As I said in my original blog post, I was slightly disappointed with the book I chose. The content was actually really interesting, but did not discuss what I had hoped. I talk about it a little in my original post.I realized today that I have another question: How have video games changed the way we interact with one another in terms of culture, and especially pop culture? What topics are colored or coded differently in our conversations because of video games or the stories/characters they embody?
On positive thing that it did for me was fix my view of how video games came into being. I had never really thought about the rise of the video game before, but if I had I might have thought that video games just came from start up companies determined to take advantage of computers in a fun way. In some cases that is correct, but not all. Nintendo, for example, existed as a game company for many, many years before it got into the video game business.
Fiction: Jekyll+Hyde
I initially made the connection between J+H and Digital Culture in terms of the concept of split worlds/personalities. In the book, Mr. Hyde acts in ways that Dr. Jekyll would never consider. In a similar way, we sometimes act differently on the internet than we normally would. We represent ourselves slightly different than reality, and some people behave badly or rudely when they would not do so in "real life."
Video games can act as a sort of Hyde-inducing elixir for us. Much of the act of playing a video game includes the act of stepping into someone else's shoes and acting in ways that we would not in real life. My husband and I would probably not shoot bandits in real life, but we do in our game. Video games allow us to step into our "Hyde" selves, though it should be noted that in a game the Hyde version of ourselves might not be evil. Games encourage us to act like someone else for a time.
Self Directed Learning:
I have thoroughly enjoyed being able to direct my own learning in this class. I set a goal to use the internet in new ways that I was not necessarily familiar with or comfortable with. One way I decided to do this was reactivate my Twitter account and follow a group of people related to my interests. My biggest success has been following Markus Persson (notch), who is one of the creators of Minecraft. He tweets about things that I find interesting and often go learn more about. Today's example: Notch re-tweeted this:
Which led me to this article which concerns the closed nature of Windows 8 (see the section on Other Interests).
Something that I would like to do the rest of the semester is expand my usual resources. I'd like to move away from simply Googling a topic and only looking at what comes up on the first page. Rather I'd like to be able to find interesting things in more diverse places. At this point I'm not entirely sure what that entails, but I have in mind a sort of journey down the long tail: Perhaps starting with a Google search, but finding links and topics from the items I find there instead of then just returning to Google.
Other Students:
I've really enjoyed connecting with classmates on Google Plus. I feel that it has helped me specifically in my self-directed learning. I enjoy seeing the topics that interest people in the class and discover that I share those interests. One important thing that I learned is that while RERO is great, you should probably reread and revise at least once before release to make sure you are saying what you really want to say.
I found it very encouraging when I would post something on Google+ and get lots of feedback from my classmates. I wish I could have gotten more feedback on my few blog posts, but I suppose in order for that to happen I would need to write on topics that are more relevant to people's interests.
Other Interests:
One of the things that really interests me (besides video games) is the idea of openness on the internet and technology. What originally got me interested was the series Everything's a Remix. I was especially interested in the opinion that the notions of "intellectual property" and copyrighting were originally useful but are now outdated. I'm intrigued by the idea of open source content. But how do we reconcile the great idea of free material and ideas with the fact that people have to make a living?
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