I’m thinking back to when this class began, and where my studies of digital rhetoric have brought me to now as the quarter draws to its close. I attended the Grand Text Auto event in early October, and investigated issues of interplay and video games as pieces of art. Currently, I have finished the bulk of my filming for my youtube video essay, eager and nervous to start editing and concocting a piece that will hopefully do my original vision justice. Lingering, still, is my initial feeling of technological intimidation, paired with a renewed hope to one day get a handle on this modern-day technology “thing” (doubtful, since it is persistently running at a pace much faster than my own). I suppose I shall resolve to tackle my fears one question and one answer at a time.
Fresh, captivating questions were inspired by my attendance of the Grand Text Auto event in October; my attention while listening to the speakers, and later, exploring the Terminal Time presentation, as well as the greater Grand Text Auto exhibit set the tone of inquiry which guided my dynamic digital studies in this course. Sadly, I did not clue you, my classmates, into my thoughts better, as I regretfully wish I would have. I had many questions to raise, that I wish I had raised early on. My apologies. Maybe I can belatedly make up for that lack of dialogue now…and you can let me know what you think about the following. Perhaps, also, this blog entry will serve the purpose of helping me to synthesize and review a few key ideas from throughout the quarter.

Some questions the class, specifically events and guest speakers, have sparked for me: How do we negotiate in video games? In gameplay at large? And what does the way that we play say about ourselves and our technological society? Mary Flanagan, who created the giant joystick offered me a rather pertinent metaphor through her art. At least in my interpretation, the giant joystick symbolized a way we play games and, on a larger scale, interact with technology. I find that the ever-growing tools of technology, devices like the joystick, can be bigger than us (largely because we treat them as they are bigger than us by relying on them as much as we do). Sure- we are the humans, and they are the machines, and we have not forgotten this. But sometimes I worry that the machines are starting to take over…
In the digital age, there are numbered complexities, issues inherent to our technological scape that we need to unpack and attack, but don’t. The average person doesn’t question the implications of our high-tech lifestyles, I feel: it is far easier to comfortably accept the conveniences which technology affords us without wondering what it inevitably forces us to compromise or even jeopardize (which can be a lot). The tools we use, the internet in particular, can indeed tower over us in their magnitude. Navigating the digital world can be much like trying to use the giant joystick. I remember awkwardly trying to maneuver the giant joystick (with the aid of my friend, who pressed the big red button for me), and I made my best attempt at playing even the most simplistic of video games only to fail at them: pac man, pong, and an outer space shootout game of some sort. The task seemed simple, and the classic games were familiar enough, but that damned big joystick! It complicates things in a big way, and forces you to think about the task at hand in a way you haven’t traditionally thought about it. The study of digital rhetoric has forced me to think of my simple, day-to-day interactions with the technological world in a new, critical way that has led to a rewarding exploration of digital identity: the way I play in this big digital game of modern day society with every last one of my relevant tools.

I think that the only way we can keep the machine from ruling us is to reclaim our real-world existence in a real-world way, uprooting those deeper issues of technology, and asserting, not only a consciously-informed knowledge, but our abilities to artistically “manipulate the machine”. This manipulation is exemplified, to some degree, in dealings with Eliza, the cyber psychologist, or in games like Facade (an interactive fiction), in which players like myself will trump the machine with our genuine humanness of thought, something the computer-programmed, simulated characters lack.

Finding control in the digital arena through self-sought knowledge can feel really empowering. We need to learn how the technological world operates and dictates a lot of how we live. Otherwise, will we find that the internet and other digital media will one day write our own history for us, the product of a vast network of historical and technological associations online in the style of the “Terminal Time” demonstration? That’s a bit scary to me…that technology implies so much more about life and society and self as each day passes.

Listening to Virgil I realized how slow I have been to get started with making an impact on the world.

Yes, he does happen to be younger then me by a couple years. Yes, he does happen to be cited on various tv stations numerous times. Yes, he has gotten law suites filed against presidential candidates because of his new program called the Wikiscanner but no, he is not struggling to survive because he refuses to make a decision about how he is going to live for the rest of his life. That decision would be completely mine.

Listening to Virgil made me realize why I have not been able to compete in a world driven by production. This guy is a freaking genius while I am just average. While this guy was contacting various people and making connections with companies and writing programs on how to make the internet a more “interesting place” I was probably at home playing video games or maybe working my second part time job at the Quickey mart.

