Violent Video Games

So Shelly sends me a link to a great site, which leads me to a great article, which led me to notice one particular paragraph.

"Some psychological studies have highlighted the 'addictive' nature of computer games and suggested that they could potentially exacerbate aggressive or anti-social behaviour. However other research claims the reverse - that computer games are a safe outlet for aggression and pent-up emotions."

This can be seen quite clearly by examining the DOJ website that tracks violent crime rates. You can see that children and young teens all over America had a lot of pent up frustrations (probably from trying to rescue that princess in Super Mario Brother I, II, and III). Mortal Kombat was released and violent crime has been declining ever since, thanks to such stress relievers as GTA and the Doom series.

So remember this holiday season to make sure there are at least a few extremely violent video games under that tree. It all comes back for the good of society.

On the serious side, the research done by Alice Mitchell and Carol Savill-Smith does look interesting, and is available for free. I've requested a copy, and if it comes electronically, I can send it out to anybody interested.

Who are you really?

4 years ago I got the internet for the first time in my home. I started wandering around and came across a chat room for folks of the LDS faith. I hopped in and spoke to a few people there.

At one point, one of the other users asked if anybody played any musical instruments. I responded that I played the saxophone and the piano, both mediocre. He got excited, “I play the piano too! I’m Marvin Goldstein.”

I responded without missing a beat, “Really! That’s great, I’m Porter Rockwell.”

I knew Marvin Goldstein, or rather I had heard him play many times. He is incredible. He is the church’s foremost accomplished pianist. He is a master at his craft. And he certainly wouldn’t be chatting in an LDS chat room at 9:30 at night.

“No really, I am,” he responded.

“Prove it.” I said.

5 minutes later I had to admit he either knew a whole lot about Marvin Goldstein, or I was really talking to the master.

“Go over to my sight, pick out a CD, and I’ll send it to you.”

By this time I was convinced. I told him the CD that looked interesting, and he promptly replied that it would be in the mail the following day. Three days later I had the CD and a slightly red face. I have never met a more gracious person. His character is as warm as his music. If you ever get the chance to hear him play in person, don’t pass it up.

Identity is a curious thing on the net, but there are parallels to real life. When I meet somebody for the first time, the first thing I do is to judge them, both by “expressions given, and those given off”. I do not mean this in a negative way, rather I’m simply trying to gather information. If they are wearing a cowboy hat, a CD sized belt buckle, and snakeskin boots, I might decide that this person possibly could like country music, might be from a rural area, or enjoy John Wayne movies. I may be completely wrong, but I’m beginning to categorize who this person is, and what makes them tick.

Online we do the same thing, although we are a bit handicapped when it comes to gathering information. I thought the author of this weeks reading did an excellent job of describing different ways we gather information about a person whether it’s by their username, e-mail, or the ‘voice’ in their messages.

The username I always use when going into a chat room or discussion board is Firemeboy. I like this username because those who know the term always ask me about it. It’s an inside joke that gives insight to what one of my interests is.

Just as in real life, it takes time to build our identity. Somebody who meets me for the first time meets a white male, about 30 years old, who is a bit quiet. The more I get to know them, and they know me, they will find out more about who I am and what makes me tick. As they do so, they will begin to determine if I can be trusted or cooperated with. It is quite difficult to trust a person you do not know.

There is certainly a benefit to having a reputation and a cost to building one. The reading said that “Information exchange is a basic function of Usenet.” And if I am a member in good standing of the community, and have shared information in the past, and my identity is well known, I will more likely receive help from the community. Therefore, if the cost of building a reputation is lower than the benefit of having one, a rational individual will seek to build a reputation.

George Bush just made the comment that with the election, he has gained a lot of political capital and he intends on spending it. Reputation capital can also be gained and spent. On this discussion board I visit, I try to make all of my posts either insightful, funny, or at least interesting to read. I have gained many friends on this board that I have never met, but who I have helped in the past. When I pose a question, there are always several who are willing to help me out, based solely on my ‘identity’.

Raising the Benefits

OK, so I’ve been thinking about the MIT open content project and what might drive somebody to participate in a course. Remember, we are talking about learning a difficult subject, by yourself, with little or no guidance. This is a high cost, so unless the benefit is equally as high, a person is very unlikely to participate.

So who goes through these courses? What is the benefit of doing so? If a participant has an insane curiosity about a topic, then simply learning the material is a high enough benefit for that person to pay the cost. But what else is there? Couldn’t there be some other way to provide a benefit so that more people would take advantage of these open educational opportunities? If, after taking these courses, businesses or other institutions of learning don’t recognize the work you’ve done, what is the purpose of going through the material?

What if there was a way to ensure that the material had been learned? Usually this is determined by a professor who also serves as a mentor and content expert in the class. But in an online environment, the professor has already provided both the content, and, to some extent, mentorship. The only piece missing in the open content courses is the ability to ensure the material has been learned.

But couldn’t there be another way that a student could demonstrate they know the material other than to have a professor watching over and checking their work?

