Remain Calm and Centered
SHIAI GEIKO

• Think of a rock in the ocean—still while water flows around it

 

• The rock is centered, calm—the water is energy, activity, noise
• If the rock gives in to the water, it gets washed away, out of control and at the mercy of the ocean’s random action
• The rock can take energy from the water [qi-mana] without giving control to the water
  

  Taking Control of Yourself
  SEME

• Clearing away YOUR demons
• TAKE THE INITIATIVE
• Place yourself in a control IN THOSE ITEMS YOU CAN SHAPE OR CONTROL

• Much of your world will be outside your control:
  • BUT you can still control YOUR REACTION TO IT
• Practice saying:
  • “NO, I’M SORRY I CAN’T” to requests from both inside yourself and from others

Situational Awareness
ZANSHIN

• Be constantly alert and aware of your surroundings
• Be ready to deal both with he unexpected and the predictable
• This will also help you empathize with others

Healing

• Pause in a quiet place and feel your fingers—what is your body trying to tell you?
• Breathing exercises
• Even out your breathing

Breathe from your lower diaphragm—move your stomach to breathe, not your chest

Advanced Meditation

• Remove distractions
• Sit or stand in a relaxed stance
• Imagine yourself Rooted to the ground
• Note your breathing
• Let yourself become aware of your surroundings
• What to you hear? Far away?
• What do you smell?
• What do you feel on your skin?

What is the quality of light that you see?  What colors?  What movement?

Self evaluation

• What has worked for you?
• Why did it work—how was it useful?
• What hasn’t worked for you?
• Why didn’t it work?
• Build on your successes: what other approaches may work for you?
• How can you modify the successes to make the whole a better fit for your needs and goals?

• Konane was not elitist—everyone played it, all the time
• In konane who takes the most pieces is irrelevant–you win by making your opponent powerless, not by conquering (as in chess) or destruction (as in checkers).
• The complexity of konane is in the control of paths through space: this makes it radically different than chess, which is basically a wargame, or checkers
• The look and feel of the board and pieces reflects the importance of all the senses
• My personal set is seen below: the white are turbo shell operculums from Hawaiian archaeological sites; the black are waterworn stones from Kahikinui Maui beaches
• 
• The Hawaiian world view is dominated by dualism—every aspect of existence has an opposite
• In konane the contrasting sets of pieces and their relationship (visually) with the board reflects this principle
• Konane pieces must contrast both in texture and color
• Konane boards varied in size from 6×6 rows up to 15×12 rows; the most common patterns were 7×6; 9×7; 9×8; 9×9; 11×10; 12×11 and 14×11
• The board below is made from mango.  Notice how two different sets of pieces look on this wood, in contrast to the bamboo or mahogany boards in the other pictures.
• 

Konane Rules

• All pieces are laid out in alternating order
• Black player starts—must remove one piece at the board center [see below]
• White player then removes one piece next to the missing black piece [see below]
• Black then moves and so on
• All moves are in a straight line, NO diagonals
• You can NOT change direction during a move—straight line only
• In each turn you MUST huli [hop over] at least one of your opponent’s pieces—which is then removed.  You DO NOT have to make multiple huli if you don’t want to
• You cannot move through empty spaces, nor can you jump over your own pieces
• The 1st player who can’t huli looses [immobilized]
• White below still has several moves (huli) possible, black does not–black has lost

• 

The Avatar as the New Self

If you’ve watched the Facebook April 17 presentation on Facebook Spaces [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/04/facebook-spaces/], their now functional virtual social world, then the concept of the avatar should come to mind.  That Facebook sees avatars as the new platform for social communication and dialog is telling on a number of levels.  If nothing else, it should certainly reawaken interest Second Life and its new version Sansar.

 

But at a more basic level it brings us back to the whole issue of realities and the increasingly artificial distinction between physical reality, social realities and digital realities which we’ve looked at this semester.