Due to this mans vision (which operantly I do not have) we now have a really cool program that can help anyone get juicy information on the FBI or the CIA or your local grocery store. Because with his invention of the Wikiscanner one can see who edited Wikipedea. This invention has done great things all of which can be found on his website http://virgil.gr/. Check it out for some direction it helped me and was pretty fun too.

I had a wonderful first-time experience with Second Life! My avatar’s name is Arabella Weymann (whom I named after the model in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock). After hearing that millions of individuals world-wide were on this virtual world, I did not want to merely explore the territory, but I wanted to actually connect, talk, and get to know all the other people that were in this world. I decided to visit one of the “favorite places” and landed on some money $$$ island.

I walked around trying to find someone to talk to. The first person I talked with quickly flew away after finding out I was a SL n00b, which made me a little sad. However, the next person I talked to was a woman who above her name had the title “Club H&D Dancer.” She was a beautiful woman and I said hello and asked her what she was doing. I told her it was my first time on SL and she was nice and kept talking to me. I told her that her outfit looked really pretty (it was very sparkly and she had a beautiful face) and she started helping me “fix up” my avatar. She sent me some hair items at first, which I got horribly confused with and my avatar ended up having a bald streak through two big pillows of hair. She patiently helped me fix my appearance. She teleported me to another place in SL and taught me how to manage and change my appearance, which I thought was very nice of her. She gave me an entirely new outfit (a scandalous clubbing shirt, two pairs of pants [one of which is her favorite type of pants], a sparkly set of boots, three different kinds of hairstyles, and a jacket). She wanted to initially voice chat with me, but I was playing off of a computer in the Multimedia computer place in Langston library, so although they lent me headphones, I didn’t have a mic and therefore was not able to audibly chat with her. She said it was okay, and continued to teach me through the chat box. She taught me all the simple basics of how to take care of myself and how to successfully explore SL. She said she was in a hurry to get back to Club H&D by 8:00 and I asked her how she became a club dancer. She said her boss would come in at 10:00sl time and encouraged me to come in and audition. What I found completely amusing was in the middle of my private SL tutorial session she said, “hold on let me change my son real quick, i’ll be right back” and I really think she left to go change her son’s diapers! I laughed out loud as I read that.

I ended up visiting Club H&D. It was pretty nice, except there were a lot of erotic dancing that almost looked like porn, and I got a little embarrassed since I was at the library with lots of people walking behind me. I had a small conversation with a man, but left quickly afterwards. Here’s a picture of me talking to someone, look how shiny my boots are!

I ended up exploring a few other places in my search for companionship. I went to Consuperismo Beach which was quite an experience. It was sort of club-like with girls dancing here and there. I had a guy come up to me and ask me in spanish if I spoke spanish and I responded “un poco” which means a little and he asked me if I knew how to buy something and I replied “no se, lo ciento” which means sorry, I don’t know. He then told me he was going to leave and I thought it was hilarious that I was able to use my poor broken spanish (which I picked up for the two year language requirement for all english majors) and that man never would have known that I was a 21 year old chinese girl! The ability to be whoever and whatever you want to be in a virtual world completely astonishes me. I hate to admit this, but SecondLife is strangely addicting.

I was thrilled at having spoken to someone in another language and I remember our guest speaker last week explaining how SL is now global, I decided to venture to a Japanese sight since I had studied abroad in Japan in high school. My experience there wasn’t as pleasant because no one was willing to talk to me. The environment was quite beautiful though.

My last adventure was to a Christian church in SL. After playing for over an hour, my friend asked me if I sought out anything related to my faith and it had never occurred to me to search for a church. So I did! There were so many, so I chose to go to the ALM Cyber Christian Church–which was amazing! It really looked like a church! They had information about service times, prayer meetings, and even counseling sessions!!! They additionally had a church library, to my quick discovery, and I was able to search for any Christian book and it would provide me with a link to purchase it online in real life. I could go up to the prayer booth and request for prayer and it gave me instructions ie: “For prayer please type /23 and your prayer request, an example would look like the following, “/23 Please pray that I can overcome my addiction to pornography” Please know that all prayers are confidential. We would like to support you and your relationship with the Lord” which completely thrilled/amazed/shocked me!! This virtual world is so close to real life! I read up on a few articles they had at the information table and it was some really good stuff. Here are some pictures of the church.

