Escape From Reality?

I am all for games. I play games all the time since I was a little kid. From the times of the NES to today’s Xbox 360, I have not missed a beat. Since that time frame, games have evolved considerably to the online arena where people from all over the world can play and interact with each other at anytime, as long as internet connection is provided. Traditional games have had limited room for emotional involvement. However, introducing people via online now lets people communicate and interact by text or voice has brought relationships into the discussion. Now these games, such as Second Life and The Sims, emulate real life, and to a certain degree, do so successfully. The only problem is that it seems that some people become more involved in these games than they do in their own real lives. Players convert real-life money to in-game money to buy things they wouldn’t or couldn’t in real life, such as certain types of cars, clothes, and a nice house. Some say that those who engage in such behaviors online are simply having fun. I agree, but do realize that there are some who like their virtual existence better than their real existence. If you fit this mold, then you’re more likely to look at this world with disdain, knowing that life isn’t as easy in the real world as it is in Second Life. Living this way is inefficient. No matter how many hours you log in these virtual worlds, the fact is, the real and the lives we lead must be given much more attention.

Scared of the Internet

Personally, I am scared to buy products over the internet because I feel as if my accounts will be hacked into. Not only do you hear about it through ads on the internet itself, but I hear about it on tv ads and people in the public. I do have my online banking through Bank of America, however most of the time I feel like someone is still hacking into the online banking and is able to distract and take funds. I know this is highly unlikely but millions of identities are stolen every year through means of the internet. Recently I just sold my laptop and two people trying to buy it were scammers. They would tell me they submitted money to my PayPal account, however they did not and still wanted me to pay for shipping to send it to them in a foreign country. It made me extremely uncomfortable, so I did not sell the computer to either one of the people. I am not very smart with computers overall and especially not with the abilities of the internet like most people know.

Another aspect about privacy on the internet is how people using the dating services have made up identities. There are a lot of mistaken facts about people and their features. Men make up height and weight features as well as women, and sometimes some sick minded people even get on the internet and completely lie about their gender. This to me is the most inhumane thing one could come across. I know if I were using one of the dating services provided somewhere on the internet I would be disgusted to find out I had been sharing feelings and trying to get close to woman that turned out to be a male. These are things that should be monitored, however I do not know how this could or will be protected, but should fall somewhere in the privacy category of the internet.

In and Out of Virtual World

Talking about the virtual world, especially games, I feel honored because I love games, but not to an extent of an addict. It is true that the virtual world Second Life leaves a lot of impact to the players, but that is just a glimpse of the real thing. There are a lot of similar simulations of the world, namely MMORPG (Massively Played Online Role Playing Game) where a human being creates an avatar to his or her liking and explore the animated world, either an almost real world like Second Life or fantasy world.

In these worlds, they are totally free to do whatever they want with their avatar. They are free to an extent where the games limit. Which means there is nobody that could say stop if they want to do a certain thing or talk about a certain topic unless it affects the game system. This worried some individuals and party as they have no whatsoever control over what they could do, especially about free speech. Yes, the virtual worlds, is limitless. Remember capitalism? Yes, they even exist in the virtual world.

World of Warcraft (WoW), that boasts an amazing 6 million registered users is a good example. Due to its popularity, a lot of people became "gold farmers", players that uses their avatars to collect as much as money as possible and sell it for real cash. This became a problem because it causes imbalance to the game system. in Second Life, real property owner used the limitless tool provided in it to advertise their products, selling virtual items, hoping that this new kind of advertisement could attract them to buy the real things in the world.

Blizzard, the creator and owner of World of Warcraft (WoW), also faced problem about the owner of the in game money, about the intellectual property of their game. The players claimed that the in game money they earned because they work for it but Blizzard claimed that its theirs as they own WoW, thus they own everything in it. At last, blizzard took the action of claiming that the items in WoW or not saleable for real money and banned all auctions in eBay, in the name of intellectual property.

The virtual world is not only confined to our actions and emotion but also it affects our future. There are a lot of thing happening in the virtual world, and we know very little of where it is heading. It is up to us to shape it.

Finding perfection,,

Human beings are basically not perfect. Therefore, we always constantly find ways to perfection. Perfection is something that all human being would want to have. Therefore, there are many ways that people do in order to satisfy their desire to be perfect. Thanks to Second Life, a virtual reality avatar, people can easily be ‘perfect’.

People in the Second Life community are all trying to be what wanted to be that they cannot be in real life. All aspects of life, physically or emotionally or intellectually, there can be made perfect. So, the question is are they real? Well, basically they are not real but from my perspective, emotions can be real. For example, there is a guy that has a girlfriend and also has an avatar girlfriend but the guy spends most of his time online with his avatar girlfriend. When interviewed, he said that his avatar girlfriend is more understanding that his actual girlfriend. Somehow, they are emotionally attached as the avatar gives him all that his actual girlfriend lacking. For me, emotions are subjective and they are real if they exist.