What if to earn ‘credit’ for a course, a student must do two things. First they must complete the course under the guidance of an expert by demonstrating competence in all of the necessary areas. Second, they must then take on the role of an expert, and turn around and guide another student through the same process. So completing a course is only half of the work, you must then take on the role of teacher and help somebody else complete the course. A person would be ‘graded’ on both the work they completed, and the work his/her student completed. If a person passes, and their student passes, couldn’t it then be said, with a fair amount of confidence, that this person knows the material?

What if we took a group of students and sent them though an online course under the direction of a faculty member. Call them Group A. Take a second set of students (Group B) and have them go through the same course, but have them turn around and serve as mentors to a third set of students (Group C). Have Group C (who has not been in any contact with a professor mentor a fourth set of students (Group D), and then wait six months (Halo 2 just came out, there are plenty of things which can occupy our time). At this point test Groups A and C (the group that never worked under a professor) and compare the results.

It can be argued that learning under somebody who just learned the material themselves could never replace learning at the feet of the ‘masters’, but what if you're not 'accepted' to learn at those feet? Or what if the privilege of sitting near those feet runs you $30,000 a year, plus books and housing? Couldn’t this be a viable alternative, especially in the ‘hard sciences’, where you either know it or you don’t? Do I really need to sit at the feet of the masters to learn the quadratic equation? Just give me somebody who knows it, and can explain it to me, and I’m good to go.

I doubt MIT is close to handing out credit just because a person has gone through the material, and mentored somebody else, but if it can be demonstrated that these mentors are learning the material just as well as their in-class counterparts, couldn't you argue for a the possibility of some other kind of recognition? Perhaps a certificate system or something? One that businesses may honor, or possibly even other institutions? What if a person in a lesser developed country could earn a 'certificate degree' from MIT without ever having to leave their country? Couldn't this benefit drive more people to online content, and thus result in the education of more people?

Rate a Customer...

I had lunch on Tuesday with a great group of folks and the topic of Best Buy came up. I was informed that Best Buy tracks which customers are not the ‘good ones’; for example, those that only buy things when they come on sale. Best Buy doesn’t exactly say what they do with the information, but it raises a few interesting scenarios. Are you going to be blocked at the entrance if you are a frugal shopper?

Anyway, I was a bit miffed that Best Buy would do that, but then it reminded me a very similar concept that I’ve never given half a thought. E-bay. I once bought an apple-peeler-corer-slicer on e-bay, (some day somebody is going to write a very good rap song about this device), and when it arrived it had apple gunk on it, it was rusty, and there was a 9 inch-long hair stuck to it.

Being new to e-bay I figured that if ever there was a time to leave negative feedback, now was the time.

Well, I was surprised to discover that after leaving the feedback, the favor was returned. The seller left negative feedback about me! They declared I hadn’t contacted them about the problem and had just immediately left negative feedback. They refunded my money, but I couldn't take the negative feedback... back. I felt bad. I was now a marred e-bay shopper. The whole world knew I was a cretin.

I got over it with therapy.

Anyway, I find it interesting that I have no qualms about the e-bay system that tracks how nice of a customer I am, and yet knowing Best Buy does the same thing really bugs me. And they aren’t even posting my information for the whole world to see. I guess I can always express my rage by passing Best Buy and going over to Media Play, but then Media play has that horrible replay system...

Maybe that's why I shop here. :)

Thet Rationality of Irrational Rationality

I was sick in bed most of last week, so I didn’t get to comment on something Dave said (typed?) ‘in class’. Dave said,

“Why do people keep buying Windows machines when they could have Macs [another wink to the student in the back]? Why do people do any of the things they do? I believe we gave up the assumption that people make rational choices a very long time ago.”

I completely agree that people do not make rational choices all of the time, though I still would argue that people think they are making rational choices almost all of the time (though that is a topic for another day).

Dave’s statement made me realize that completely rational choices of a group of individuals, can lead to irrational choices of another group. Take, for example, the Mac/PC/Linux situation. I have read a bit about operating systems, and it seems to me that the best operating system is Linux, followed by Mac, and then Windows. The Linux system is arguably the best because if it doesn’t do what you want it to do, you simply re-write the code. It seems that Apple computers are always on the cutting edge, and Microsoft seems to be a step or two behind them, and have had some problems with system crashes and security.

So since I know this, am I being irrational because I use a Window’s based operating system? Isn’t the rational choice for me a Linux? Or at least a Mac? I would argue no, and here is why.

What is rational for one person is not necessarily rational for the next person. I mentioned that Linux is the better choice because you can go in and change the code to suit your needs. This is a serious benefit. However, if you don’t know how to change the code, then that benefit of Linux suddenly doesn’t mean anything. In fact it may be a liability if you think you know what you are doing, when in fact you don’t. It’s better that you don’t go in and play around with the code, lest you reformat the hard drive by mistake.

Another example is money. If money is no object, and I want the best computer, then it could be argued that buying a PC is irrational. If I don’t know much about writing code, a Mac would be the way to go. But if money is an object, or I want to buy a computer to play the latest games (like this guy?) then the PC is now the rational choice for me.

