"Build It!" Project

 

Head Architecht  - Amanda

Group Archivist - Andrew

Project Manager -  Jun

Photoman/Linkguy - Chris

 

- Cheif Architect, Amanda, established the foundation and erected the first two walls of what will eventually become our "Build It!" project. The style of our building is yet to be determined. Amanda has experimented with different wall textures such as tile, brick, and velvet, but has held off making decisions until the group meets in Second Life.

- All four group members went in world to start constructing the project. We took a group photo which we hope to display in our building on as a welcome sign. Amanda continued to build while the other group members uploaded their pictures and and set the links to the wikipages.

- Amanda has come to realize how daunting a task it is to be head architect. Her progress has been hindered by the disappearance of objects and the constraints of limited territory. Chris, meanwhile, has been collecting photos from group members and has been fixating them on the walls of our house. He is currently having difficulty linking each photo to their respective web pages, but has contacted group mentor Skagen Vica for help.

- With our Final Research Project and other exams and term papers all on our plate this last week of the semeseter, the workers of Group 2 have gone in-world individually to make small adjustments on the house.

 

Blog of our "Build-it" project updates (by: Jun)

 

(12/03/2008   6:45p.m.)

We met at the library (the one in the reality), and rented a study room to work on the “build-it” project. Amanda has built four walls and one side of the roofs before, so she is nominated to be the head architect. Andrew chooses to be the group architect. Chris and I become the project managers. I am responsible for writing the blog and he will do arrange pictures inside our house. We decided that we would take a group picture on the bridge and wrap it around a cylinder which was made in the center of our house. Everyone is excited and doing great.

 

(12/03/2008   7:15p.m.)

Chris had attached our group photo to the cylinder successfully (see picture one). We called him a “photoman”. He tried to link our group page to the picture, but there were some problems. Chris planned to contact our new class mentor Skagen Vica. Amanda had putted on all sides of the roof and she also built a stair inside the house (see picture two). Great thanks given to Amanda. So, now we have two floors.

 

                                 

                                             picture one: our group picture on a cylinder

 

 

                                

                                                 picture two: Chris is walking on the stair

 

(12/03/2008   7:45p.m.)

Skagen Vica replied us and she said that she would be here in fifteen minutes. Oh, the back side of the roof was mysteriously missing; Amanda was angry about it. Andrew was trying different textures, and we had what looked like in picture three: green walls (aim for environmentally friendly). Unfortunately, Chris was upset about this color. For us to have a bigger inner space, architect Andrew decided to move the stair outside and we decided that we would not build a front door. Instead, Andrew suggested putting on a bead curtain. 

 

                                    

                                        picture three: our "enviromentally friendly" house

 

(12/03/2008   8:15p.m.)

After about two hours in the room, Chris got a bit bored. He decided to set up huge signs with our photos in other two groups’ sites for advertising (see picture four). Skagen Vica dropped us a note card of the script for doing web linkage. Amanda and Andrew were still working on changing colors of different parts of the house. Andrew and Chris had uploaded their photos. We are almost done. EXCELLENT JOB!

 

                               

                                                            picture four: Advertising...

 

(12/04/2008   4:15p.m.)

We are in the English class, and Dr.Essid just pointed out that Chris didn't make the picture signs he put in other goups' sites "share". He need to fix this problem.

 

(12/11/2008  12:00p.m.)

First, great thanks to Amanda, our house is done. It looks like a very modern art gallery (see picture five and six). One problem left is that Amanda hasn't posed her photo yet and Andrew's photo is not linked to his page. There is also one "un-shared" object created by Amanda near our house. I happened to meet Andrew before I logged off and he would try to link his picture. I IMed both Amanda and Chris about the problems.

 

Picture five: the  outside of our house

 

Picture six: the inside of our house

---

 

 

 

Writing In-Class for Oct 28: Identifying Offensive Claims

 

1. Claims identified by each group member

 

"In an age where entertainment is more of a demand than a request, new users are unlikely to remain in Second Life where the initial most intriguing activity is customizing one’s character"

 

(Chris:) AJ Tan makes a very definitive claim with this statement. The claim belittles virtual worlds, Second Life in particular, by arguing that getting deeply involved with them is nearly impossible. It comes across like Tan makes fun of Second Life, as highlighted by the following paragraph, by stating that activities in world become quite boring and mundane after a short period of time. He emphasizes this when he jokes that once you become bored with the activities in Second Life, changing your avatar’s appearance is the only other entertaining activity.

(Jun:) This claim may be offensive because of the word choices, and especially the part that he describes SL as “where the initial most intriguing activity is customizing one’s character”. The adjectives “initial” and “most intriguing” create a sense of irony, and I feel he simply looks down on all the people who remain in the Second Life.

"Virtual worlds were built as a sort of great equalizer." 