I ended up playing for almost two hours and I didn’t even realize how hungry I was until I got off the computer! I find myself constantly wanting to go on again to explore more but I don’t have a computer fast enough to run it! It really is like a higher tier of chatting. It adds so much more life and personality to online relationships. I definitely understand why there is such an explosion of interest in virtual worlds. I definitely appreciated this experience.

1. In second life my name is Pwizle and because I don’t want to write about what the other class members are writing on and to give diversity to the topics explained in second life I thought a personal approach to the game would be interesting. Various ideas were sparked through the discussion our class had and the visit we made to Second life in class so I was excited to find out about the different marketing strategies one could use Second life for.Star Wars

   I entered the Star Wars area with interest not knowing what to expect. I had heard a little about Lightsabor fighting and thought that would be pretty cool. Instead of being attacked by a light saber an R2D2 droid came up to me and tried to light me on fire which was undesirable but expected due to the fact that I was defiling his part of the neighborhood with my less then enthusiastic attire. Unfortunately after being literally burned I realized that Star Wars area was semi off limits to people with out enthusiasm. Sorry, I will be returning…. once I can get a good rate on the linden exchange.

   Apple store

   The apple store is pretty cool looking and feeling just like a real store. One can enter various areas that could be very helpful in the event that a person were interested in buying an apple product or even just testing a product one is thinking of buying in the future. After visiting the Apple store I thought the IBM store may be interesting but I found that it was much more of a spacey rendition of the future of IBM. Floating molecules were in the air and the atmosphere was much to dark to really draw me in like the apple store.

   Mature

   At this point I was not interested in the mature sites offered via second life’s close to home content what I am interested in are the marketing taboos created by a group that has no other interest then the marketing of ones body. Would it be safe to call them leaches or just fun loving, quasi-realistic, minimally interesting 3d images of a nonhuman event? Ok so maybe it isn’t that bad actually I didn’t see any marketing of the mature areas going on but my suggestion if you are interested in going to third base with a 3d rendition of Godzilla try to keep it in doors. Even if this were something I were interested in I would still suggest going to a more realistic human based website for emotional stimuli because second life is just not up to par as far as I could tell. None the less I know many people are interested in experimenting so what ever your pleasure may be, let it be known that mine is not unrealistic sex.

   Uci

   Anteater Island was interesting due to that fact that I attend there and couldn’t recognize much of the area. I do like the fact that on the video game water is much more close then it would be in real life in the same event seeming to come right up to the edge of the school. Yes; I know this is a virtual island but some resemblance should be made to the actual place, right? Even though I was a little disappointed with the appearance and disturbed because a large section of the island is off limits I settled with a precursory visit only to return for bigger and better ventures in the near future.
   I found that you could buy a cell phone, shoes, close and organs. Various styles are more prevalent in certain areas and are actually over emphasized in some of the areas that I was interested in like Star Wars. You could buy storm trooper suits by the dozen if you just forked out the serious lindens that would be required. Real computers could be bought at the apple store and the events that could be played are totally awesome. I am definitely looking forward to returning to this game with many personable experiences left to come.

I set up my account for Second Life last week and chose a very Scottish sounding last name. Then when I actually started to download the program at my office it started to make all the computers on the network act funny. Believe it or not I am the one person in the office that everyone turns to when we have a computer issue. We have a digital x-ray program and I have learned to troubleshoot that as well as most of the practice management software, etc. So, when the network decided that it did not like Second Life I removed the program and put off my trip into Second Life until the Thanksgiving weekend. Then I couldn’t make it happen at home on my laptop. When I got to class on Monday I learned that many people had issues. I went on again on Tuesday and had a successful, to some degree, foray into a virtual world.