The point is, it is good to find something that is lacking in real space in the virtual reality but they are just running away from their real life problem. Sometimes we just have to handle our real life problem because that is what life is all about. Learning what is lacking or wrong and try to mend it. This way our life will be more meaningful. For me, the virtual space is just a medium for people to escape from problems in reality.

when is it free and when is it obscene?
Censorship of information on the Internet has become a much publicized debate. There is a great controversy as to whether or not censorship is a necessity in order to maintain a particular moral standard. This question brings us back to the early weeks of class when we were discussing ethics. We never found a straight answer of “what is ethical and what is not?” I think many people would agree that there is no one moral standard. For example if someone posts a blog with explicit images, that blog is without a doubt violating someone’s moral standard. However if you tried to censor that blog, you would no doubt be violating another person’s moral standard. There has to be a middle ground, a compromise between censorship and free speech. This compromise however, would require some sort of regulation. Is this regulation even possible? Regulating the internet seems like an all or none situation. It does not seem possible to only regulate some things. The only way to keep all pornography off the internet would be to monitor all other websites, which would be an invasion of privacy for the innocent users.

Who is listening in?

The NSA warrantless surveillance controversy concerned the illegal surveillance of persons within the United States. Under this program, the NSA was authorized by to monitor, without phone calls, e-mails, Internet activity, and text messaging. There was no legal justification for this surveillance, and NSA supposedly was allowed to monitor anyone they believed to be outside the United States. The NSA was provided total, unsupervised access to communications going between some of the nation's major telecommunication companies. So, if a civilian in the United States was talking on the phone to a friend in England, they could have potentially been monitored by the NSA. As a person who has a friend in England, this thought makes me supremely uncomfortable, and I envision a faceless NSA agent listening to my most private secrets. The Bush administration justified this wiretappings by saying that they were preventing future terrorist attacks. And some Republicans support this by saying, “Wiretaps and Homeland Security as implemented by George Bush sure as Hell would have stopped 9/11.” But how do they know this? It seems to me that a group so intent on destroying the United States would not let random wiretapping stop them. They would probably speak in code, and not use the same phone every time. What are the chances that the NSA is listening in on a real terrorist group rather than someone wishing Grandma happy birthday? In this case, it seems that losing the trust and respect of the American people is less important than listening in on conversations without just cause.

How are you presenting yourself online?
It is frightening to me that anything I send or post on the internet can come back to haunt me in the years to come. What about this blog? Years from now, if I ever decide to run for public office, are my words as a 19 year old going to come to light and be held against me? Probably. And what about my facebook profile? I will without a doubt never be elected to public office if anyone sees my facebook pictures. I am not a particularly bad kid, but simply one picture out there of me holding a beer will secure a reputation as a “party girl”. But there is really nothing I could do about it besides removing all personal information from the internet. Emily Nussbaum is correct that young people have taken a nonchalant attitude about this lack of privacy. Living with the internet for a large majority of our lives, we have accepted that we cannot control what is being seen by others. We either forfeit our freedom of speech or accept that that freedom does not mean control. We can say or show what we want, but we cannot expect information to do nothing. Fortunately, I have no desire to run for public office. But I still worry about what future employers might see. Personally, if I was an employer I would not hire many of my classmates after seeing their facebooks. Despite the fact that personal life should have nothing to do with work life, people are judged by their internet persona. An internet persona that can unfortunately be googled by anyone whenever they like.

Change The Fundamentals Before The Situation

When the US Constitution was written, the founders made the laws based on what they fought for, what they believe is right, and what they believe is the best for their grandchildren for years to come. But, if they were alive by this time, I am sure they would change the Constitution, since a lot of it is violated by things unimaginable by them. Especially privacy.

At that time, there was no such technology like computers or internet. The only thing that they thought would invade privacy is through physical actions. Not now. There are still police officers that could come into our house and search it, invading our privacy. Using technologies, such hassles are reduced. For example, wire tapping. By this way, there are no physical being entering a certain house. Somebody would enter the telephone line, hear on the conversation, and leave without leaving behind any marks. According to the current Fourth Amendment, this does not trespasses somebody else's privacy. But to our time context, it is. Another example would be worm, design as codes in the Internet especially. Whenever we downloaded something from the internet, we may not know what is exactly in the content. The worm may be harmless. It is created to serach for something, and if it has nothing to search for, it will destroy itself without producing any problem.

As Lessig puts it, we need to change the Constitution to preserve what is right for us, what we believe in. The Constitution that made Americans American. If it is violated, then there is nothing that holds this land as America. To protect privacy is by to change the Constitution itself, as long as it suits our need at this time. There are too many ways technology could invade our privacy. Technology is advancing, and it will wait for no man. Are we going to follow it or is it going to leave us? That is why, changing the fundamentals are way important before approaching the situation.