 

(Andrew:) The fact that Tan calls it a “great equalizer” implies that Second Life users spend time in the virtual world to compensate for what they lack in real life. This could be a number of things such as, style, knowledge, romance, or wealth.” Tan adds that anyone can enter and create “an entirely new personality” and that avatar interactions are fueled by “anonymity.” This suggests that even the “cool” avatars are controlled by real life “losers” who are looking to escape real world social hierarchies through virtual freedoms of expression.

 

"Virtual worlds are supposed to be an escape from reality – Second Life is too close a parallel to the real thing.”

 

(Amenda:) This claim can be seen as offensive because Tan is dictating the purpose of virtual worlds and how they should be focused on entertainment; however, Second Life is not a game but it is more of a tool.  I agree with Tan in the sense that Second Life closely mirrors real life in terms of what avatars do, but at the same time it is an escape from reality because in the real world one would not be able to appear as an animal or create massive structures with the wave of a hand.  I would argue with Tan and say that if one is looking for game like entertainment that there are plenty other opportunities outside of Second Life.  Second Life residents may find this claim offensive because without the ‘real life’ similarity of Second Life they would be unable to make a lively hood in Second Life and argue that Tan does not understand the business aspect of Second Life.  I must also question where Tan went in Second Life, because when visiting IBM one does not escape from the real world, but there are definitely islands that allow avatars to experience a fantasy.

 

2. A short comment about one of Tan's claim:

     While AJ Tan’s essay comes across as very bold from the opinion of the average middle-aged Second Life user, we feel as though his claims directly reflect the opinions and views of typical adolescents and young adults. In his essay, Tan shows the reader why he became disinterested with Second Life by suggesting that “There is no continuity, no over-arching story to keep me interested. Unlike modern games that allow you to reach conclusions by taking some path, Second Life has neither a conclusion nor a path” (Tan). In a period of time where amusement and success are goal-orientated and measured through achievement, members of our generation have difficulty attaining these standards through virtual worlds, which tend to be broad and lack obvious objectives. With nothing to work towards residents gain entertainment through altering their appearances or ‘greifing,’ and these forms of entertainment can only be amusing for a sort period of time. Therefore, Tan argues that only residents that have businesses can stay long in Second Life because they use SL as a tool to make money. Unlike people who aimlessly seek for entertainment, businessmen have clear goals: making profit in SL. Giving the example of business people in Second Life, Tan contradicts himself by simply saying that “SL has neither a conclusion nor a path”. Hence, the problem is who the player is behind the screen. Second Life is a virtual world designed for middle aged people, who use SL as an extension of real world rather than a completely opposite. They do things that they may be not able to do in reality because of the social or physical restrictions. SL is a stage for them to turn dreams into truth. Being a college student only, Tan has a limited perspective about SL. We agree with him to an extent that SL is a bit too simple for adolescents, but we also think it is still pretty intriguing to the majority middle-aged players.

---

Writing In-Class for Sept. 9: finding binaries & assumptions

 

MEMBERS CONTRIBUTING: Brittany (wiki-editor), Amanda, Andrew, and Chris F.

 

One group member will be our wiki-editor for the page. Others will take notes in their comp books but everyone needs to help to make this work (I'll grade this page and you all share the fate of whomever participates).  This exercise will help you focus your own short assignment due this week.

 

Your tasks are as follows:

 

• Use strategies 1-4, on pp. 74-75 of your textbook, to question the binaries in this question:

  "Do virtual worlds like Second Life change the nature of how we interact online?"

• THEN reformulate the question using strategy #5 on p. 76. Write your reformulation below.
• THEN examine what you have written and list any assumptions for your reformulated question. Here you would also consider what sort of additional evidence you'd need, if you had as much time as possible to do research.  Try the four steps on pp. 78-79 to guide you in digging deeply into your question.

 

ORIGINAL Q:

 

"Do virtual worlds like Second Life change the nature of how we interact online?"

 

GROUP'S REFORMULATION:

 

Will virtual worlds like Second Life become the dominant form of human interaction? 

 

ASSUMPTIONS and STEPS to uncover them:

 

1. This step includes paraphasing the explicit claim by finding some underlying assumptions in the claim. We came up with the assumption that virtual worlds will become so beneficial that they will become the dominant form of communication between people. 

2. This step involves listing the implicit ideas that seems to assume to be true. One that we came up with is that the current form of communication between people is able to be replaced by virtual worlds. Another is that the communication between people in virtual worlds is different from the current form of communication used today. 

3. Step 3 requires us to define some key terms in the claim. The first is beneficial. When referring to this term we are meaning that virtual worlds will offer many advantages to people such as that they never have to leave their homes to interact with others. The other term is dominant. In referring to dominance we are implying that it will be the most common form of communication even possibly replacing other forms of communication all together.

4. An oppositional stance to this claim is virtual worlds are not beneficial.

 

EVIDENCE NEEDED:

 

We would need to understand whether or not Second Life is beneficial which is a prerequisite to it becoming a dominant form of communication. Thus we would need to have some data and research on this topic.