 

In the traditional (say pre-1995 w0rld), physical-social reality were cohesive and intertwined.  Your individual sense of who and what you were (your internalized self) was largely driven by the input of others.  Identity and image were largely a result of externalized forces.  Self-expression and self-identity were constrained by the demands and expectations of others, and the internal ego was largely limited to art and literature (diaries anyone?).  The sense of being “trapped” by the demands and expectations of the ‘real world’ were dominant.

 

In the contemporary early 21^st century world social reality has moved into the digital and has largely become divorced from physical reality.  They now compete for time and attention.  Given the asynchronous nature of social media, this has allowed the growth of self-identity into social reality.  Your individual sense of who and what you are now drives how you image and present yourself in social media, and how others perceive you.  Identity and image are now largely the result of ego-based choice.  Given the essentially limitless ability to find a group of like-minded people to support you, you can find public acceptance of who you want to be seen as.

 

But the digital is not the same as the physical.  Being part of a group and social network doesn’t mean you have anyone to hang out with at the beach, go drinking together–all those activities which require physical co-presence.  With the increasing popularity of Augmented Reality platforms, the need for physical co-presence may become less of an issue.   You can interact with your physical surroundings while interacting digitally–digital co-presence without physical co-presence.  The implications for group membership, group identity, relationships–all these will change as technology continues to impact on our social lives in changing ways.

 

Social interaction, social identity and realities in general are changing.  Into what is the question.

VIRTUAL REALITY-AUGMENTED REALITY

Multiple Modes to Reality-Virtual, Augmented Reality

This will be our last topic of the semester so it’s only appropriate we look at the emerging realities—the immersive, but isolating virtual reality of Oculus Rift (including the Samsung system in my office you can check out) or the augmented reality seen in the Microsoft vid a couple of weeks ago.

In both cases the goal is to replace the screen-keyboard experience of the PC (or game console/phone) with something more portable, more attuned to normal movements such as hand gestures.  Virtual reality systems by definitions must be immersive since their goal is to replace reality with a digital reality.  This has been the dream since Star Trek’s holodeck (see nice Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck) .  In VR the user is immersed in the digital reality, theoretically with all senses being equally functional as in the real world.  However in contemporary tech this involves a isolated headset with screen.

As Castronova, Yee and others have noted in work on games and Second Life, the brain quickly assumes what it senses is real.  It is quite common for people to get motion sickness while in VR headsets.  The bulk and control-interface issues keep VR on the fringe, though Facebook has sunk a huge sum of money into VR as the new platform for social media.  A good example of VR can be seen in the Steam vid at https://youtu.be/qYfNzhLXYGc?t=4.  Note the isolation from reality.

By contrast, augmented reality (AR) uses projection to place aspects of digital reality into physical reality.  A good example would be the recent Microsoft Hololens HoloTour demo vid https://youtu.be/pLd9WPlaMpY?t=2, with an excellent summary in the ColdFusion vid https://youtu.be/NwY-6sQDYnk?t=9.  As ColdFusion notes, it is intentionally designed with reality integration as a goal.  Having said that, note that in both cases they want to move you from reality to the digital form.  Given the huge $$$ being poured into this, robust functional versions are likely by 2019 (as in commercially available).  This leaves several questions, not the least is what will happen to the smartphone makers as phones disappear.  Again note that this fits well with the Microsoft demo vid we saw before [https://youtu.be/w-tFdreZB94?t=6].  Note the lack of any phone, with flextablets as work spaces.

Whichever technology, the issues of addiction to digital forms and all the other issues we’ve seen this semester will be amplified.  We will discuss the potential for amplified stress points in our last Hangout session Wednesday—think back to the Catfishing episode and online dating—and now mix that in with the Steam and/or Microsoft demos–how does that change the whole pattern of social interaction, with avatars?  Who would be the ‘real you’?  How big of a jump into a digitized version of “Surrogates” [https://youtu.be/UGwQ74cH5O0?t=7] ?  See you on the other side.

MMORPGS: THE LONG-TERM SOCIAL IMPACTS?

