strictly across party lines without examining each issue in detail. Once a participant has examined an issue in detail, he or she will take a basic information test. The last question of each test would allow participants to decide where they stand on that issue. The names of the badges would not be generic, like "Healthcare," but political statements, like "I strongly support Obamacare!" or "I mildly oppose Obamacare!", etc.

Homies, peers, enthusiasts, and experts would earn these political statement badges via Mozilla or another site and categorize them under some sort of "Election 2012" heading. We would then direct participants to seek out those with different viewpoints on key issues to ask them how they came to their conclusions. (If I could create a full-scale social media site based on this idea, I would, but I definitely don't have the resources for that.)

I know there's been a lot of proposals to work with badges this semester, but I thought it was an interesting idea, anyway. It may be too different from the original proposal to attempt, but at least we know badges are an exciting concept. Maybe it's a good thing for several different projects to experiment with them. Maybe not. The final word is Professor Burton's, of course.

Prior Art

There are lots of amateur lists of political fact/opinion sites on the internet (probably too many to count). However, most of them are myopic, incomplete, biased, ugly, disorganized, or otherwise impaired. This proposal encompasses more than a simple list or bibliography. Its goal is to present diverse, researched, quality resources in a reliable, objective manner to help assist voters this Fall and into the future.

A Recap of Social Proof

Contrary to the comic above, my blog post here doesn't refer to the type of social proof commonly associated with herd behavior. Rather, I'm referring to digital social proof, the idea that social media unfolds in phases of development, and that in each development phase ideas are passed to a community of homies, peers, enthusiasts, and experts for feedback. If feedback is received (and depending on the quality and frequency of the feedback), social proof is provided. The underlying premise is that ideas validated by others are worth exploring.

So, what kinds of social proof have I received now that my critical study of digital culture has been underway for over a month? Thanks go out to the following homies and peers for their extensive, insightful feedback on my ideas and blog posts thus far (their names with links to their digital culture blogs are found below):

Gideon Burton
Casey Deans
Greg Williams
Rebecca Ricks
Gwendolyn Hammer
Nicole Black
Katie Cannon Wilkie
Allie Crafton

Largely due to the social proof I've received from these individuals, my digital interests now encompass a small, pre-screened selection of (shockingly) cohesive issues: internet regulation, echo chambers, corporate influence, hacktivism, and personal identity. For me, the point on which these issues converge is capitalism. In future writings, I plan to explore the effects of capitalism on the internet using these lenses as vantage points.