I chose a standard female avatar and I like her because she is thin and has long thick brown hair and her butt looks good in jeans. Pretty shallow, but it is nice to imagine that she is me. She looks like I did when I was in my twenties, so in effect I have virtually teleported back in time. When I entered Second Life I tried to go to the Louvre but it wasn’t the Louvre when I got there. It was a gallery of some sort but I was outside on a ledge and could not get in. I walked around the ledge looking for a way in. I was on an upper level of the building and eventually fell off the building. At this point my daughter called. She is the one I mentioned in class that loved to play The Sims. I explain what I was doing, and how poorly I was doing it and she was amused. She is saving for a laptop and now wants one ASAP so she can download Second Life. After I hung up I flew around and ended up at another structure. It was a Gothic/Victorian house in the woods. It was decorated for Christmas and looked very cozy inside but I could not get in. I walked around it, and bumped into the door, but did not know how to open it. I looked longingly through the window at the fire crackling away in the fireplace and the Christmas tree twinkling and decided to fly around it to see if there was another way in. It was dark outside and I felt very lonely and rejected by the space. I flew at light speed away from the house and had to turn around to fly back. When I stopped flying I dropped into the woods around the house, which was apparently on a pretty steep hill, and I rolled/fell through the forest. The house already had a Hansel and Gretel vibe to it, so the tumble through the woods was very fairlytale-like. I expected to meet an ogre. I walked back up the hill and gave up trying to get in. An on-screen help box suggested that I go to Help Island. I tried to teleport to Help Island but the site said I did not have authorization or access to teleport there. I tried a few of the other help islands but they all said the same thing. I teleported to Anteater Island and looked in some of the buildings. One had chairs and was showing some kind of presentation on a screen. I tried to sit in a chair and was unsuccessful. I operated the screen for the presentation but only could get three frames to scroll across the screen and grew bored. It was not very interesting. There were no other residents present. I then typed “dance” into the search box and saw a site where there were some residents and decided to teleport there. When I arrived I saw a female avatar named Bettee moving quite quickly across the plaza outside the site. I tried to catch up to her to chat but she just flew across the screen and was gone. I met and chatted with Eric B. Cannel (sp?) outside the venue. He was dressed in a very classy pimp-like outfit with a watch that sparkled like a bunch of diamonds. I said “Hi, how ya doing?” and “nice place” and he said “You wanna buy it?” I told him that I didn’t have any money and he lost interest, but during the course of my interaction with him I said to myself, out loud, “Wow, this guy I’m talking to looks like a pimp.” My husband was suddenly very interested in what I was doing. I tried to explain the assignment to him, but his main concern was that I was online talking to Huggy-Bear. (For my younger classmates, Huggy-Bear was the pimp/informer on Starsky and Hutch, a ‘70’s era cool-cop show.) Now I am wondering if that show was produced by Stephen J. Cannell, because then Eric’s choice of name would be very coincidental…you can see that I am easily side-tracked. Back to my husband and his fears that I will become a cyber-hooker. He tells me “I am not sure I like you doing that.” I tell him it is anonymous, that my identity is protected. He still seems worried. I ask him to explain his concerns. He worries that the world is populated with single people and weird-os. I am married to the original Puritan. For example, when my two oldest kids were a senior and a junior in high school, respectively, I rented Trainspotting. My husband and I do not share the same taste in movies. I like indie, he likes shoot-em-up blockbusters and war movies and anything with Super-Marionation. (We both liked Team America, which was rare.) Anyway, my kids and I had just started the movie when my husband walked through the room from the kitchen on his way to the bathroom. The toilet scene was onscreen when he passed the TV. He did a classic double take, hit the eject button and went to Blockbuster immediately to return the movie. The three of us sat there with our jaws dropped. So the idea of his wife wandering around a virtual world populated by, gasp, singles and weird-os, makes him uncomfortable. I told him I thought his response would make great material for my Second Life essay. Now he’s uncomfortable being mentioned in my paper. He likes to pretend the world is full of puppies and butterflies and doesn’t like to be reminded that there are dark things out there as well.

When I tried to get back on Second Life it was like I was stuck in molasses. My avatar would not move and I became frustrated. I can honestly say that this virtual world holds no appeal for me. I thought it would have better graphics. I must hold some ideal of virtual reality in my head and this did not measure up to my imagination. I suppose the level of graphics will vary from site to site depending on the skill level of the creators, but everything I visited looked cartoon-y to me. I am not a gamer, so I am not attracted to the look of game-worlds. I think if I could meet someone that I already know and interact with them in the virtual world then I would be more engaged.