Information Extortion

iPhone? That's old. iPhone 3G? That's a little bit new. An almost free phone where you do not need to spend a single penny browsing the internet with unrestricted open source software for download, gPhone? That is hot!

Yes, everything free is good, but how come it is free? This is where market and advertisement rolls in. That's why Google, the creator of gPhone; could provide those services for free. The big companies invest in Google, specifically gPhone, because they could see a new market for their merchandise, the phone browser. Since gPhone would display advertisement from time to time when the user browses the internet, the user would read the advertisement at some point. But that would not be enough to convince the companies to invest.

The data obtained while internet browsing. That is what the companies want. With this valuable information, and the help of Google, they can further slim down their advertisement to specific user so that the advertisement is effective. But, this breaches our privacy. Why should they know what are we looking in the internet?

This may not seem much of a bother to many of us, since they only want to know what websites we go to. Wrong! When the companies do know what we like to do, we might get bombarded with annoying advertisements and even spams. At least, they should have our permission to collect the data from us.

This is consumer panopticon. The extortion of our personel data, whether in what form it is in, is a violation of our privacy. And in most cases, we do not even know that some of our information is collected. Imagine that if I were to surf the internet a lot about sports car using the gPhone. Next, I could get banners of add on top of my browser, the next thing I knew is that I get spots car magazine delivered weekly to my doorsteps. We, as consumers, should take a better care of ourselves. The next time if any company ask our contact information, make sure that we think it out thoroughly whether we are giving unnecessary information to the company or not.

Commons and Capitalism

My main argument in this posting is going to be comparing the Commons and capitalism and how they do not mix together. First of all the Commons is a place where people submit their works with their works being open to the public. These works can be made into any form or fashion and the people's originals creator has no rights to the original piece. For instance with the movie we watched in class, one guy took another bands music track and put a different instrument into the songs and it was considered to be a creative art. It is, however this work is really cheap and to me should be considered a low blow, but if one were to look at it in a wider view the work increased utility even more because it took that same track and made it likeable to people who enjoy the instrument he added into the songs. If we were to take these works and implement them into a capitalism world it would never work. Capitalism thrives off of producing products that come with loads of money in return. It focuses solely on the best way to make money however that may be, so to create works that are open to the public completely counteracts what capitalism stands for. This is where copyrights and patents came into effect. One could argue that they came from the constitution that says they are offered to encourage people to create art and science without fear of their work being taken. However another view could be that society is going to create art and science anyways for personal achievement or personal utility. Capitalism could have issued copyrights and patents in order to make sure that they could make money off of the creative arts and sciences that people make. This said there are two observations to ask yourself. Are copyrights and patents issued to make sure capitalism captures revenues off of humans creative works? or Without copyrights and patents would people's creative side still come out and discover and make the arts and sciences that maximize society's utility?

Private..but not Private

Privacy can be interpreted in many ways, but one concept remains constant and that is that people want whatever is private to be held out from the public's eye. For me this is anything that regards my personal self such as medical records and my ability to to speak to someone without it being overheard by a third party. What if a university were able to tell the students what they were allowed to have in their dorm room, would students really enjoy their experience at college? Probably not in the regards of that it is college, people's first time to be able to make decisions on their own. If universities were telling students what they were allowed to do how would one become their own person and find out what they could bring to society. These universities that do that, in an extreme possibility, could be hindering some form of utility being brought forth to our world. One could relate privacy and intellectual property together in the form that if copyrights and patents are offered in order to spark the creation of creative arts and science, these universities telling the students what they are allowed to do/have are not creating any innovators for the world. Of course these colleges are teaching them the regular classes but the biggest part of college is figuring out what kind of person an individual really is and how they can best help society through their personal reflections on what kind of person they became throughout their freedom of choice throughout college.

It’s Not that Common

Commons are a resource that allows anyone to use an object without asking for permission, because permission has already been granted. This system works in the digital context by allowing users to use programs, IPs, etc. without having to request permission from the content’s creator. The creator, in fact, gives up his rights for a good he or she senses in the wide availability of that product. According to Lessig, the framers of the Constitution even supported the ideas of Commons and wrote laws encouraging it. I know that I would benefit greatly from this system. However, what if I wore the shoes of the inventor? Sure, I would still want to create more content, but how long would it last? Would I still spend late nights and long weekends on something I know is of no profit to me? Even though the Constitution’s writers were in favor of Commons, they also saw the other side’s point of view and knew that the creative process would stall if it were not beneficial to them. This way of leading has lead to the introduction of intellectual properties. Looking at it from another angle, Commons tend to develop some of the most innovative goods. Wikipedia, despite its flaws, is a marvel in this digital age and one that most people would not want to go away. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that allows users to input information regarding a specific topic. This allows people of different expertise to fill in information about things others may only know sparingly. I doubt Wikipedia would be such a phenomenon if you had to pay a monthly subscription to use it. In the end, everything comes down to balance. Commons and IPs have to be efficient in coexisting if progress is to be continued.