If you look at the MMORPG powerpoint you will see several points that drive this post.  A number of studies show that social interaction in gaming is central to the experience.  This can be more important than other aspects of the game world, or conversely awkward social interaction design can doom an otherwise attractive game world.

But while MMORPGs share this desire with social interaction with the more free-form social virtual worlds (such as SL), they are (unlike SL), very structured, controlled virtual environments designed by a development company.  All aspects of the gaming world, such as goals, images, dialog and almost every other aspect of the experience are programmed by the company who built the MMORPG.  In this way they are different from the more fluid social virtual worlds such as SL.

This can be seen in the quote from Yee’s work: “Online games are like school in many ways.  Both provide predefined rewards for a set of highly constrained and objectively measured activities… Wherever you are in the education treadmill, you know exactly where you are, where you’ll be next, and how to get there.  For about sixteen years of our lives, this is the model of progress we are all taught.  And then we’re let loose into the real world, where these rules go away.  Goals are no longer defined for you.  Performance in many jobs has no clear objective measure… The real world is tough, and it’s often unfair.

Not so in online games.  Everyone who kills the evil bandit gets the same amount of experience points.  Goals are clear, predefined, and fair.  Your achievements are displayed in a multitude of easy-to-read progress bars.” (Nick Yee Proteus Paradox 2014: 34-5)

Yee also notes that this structure—of a predictable progression leading to clearly defined goals—can be very attractive compared to the chaotic nature of reality.  As Bauerlein notes, digital media can encourage self-directed and self-centered attitudes, especially in the 10-25 age group.  Rather than larger social networks, this shrinks into a smaller group sharing common experiences.  His argument is based on digital reality in general rather than gaming specifically, but he sees gaming as being a factor with some groups.

This brings us to one of the biggest fears of digital gaming–that of the gamer turning into “otaku”, of someone who is so consumed with their digital realm that it starts to play a dominant role in their real existence.  Or at it’s most extreme, the “hikikomori” who basically removes themself from much of reality to spend the majority of their time in their digital world.  Both these concepts have been around in Japanese society for the last several decades, with hikikomori coming to more general attention in the last 15 years [feel free to google both and see what you get]. [Remember your earlier reading].

Note that this shift in real-world social engagement (or shifting orientation) is very different than the older concerns about gaming as a trigger for anti-social behavior [including in SL terms, ‘griefing’].  This has been around since pinballs in the 1950s but grew in volume with the growth of gaming consoles in the 1980+ period.  As the gaming media has shifted, and as the quality (especially visual) has improved, the concerns have grown, despite the lack of compelling evidence to show a clear correlation between explicit anti-social games and real-world anti-social behavior.  A current example of this issue can be seen if you google “gaming addiction”, an example being at this website= http://www.techaddiction.ca/computer_game_addiction.html

The issue of gaming addiction [more accurately gaming compulsion] is treated very seriously in Asian societies, in part due to the heavy expectations placed on 10-25 age group to fulfill family and social expectations.  So anything that gets in the way of academic success is treated harshly.  This can be seen in the documentary on gaming addiction intervention at https://youtu.be/uOm5aXXjzzM?t=11.  This can also be seen in a number of articles such as the one by Li et al (2012) “Effects of Digital Game Play Among Young Singaporean Gamers” JVWR 5:2 Sept. 2012).  A common thread to most of these is the escapism/irresponsible wasting of time, rather than the projection of gaming violence into the real world.

It’s of interest given our topics that gaming addiction is seen as a much more troubling phenomena socially than social media addiction.  In your view, why?  This will be one of our topics in the next Hangout session.

From a functional standpoint, MMOs are fascinating as they are one of the most successful of the financial forays into online social engagement.

The earlier model of social gaming worlds would be the subscription model (Everquest, World of Warcraft, EVE…) where you pay a fee to enter and play the game.  Given that MMOs are incredibly expensive to develop (same as a high-end Hollywood movie—60-90 million USD), and there is the cost of maintaining the system (upgrades, control) they needed a robust guaranteed means of income.