Entering Second Life requires completion of a tutorial/ orientation which fails to provide any useful information.  A requirement to exit the orientation required finding the torch.  Limited instructions were provided on finding the torch which required seeking assistance from other avatars.  The positive aspect of the experience was communicating with other avatars.  However the requirement of the torch is a useless requirement because I didn’t gain any knowledge on navigating Second Life.

Before entering second life I decided that I would save time by not modifying my appearance.  However after seeing the modified appearances of avatars I was persuaded to change my appearance.  It was a challenge and quite time consuming.  Modifying my appearance was a mistake.  I ended up with a tacky red outfit.  In addition, during this process I lost my hair and became bald which really upset me.  I honestly felt devastated and hopeless being bald.  I then wasted a lot of time trying to get my hair back.  I still am unable to recover my hair - I am a bald avatar.  I have chosen to stay bald as a tribute to my friend who is fighting cancer.  Teleporting was challenging because I did not have the basic instructions on teleporting.  Finally I figured out how to use the map in order to teleport. The tutorial should be modified to include basic instructions on navigating through Second life.  People will have a better experience in Second Life with a basic knowledge of navigating Second Life. 

Anteater Island was empty when I visited it.  It was pretty boring.  Laguna Beach looked realistic, nice, and clean.  There were businesses there however I was unable to access the businesses.  The only option was to walk around an empty beach city.  I found myself bored and lonely.  There is an interesting animated tree in Laguna Beach that leaned in the direction of the ocean as if it were windy.  I found this odd because usually the wind at the beach comes from the direction of the ocean.

Dell Island is the most useful place that I visited in Second Life.  It provides details on changing appearance, flying, how to see, and etc. The setting was appealing with flowers, water, and green plants.  The site was empty except for an annoying parrot who offers a kiss upon request.  The presence of the parrot in a useful location is pretty random. 

I was desperate to locate places to visit with other avatars present.  I looked through the list of events and narrowed it down to events that I believed would have avatars present.  The first event I visited was a fundraiser for war child international.  However the event was empty.  The fundraiser turned out to be great opportunity to get free clothing.   I took advantage of the opportunity granted I have a negative balance of Linder dollars.  However I was disappointed that there were not avatars interested or present at the event.  The second event I attended had several avatars present.  The event caught my interested because it was advertised as offering free Linder dollars.  However after looking around and seeing signs of questionable behavior I left immediately.

After being in Second Life during different time periods of the day I prefer to visit it during the morning.  There are more avatars present and I enjoy interacting with the avatars.  Most of the avatars I interacted with were very friendly, generous, helpful, and caring.  Not being able to interact with other avatars creates a sense of loneliness.  I hope to visit other events in Second life that are engaging and meaningful.

­A few days ago I attended Virgil Griffith’s talk regarding his creation the Wikiscanner and how he received much attention, both negative and positive, from various groups such as corporations, businesses, and government. He mentioned how it was relatively easy to create such a tool as Wikiscanner as you can download all of Wikipedia, which provides you with all of the anonymous edits from Wikimedia, and then buy a database of what organizations own which IP addresses (available from private corporations), and then you merge these two together to create a source identification system such as Wikiscanner. In addition, Griffith, while receiving mass publicity and popularity for his new creation, was also met with scrutiny from corporations since their clients were being exposed through Wikiscanner and were,thus, losing money from such bad publicity.

I enjoyed Griffth’s talk as he was very entertained by the fact that he had a lot of fun causing scandals for so many companies and governments by revealing the source of previously private edits. What seemed like a funny practical joke turned out to actually have some pretty serious repercussions and maybe even skirted some legal issues for that matter.

When I first entered the Second Life world I immediately understood how people could spend so much time in it. I felt as I had discovered a new place and I wanted to explore everything. I just started wandering around, and found that flying usually seemed to be the most convenient thing to do unless I wanted to intimately explore something. I passed through the orientation rather quickly which I am regretting now because I want to buy some new clothes and have yet to discover how to make money.
The avatar I originally chose is a gothic woman, which really is not me, but that was why I decided to choose it. As I am going through now however, I have decided that even though I can be whoever I want to be, I would rather be someone closer to who I am than anything else. I feel that I am still representing myself and no matter what one looks like people will still try and judge their character by their avatar, as I found myself doing when I cam across other people.
The first place I ended up transporting to was a snowy little town that seemed to be in the middle of Christmas because many of the houses had lights on them. It was very peaceful there, but no one seemed to be around so I left. I went to Anteater Island after that, but the more interesting parts seemed to be blocked off so I did not stay there too long. I am now in a shopping area looking at pretty dresses that I cannot afford. So it seems as if Second Life is actually quite similar to my real life.

