Government 2.0

               I was very surprised when I read UltraAyla's post discussing President-Elect Obama's plans of recording his weekly address as a YouTube video that will be posed on his web site Change.gov. This has never been done before and is a great example of how video blogs and the internet in general has become such a big part of our lives. Also, I think this is a great demonstration of how Obama is very connected to the younger generation. One of his main point throughout his campaign for presidency was change and clearly his is changing a few things already

               As I continued to read the responding post to the question posed by UltraAyla, I noticed a lot of people felt that it was unnecessary to do this because most wont even bother watching the videos. However, it is my argument that although most probably wont watch it, some will, even if its only one person. Also, people are much more interested in what is going on with government and the news these days, so maybe people will watch. President Bush's candidacy left a lot of Americans upset with their government and questioning its authenticity. I think having a very open government is exactly what we need in order for Americans to gain back trust in their government. 

              I think the younger generations will be effected the most by this change. Older people don't utilize the internet very much because they didn't grow up with it the way that we did, so it's not an ordinary part of everyday life for them like it is for us. I think this is a great strategy to get younger people more involved in their government. Our generation gets a lot of slack for not being involved and not taking action towards what goes on in this country. By making governmental issues more accessible to us by putting them on a medium that is most used by young people, maybe we will be more involved. Young people don't know what's going on because they would rather watch a dumb reality show about a bunch of idiots then tune into the news. 

            Another advantage to broadcasting his addresses on his web site, is that his words will not be manipulated by a news forums. Channels like Fox are known to be very right winged conservative and often report news from their point of view. In this case, people can watch the videos and make their own judgements and reach their own conclusions about what is going on. 

           In conclusion, I think that what Obama is doing is great. He is continuing to hold true to his words and speeches about change. He truly is taking steps towards a new America, where things are open and transparent. His openness give me great confidence that he will be a good president that will do good things for our country, because he clearly has nothing to hide. GO BARACK! 

     

Net Neutrality A MUST!

According to Wikipedia, network neutrality is when a neutral broadband network is free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached and on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonable degraded by other communication streams. Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor, defines network neutrality as, “A network design principle that allows maximally useful public information network that aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.”
Network neutrality is an issue causing a lot of debate. On one side of the debate is the broadband companies who feel that have the right to control what applications and content their subscribers are utilizing on the Internet. By doing this, they can make sure that users are obtaining data from their own sponsors or media interests. On the other side, are people that believe broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.
As we all know money makes the world go round, and certain companies are willing to pay phone and cable companies an extra fee in return for filtering content and favoring certain Web sites and applications. What it means to filter and favor certain web pages means that the content on those cites will load faster work more efficiently and overall work a lot better. While other web pages not favored by these companies will load very slowly or not at all. However, those on the side of non-neutrality argue that with Web sites like Google, the Internet is already bias against smaller competitors because popular cites like Google have a performance advantages.
I can see where both side are coming from in this debate. Broadband providers are right that big companies like Google do have great advantages over their smaller competitors, but at the same time the smaller competitors are not the ones that are going to be able to afford to pay off the phone and cable companies, therefore allowing non-neutrality definitely would not make the internet more equal in any way. It is my opinion that the Internet was created to allow anyone who has access to it to obtain information on whatever they want from wherever they want, and I think that principle should remain. The only reason why companies would be against neutrality when it comes to the Internet are greedy CEO’s looking for more money because apparently they aren’t already rich enough.
More than anything, I think network neutrality should 100% be mandatory in the United States. Countries like China and Saudi Arabia that are not democratic filter out news content on the Internet in order to prevent their citizens from obtaining information in order to suppress them. The US on the other hand is a democracy and although I know that the reason why companies here want to prevent their users from accessing certain information is to lower their competition with other websites that provide the same things and not to suppress us, we still should have the choice to go to do whatever we want.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality November 14th

Gaming.. get your moneys worth!

According to Wikipedia, virtual economies are an emergent economy existing in a virtual persistent world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an Internet game. Linden dollars is the official currency used by gamers exchanging things over the web. There are five different characteristics of virtual properties; rivalry, persistence, interconnectivity, secondary markets and value added by users (Wikipedia). When these qualities exist, virtual economies closely mirror contemporary economies.
When you first think of any of the aspects of virtual world, at least for me, they are viewed as fake, only existing for entertainment purposes. However, virtual economies are very real. The existence of economies in online games makes them more like the “real” world, because it makes them actually effect your real life since one uses “real” money to pay for virtual items. This is made very clear in the virtual game Second Life, because it provides users with Linden dollars to real dollars conversion. By providing users with different aspects of real life in the virtual world, these games are no longer seen as virtual reality, for many people virtual communities are their reality.
Second Life actively encourages players to buy and sell virtual property. According to Robert D. Hof, Second Life told users that if they paid them for virtual land, they could build whatever they wanted on the land and then charges others users Linden dollars in order to do things on the land, and then convert the Linden dollars into real money. This way both the owners of Second Life and its users are profiting from the existence of virtual economies in the game.
Every month, millions of Linden dollars are exchanged for goods and services created my Second Life users. One example of a virtual business a user could create is a bar. The person buys land, builds a bar, and then when different avatars come to the bar in order to socialize and meet others the creator of the bar and owner of the land can charge them for entering the bar and if two users are making good conversation one can possible buy the other a virtual drink in order to indicate that they are interested in the other person.
According to Wikipedia, this presented a problem for Second Life developers when Marc Bragg sued them in 2007. Bragg was kicked out of second life and turned around and filed a law suit against the developers because he had purchased virtual land from them when an active user and when he was banned from the game he no longer had access to property that belonged to him. In the end, Bragg was allowed back into the virtual world of Second Life and developers on longer advertised that purchasing virtual land meant that users owned that property.
World of Warcraft on the other hand, does not utilize the existences of a virtual economy. They actively discourage players to buy and sell virtual property using “real” money. Robert D. Hof thinks this is a result of the games long and interesting story lines, users spend all of their time going from one quest to the next. Adding in the element of a virtual economy would just be too much for this game. It isn't neccassary for this game and users enjoy it just as much without it.


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982010.htm November 7, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy November 7, 2008