With increasing Web 2.0 access a second model has grown and now dominates much of the market—that of “free to play” but to save/enhance/progress in the game it involves payment.  This coincides and has been driven (in part) by the growth of portable (phone) gaming in contrast to the traditional PC.  The chance of catching a huge global market if popular (Minecraft anyone?) means that a new set of paradigms in game design grow up—graphics drop in importance, but other aspects of story or game play take precedence.

The need to design compatible cross-platform (phone-PC-console) versions that are all attractive and compelling puts even greater strain on game design companies, dramatically raising the costs of developing A new product.  Another developing threat is the independent development of games in APPs, which can be done by a small team for small cost (Forge of Empires is a good example).

This pattern has some analogies to popular music—the big labels vs independents—who wins ($$$), who loses is much less predictable than just 10 years ago. All of which increases the risk of MMORPG development dramatically.

Social Research: There have been several major areas of interest in the study of MMOs.  A few games (especially World of Warcraft-WOW) has been the subject of several ethnographic and sociological studies [Nardi’s 2010 My Life as a Night Elf Priest; Bainbridge’s 2010 The Warcraft Civilization; and Pearce’s 2009 Communities of Play].  All of these studies focus on the users (gamers) and their social dynamics.

There has also been a large but not coherent amount of research done on the social-psychological aspects of intensive gaming, much of it driven originally by concerns about the social impacts of playing very violent anti-social games (much of it around Grand Theft Auto in its various versions).

In another direction, work by Nick Yee and others on the Daedalus Project, studying gamers and gaming motivation [why to people play games and what do they want from a game] came up with interesting findings.  He has expanded this into a career with his company Quantic Foundry [http://quanticfoundry.com/] and with his 2014 The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us-and How They Don’t.

I would recommend that you go to the QF website and take their survey as they give you where you fit in the ongoing gamer motivation study.

Assignment: Please watch his recent presentation on YTube “Gamer Motivation Profile Findings” https://youtu.be/YZwiQd-0xqQ?t=6.

The last area of [very limited] study has been the cultural impacts on gaming—some of which Nick refers to in his presentation.  We will get into this more next week.

Remember the Hangout session Wed 12:30 where we will look at issues of motivation.  If you haven’t already, go back and watch the EVE vid clips I sent several weeks ago.

The Future of Virtual Social Worlds

The current development of 2^nd Gen social worlds seems to be moving in two very different directions.  Direction 1:  An updated-improved Second Life type experience, where the key is an open platform with the users/residents building most (if not all) of the in-world experience.  These will look a lot like SL, but faster, more robust, tablet-friendly…  They directly link to the existing SL model, with tweeks to enhance popularity, user numbers and also multiple revenue streams.  Key players here would be Sansar (by Linden Labs, the developers of Second Life) and Space.

Direction 2: New platforms driven by the ideal of social interaction in 3D, or the merging of virtual reality into social interaction.  This is less driven by the user creativity, and more driven by social interaction/”hanging out”.  These players would include High Fidelity (Rosedale, the original designer of Second Life) and Facebook (Zuckerberg’s team).  There is a lot more money in model 2, as this is also more complex but is also seen as the “next generation of social media”.

Note how both directions use the only robust, long-term example of social worlds, Second Life, as their model.  But they interpret very different futures—one on virtual world interaction, where much of the driving energy is based on digital landscape interaction; the other on social interaction with other people—or if you would things-places or people.

I would like a reaction paper on the following:

Take a minute to go think back through the Second Life material, and through your own experiences in SL.

IF someone was going to spend a couple of years and millions of USD$, what changes would be most attractive to drawing you in to use the APP—what would make a social virtual world attractive to you, a place for you to spend time, and for what purpose(s)?

