MMO's

In an article by Constance Steinkuhler and Dmitri Williams argued MMO’s or massive multiplayer online can function as the “third place”. A “third place” is a location where informal social interactions can take place, such as a bar or a coffee shop. I think there are other ways to look at MMO's as whole. MMO's are not only "third places", but a whole another world within our society.In theatre there is a term called ‘the green world’ which can describe MMO’s in a new way. In A Student’s Guide To Play Analysis, David Rush describes the ‘green world’ as any place away form “here” where interesting and sometimes wonderful things that happen that change people. I believe this shows a different way of viewing MMO’s. They are magical and full of fantasy, unlike the real world. For example, an MMO that I have played called Civilization V can describe this. In Civilization V users can take control of one of 18 select civilizations and foster them from the beginning ages to far in the future. This game allows people to enter worlds and do things one could never fathom in their entire life. MMO’s allow people to do things they could never have imagined. Like the "green world" in theatre, users in MMO are able to do amazing things in the game that hey could never have imagined otherwise. 

Is google making us stupid?

Is google making us truly stupid? It is not and I am sure of this fact. Many other factors along with google are negatively affecting people in general. The way we are reading is quite different in the present many people will still read. People can sill read books intently if they are engaged enough in the topic. The presence of the new technology is what is more frightening to me. Today's society is set on immediacy. We want things in the fastest and quickest way possible. Everything is more focused on the efficiency for which things can be done. For example, the way one receives news is quite different from just five years ago. Now the anybody with a blog can be a "journalist". Also, with social networking sites such as twitter, the way we receive news has come to 140 words or less. This alone says enough about not just what Google has done to our society, but what technological advances have done to us.

Best Thing I found On The Internet

I think the best thing I have found is a website I was recently introduced to in the fall. The name of the website is Reddit. It is a website where users can submit content in the form of text or by picture. I think it is a very underrated website for gathering news and other such things. I can go to sub-categories on Reddit which are anything to politics to a funny page. The website makes way for some very interesting content. It can also be resourceful as a way of seeing what is relevant in the news. For example, especially during the election and the fiscal cliff I would gather my news from this website. I would be able to get articles from reputable sources daily. By using this website I can see which articles were good or informative. It provides a better alternative compared to google news. I feel with the wide range of topics to be searched and explored, I feel like Reddit is one of the best websites around.

Article Response

Organizational structure is playing a key part in the Internet in present day. Do people need oncology or organization when using the web? Before the Internet we used to use to have a more structured view when organizing systems. With the birth and rise of the Internet all of that has changed dramatically. With the rise of the Internet in the past 20 years or so organization and oncology have changed drastically. With search engines such as google, oncology is almost non-existent. Why is this change significant? Google went in the opposite direction of their competitor Yahoo with this move. With Google's move organization and hierarchy of a system became much more obsolete. Google by doing this isn't telling us in advance what we really need. People will search through google and google will do its best to support it. It's important to know these types of specifics regarding the Internet. We consume the Internet daily, use it in our everyday lives but are unaware of how it truly works. By understanding the Internet's change in categorization and what oncology is will bring us a step closer to understanding this phenomenon. By doing this people become more active users of the Internet. by doing this we are learning the characteristics of the entity itself . A quote from Bandi Mhuhi makes light of a point in terms of the Internet. "It's time we start asking questions about technology. Where does it come from?"