The interesting thing to me, going back to the beginning now, is that if most people are buying a computer based on what they feel is a rational choice (and may well be a rational choice for them), then suddenly that technology becomes the ‘norm’. Not because it is the best, but because it is or appears to be, the most rational choice. And even if you realize that the Mac is the better computer, now that Windows is the 'norm', and you love computer games, and game developers develop for the PC, because the PC is the 'norm', suddenly the rational choice is what first appeared to be the irrational choice.

Maybe a better example is the whole Betamax/VHS thing back in the 80s. Beta tapes were in many ways the better technology, so if you wanted the best movie watching experience, the rational choice was Beta. But as more and more people bought VHS, and less and less movies were being released on Beta, there came a point when if you want the best movie watching experience, you now had to choose VHS. The irrational choice became a rational choice because of the way other people acted.

IRC

The first time I used chat was probably more than a decade ago, but quite frankly I don’t think I’ve ever been in an IRC channel. This assignment was enjoyable, and I wish I was 16 again (with no life), and had time to just mess around with this medium. I really could waste a lot of time playing with this.

I was completely up front with everybody I met online. “Hello, I’m firemeboy and I’ve never been on IRC before today.”

This statement was sometimes ignored, but often I was welcomed to the channel and many were very willing to answer questions. I decided rather than to just try to pretend I was an expert at everything, I would let them know up front I was a bit lost. This way if I committed a faux pa, they would know it was because of stupidity instead of spite. I was just a moron, and not mean. Thick and not thoughtless…

The first several channels I went to were quite dead. The one I was most excited about was #geocache. I don’t know if it still exists, but nobody was there the times I visited.

I found some channels that had quite a few people, but still no action. I asked my friend who was sitting next to me (face-to-face help, is that cheating?). He replied, “They are probably just swapping files or something on the side.”

“Swapping files?” I asked, “like pictures they’ve taken themselves, or music that they have created and recorded themselves, and thus own the copyright? or the latest CD from Wired that is under a CC license? All legal stuff, right?”

He gave me a weird look and said, “Yeah, sure.”

Looks like even is Kazaa is shut down, file swapping will always be around. You can get your Burt Bacharach albums online whenever you need.

I finally found one interesting channel called #chataholics. There was a very interesting person named Mungo (I think that was his name) who kept asking trivia questions. He appeared to be keeping score, and he would time to see how long it took people to answer. He was also a stickler for spelling. When he asked who wrote Childhood’s End, I quickly wrote Arthur C. Clarke, but he didn’t give me the points because I put a period after C.

I’m thick, but it didn’t take me too long to realize what was going on.

“Is Mungo a bot?” I asked finally.

“Yeah” came the reply. Remember, this stupid of a question surprised nobody because I had already professed I was new to IRC.

“Does he do this all the time?” I asked again.

“Pretty much.”

I shut up and went back to answering the questions. I think I ended up with about 14 right. I’m now in the top 100 players of all time. I suspect there isn’t much competition.

There was a bit of chatting going on in this room, but it was a bit tricky with Mundo always asking questions, giving hints, and delivering the score.

Another room, #chatterz I believe, did not have a bot going, but they were more active. This was more like the chat rooms I’ve been in. People asking about other people, reporting where they live, joking back and forth. But there was not the level of identity I observed in LambdaMoo, but it wasn’t a group of strangers by any means.

While many of the channels were empty, I observed a broad range of topics. One could go and talk about a number of highly specialized topics.

Over the weekend I got a contract from my publisher. Once I sign it looks like it will be official. I had a few questions about the contract, but many of the questions were branching in nature. If the answer to one question was positive, then I had a follow-up. If it was negative, I had a follow-up for that question too. But when I e-mailed my editor, I had to try and second guess. “If so and so, then is this the case? Or if not, will this be the way it’s done?”

IRC gives the user to interact and working things out in real time that cannot be done easily in a medium such as USENET. I have quite a few geocaching questions that I have never bothered to post on a bulletin board because it would take too much time to flesh out all the information I need. In a chat room, this could be done within a matter of minutes.

Hurdles in the adoption of new technology

I’ve been reading Christine Hine’s Virtual Ethnography book for another class, and came across an interesting phrase. Hine discusses the fact that so many times a new technology comes along, and proponents suggest that this new device will lead to the end of such and such, or the beginning of a new era in so and so… And that quite often those predictions are completely wrong.

So she concludes “This argument suggests that, rather than technology itself being an agent of change, uses and understandings of technology are central.” I certainly agree with this sentiment. Just because something should work, doesn’t mean it will work. Many times I’ve heard somebody (usually programmers) say, “lets write up a quick program that will automate this. All people will have to do is…” And there is the trick. Based on a different cost/benefit structure, the automated program doesn’t actually lower the cost for the intended user. Sure it works great for a techno junkie, but not for the common man on the street.

And a further hurdle is that something can’t just be easier (lowered cost), it has to appear to be easier, since so often perception is, in fact, reality. I would be willing to bet that many time saving devices that should have caught, didn't catch on for these two reasons. Using the device did not actually lower the cost for the intended user, or they were not perceived to actually lower the cost, even though they would have.

Something to keep in mind when trying to convince somebody you have an answer to their problem.