You might want to go to YTube and look at the recent demos for these various platforms and see which ones, if any, you find more compelling than SL.  Remember that Facebook is gambling that within 3-5 years you will not be using your phone at all, but will be immersed in a virtual social APP.  When you have this first part done, go and look at the “Microsoft Future Productivity” video demo from 2015 at YTube= https://youtu.be/w-tFdreZB94?t=150 and see where this fits in.  I

should note that everything in the Microsoft video is around at least in beta form.  This will be your world in 2022 (or so)—what do you think of it?  How ready are you for it?

Part 1 [MODULE 7A-Virtual Worlds; MODULE 7AB SL Observations]

The division of virtual worlds into gaming vs. social is somewhat arbitrary, but i will argue that there are three major differences:

1) Second Life and most of the “new build” Social worlds [Space, Sansar and High Fidelity] are user-built.  Almost all items found in-world are constructed by residents, not by the owners of the world.  By contrast Gaming worlds are almost entirely constructed by the owners of the world, with resulting constraints on options to users.  If you want to, think of Second Life as being an expression of the Residents; gaming worlds such as Eve or WOW [World of Warcraft] are an expression of the owners of the world.

2) In-world economic systems in Social virtual worlds are largely user-user driven, with most economic transactions being of one user purchasing something from another user.  The owners of the world get revenue from a combination of land rental fees and micro-transaction fees from the in-world revenue system (think a bank in RL where you have your checking account).  Gaming worlds usually charge a fee to progress in the game or to play it at all (WOW for example).

3) Social virtual worlds do not have goals, and individuals don’t compete with each other to gain/win something—there are no challenges per se.  By contrast Gaming worlds are built on the concept of competition (hence ‘gaming’ worlds) so they tend to be programmatic, sequential and competitive.  They almost invariably have some storyline, which includes paths through which all players share.

What they have in common is the social aspect—all successful Gaming worlds have found that social interaction (and frequently cooperation) are central to the popularity of the APP, and the most durable have very strong social virtual communities which persist over long periods of time.  This can be seen in Pearce’s work on a group of players in the gaming world of Uru (think Myst) that migrated as a group to Second Life when Uru was closed [Pearce, Celia & Tom Boellstorff 2011 Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games].  The fact that this diaspora occurred is an indicator of how strong the social relationships in the supposedly fragile digital world can be.  Again, think back on the emotional impact of the Catfish episode we saw.

Look over the first Module (7A), a general one looking at some of the information on virtual worlds.  Then go through Module 7AB, which is basically a very short summary of the geographical research I did in Second Life several years ago.  Look at this data from the standpoint of a unique, long-term social digital world that has no gaming value or goals.

We will now try to tie together the discussion points on social media to date.  One theme that is rapidly gaining traction (and also supporting data) is that social media has the potential to become an addictive behavior.  This is probably best argued in Nancy Colier’s 2016 The Power of OFF: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World.  She labels this phenomena Technoholism, and notes that one of the more terrifying aspects of it’s potential is that fact that overuse of the social media is not only socially acceptable, but is condoned and in fact encouraged (especially in the U.S.).  Dialog about the negative negatives of over-dependence on social media, psychological or physiological dependencies do not get discussed.

.  This becomes critical when you look at the following stats from 2015:

“A recent study found that the average person spends approximately 12 hours per day looking at a screen, with digital media being the most ingested form.  The computer occupies more than 5 hours of our day, whit mobile devices coming in second at more than 2 hours per day.  And the numbers are rising quickly: it’s reported that a child born in 2013 will have spent a year of her life in front of a screen by the age of 7.” (Colier 2016: 24-5)

NOW take a look at the following short videos (all just 2-3 minutes each):

• Zurich Insurance video: https://youtu.be/wncZPE7NMVI?t=68

What are they worried about in terms of social media and their industry?  In your view is it over-reaction?

How does this video apply to you personally?

• How Social Media is changing your Brain: https://youtu.be/HffWFd_6bJ0?t=33

This video uses the same arguments and data as Colier does in her book in regards to technology addiction [technoholism].

How compelling are the arguments?

Do you see any evidence of these claims in yourself and your friends?