A Vast space

My first experience in Second Life was a lonely one. As I begin to walk I noticed I was quite wobbly, and although I wanted to go right, I walked in every wrong direction. I must have been drunk in hopes to forget my sorrows.

It took sometime for me to regain my composure, and when I did I noticed I was by myself. I was all alone, I would walk quite a distance, and I would find no one. Several sites seemed to be under construction, however, who had built them, where were they. It was as if a neutron bomb was dropped on this forsaken land, and miraculously I was the only one to survive. That is what must have happened. The place known as Anteater Island must have been nuked in some horrible war. A last, I am alone, all alone here to rot by myself.

As I stood there by myself, I begin to loath in self pity. I wanted to cry, however, my face was unable to change; it was as if it had been glued in place; I was no long able to control my facial expressions, I was emotionless. As I continued to stand in this god forsaken wasteland, it suddenly came to me… I must be here for some reason… why was I the only one to survive this nuclear holocaust. I must have had some kind of supernatural power. I begin to ponder what it was, was I stronger, no it couldn’t be… My body was far too flimsy. Was I smarter? No once again I still was unable to tell left from right. No no… hmm no… wait I’m able to FLYYYYYYYY.

That is how I must have escaped the explosion I flew away, and I was drunk, and forgotten I had done so. I felt wonderful, as the cool wind pasted by my face. I no longer cared that I was the only one, I had a land to myself, and I could do whatever I wanted, but all of the sudden in surprise as I was in the air a saw a lone figure walking about… Another survivor, I thought to myself, she must be injured, “here I go to save the dayyyyyyyyy.” As I came to make my entry, all of the sudden I had no ideal how to land, causing me to fall and slam my face to the ground, I was a bit embarrassed, what a horrible way to make an entry. “Miss are you in need of assistance,” I asked. She hardly even noticed me and continued to go about her way. I couldn’t believe it, walk past Superman, how dare she! However, I didn’t chase her, she had to find out the horrible truth for herself… That we were in a world with miles and miles of space all alone, Up, up and way.

My first ‘exposure’ to Second Life actually came in the form of a rather witty parody that my friend had linked to me months ago. Since then, I’ve always held Second Life in a vague disdain; this assignment gave me a chance to actually enter and explore it for myself to see what the famed virtual world was all about.

Download the client, create an account, and hop into the world – it should have been easy, right? Well, the first step was fine, but account creation ended up being more of a hassle than I had expected. I had problems with the first three accounts I created, in which I was toying with several email addresses in an attempt to get my verification email successfully delivered, while waiting for one of them to show up in a mailbox to let me into the game. Eventually, my confirmation e-mail arrived on the fourth try, and I was set to log in. Once I entered the world, I looked into some of the tutorials to get a feel for the controls, but quickly found that experimenting answered my questions more than the tutorials themselves.

Movement was very stilted and clumsy: walking and running involved jerky animation cycles, while maneuvering in flight was faster, but impractical for exploring in any detail, and difficult on smaller islands. Admittedly, this might be because I am used to the fluidity of motion in games, even MMOs. I enjoyed playing around with customization, though. The system isn’t exactly the most user-friendly, but it is certainly very flexible. I found it interesting that the inventory pane, for example, mimicked the traditional file interface found on most computers rather than trying to create a new graphical interface.

I found the various sites fairly interesting, although the loading times were fairly atrocious, and – as was mentioned before – it was hard to get a sense of the social atmosphere of the world. The possibilities for the world were definitely interesting, though. The recreation of the Sistine Chapel, for instance, might not have been very interesting outside, but the interior was beautiful. Certainly, it doesn’t quite have the same sensations as if one were actually to go there, particularly since it was tricky to look up while in first-person view, but seeing the artwork displayed in a virtual environment added a lot of context that traditional two-dimensional formats can’t convey as well.

The virtual world of Second Life was interesting to dabble in, but not one that would hold my attention or interest for long. However, I find it interesting as a variation on traditional communities, and think that there is definitely promise in the concept, at least.