How does this video tie into the discussion about the attraction of controlling the presentation of self (asynchronous) as seen in Facebook or other social media—in contrast to live interaction or a phone call?

Watch these two related videos about smartphone:: https://youtu.be/W6CBb3yX9Zs?t=30  and https://youtu.be/RpmIkWfH2ks?t=87

How many of these impacts were you aware of prior to the videos?

Do these videos change the way you look at smartphones and social media usage?

We will be going over these questions tomorrow in hangouts so have some thoughts ready to share [Wed. 12:30]

The second point would be the global nature of the phenomena of social media.  If Miller is right, then we must separate the APP from the social use and impacts of the APP, which will vary dramatically from society to society.  Miller’s work on Trinidadian Facebook use is good case in point, as Americans have a very ethnocentric view of the social impacts of APPs.

The long-term impact of social media usage won’t probably be clearly seen for another 5-6 years, but some trends are already accepted.  One is that rather than the assumed growth of globalized social norms and values, the realities appears to be that social norms and values have become more compartmentalized.

Colier notes that accepting alternate viewpoints or interpretations is not as necessary today due to technology:

“Information syndrome, on the other hand, solidifies what we already believe, ensuring our “rightness” and thus making growth less likely or possible.  Accommodation is no longer necessary in the information age.  There is enough information for everyone to be “right” and maintain a barricaded system so that we don’t have to encounter disruption or contradiction… Technology allows us to instantly find the facts that support what we already believe.” (Colier 2016: 35)

It is possible that rather than a unifying force, social media may lead to us becoming more isolated in ever-smaller communities of people who mirror our likes and dislikes—innumerable  digital-only communities.

This is the first to the panel sets to look at one of our major themes, the social impacts of APPs.  In the last week I have had several people mention that they like texting rather than talking (the phone call) as they feel more in control.  This issue of control of image and situation appears to be central factor or motive driving the current use of APPs.  What makes it perplexing is that any number of studies point out that people are actually disclosing a lot more about themselves at a very personal level online at the same time they want more control.

This is a major theme in the BreakUp 2.0 studies: that relationships collapse due to personal information disclosed on social media sites, especially photos that then get misinterpreted (?) by the significant other.  From my POV as a dinosaur the puzzle is why post it at all if it can lead to issues?

The imperative to post every aspect of our lives for public (or more accurately, the select public) consumption seems almost to have become a need that has to be satisfied, with potential consequences not in the equation.  Even more striking is that this is not based on close social proximity, but rather on digital relationships.

When you look through the panels you will likely note the emphasis on 15-18 year-olds, which is a reflection of the literature rather than a critical demographic group.

Think over what changes you would make if talking about your colleagues (undergraduate college students)—would the analysis look the same, or be different?  How?  This is an example of using the critical thinking from the Learning training on these panels.

I really like Schomaker’s discussion of ‘colonizing’ in the context of the avatar (panel 4) as she makes it clear that we construct our digital image—it’s not a passive process.

The second key concept here is that which came up during the last election cycle here in the U.S., that of the perceptual bubble.  The narrowing of POV seems like a rather obvious scenario today, but it’s important to remember that WEB 2.0 was based on global dissemination of information, broaden one’s horizons—not narrow them.  So how did Wikipedia, the Gutenberg Project and Zuckerberg’s vision of Facebook from 10 years ago turn into the perceptual bubble?

At this point we are probably too much still within the situation to be able to adequately analyze it, but these issues are central to the need for more research like what we’re looking at this semester.  It also points out the need to look at older social interaction platforms (which some of you are familiar with), especially online gaming and virtual worlds—both of which have major functions as social platforms.

Work done on clans/factions in World of Warcraft and Eve Online, along with work on communities in Second Life (think of Pleasantville) seem to have suggested the ‘narrowing’ of Web 2.0 into very small discrete communities.

As you look through this and the next (5C Social Behavior) panels try projecting where you see all this going in the next 5-10 years.