This is Bogost's personal webpage and I thought it was interesting to look at not just to gather more info about Bogost, but also because the website itself has an interesting layout worth dissecting or borrowing for our own sites. :)

This seems like a smart commentary on many of the issues we're seeing in the book and it helps modernize the Miller v California debate. It's again, largely focused on the idea of policing rights which focuses on freedoms of expression.

I wanted to add this link to the famous court case of Miller v California that helped define pornography and its protection (or lack thereof) under the first amendment. There is a lot to discuss here regarding offensiveness and "social value" especially in regard to the fact that the case dates back to the 70's. Perhaps the same case would be tried differently today.

Considering how often we look at TED talks, I thought it might be worth including this fake TED talk used as a clip for the new Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus. I know this probably looks a little like getting off track, but I thought it was interesting that the author claims that humans have become gods through their acts of technological creation (in his case, "cyberkinetic individuals). Science fiction often does a great job extrapolating certain ideas or issues, and I think in some ways we can find links to the issue and use of Wikipedia in which we can freely take place in the act of creation or manipulation of a text and even the meaning behind the entries we change. Obviously this is not necessarily created in our own image the way a cyborg would be, but it is still using McLuhan's idea of the extension of man into the cyber world. The question we're left with here though, is whether or not we deserve the moniker of "creator" if we create anonymously.

And we know we couldn't avoid adding the thoughts of Michael Scott on the use of Wikipedia. Obviously, some of our sources seem to take a more genuine approach at propagating the veracity of Wikipedia, but the Office's use of Michael Scott as a supporter does represent people's general fear of the quality of contributor on the site.

I had to share this because it's just too funny but also seems to make an interesting critique on the problems with fact checking and collaborative and anonymous contributions to an encyclopedia. It also seems to make a commentary on how we establish relevancy by adding items (including ourselves) to these kinds of encyclopedias.

This is a google book that discusses some of the same things I mentioned in my post regarding the use of wikipedia and other networks and how that shapes our ideas of freedom.

This is an article that discusses the views of professional historians regarding wikipedia. I think it makes a number of interesting claims both regarding the management or historical data and wikipedia's role in promoting a particular historical paradigm.

This a brief look at combining some linguistic approaches to the content of wikipedia and asking questions about the shaping of the meaning of words.

This is the social networking homepage of a online gaming website, IGN. I wanted to share this because it seems to overtly combine the gaming and social elements of social media. It also, similar to the AXE site, allows users to follow certain products and claim an identity based on what products the user owns in comparison to other members of the community. Within the site itself members have some level of gaining badges and competing by listing and comparing their games and interacting with each other. Also, on the level of competition, there are prizes available for different interactions on this site which further invokes the sense of gaming and competition.

I talked about this in class and I've posted on this before, but when I first posted this the idea was still in the inchoate stages of development. Now you can click on different chapters of the story and there will be a menu on the right hand side that shows animated versions of people added to the story. By clicking on this drawing, the story will advance to the period where this person makes a guest appearance and will show the real photo used for the drawing which is sometimes a facebook profile picture. Why I think this is especially interesting is that it has elements of IF that are in use in electronic literature, but it also creates a participatory community based around a specific exigency which is buying products from AXE.

Of the different online accounts I have, Tumblr is one account I don't have and after reading O'Reilly and looking at the site I have to admit I'm a little fascinated by it. It seem like in many ways it's taken the parts of Myspace, facebook, and twitter that work and pasted them all together at once. In some senses this seems overwhelming, but just from the sample pages, what I see doesn't look entirely unlike what I'm creating for this class. I intentionally linked to the about page since I think there is a great deal of interesting info that feels like it came almost came straight out of O'Reilly's book especially in regard to building communities and allowing for participation, customization, and interaction. The home page also has some useful pieces worth exploring I think.

I'm posting this article because the author and this website are referenced in our book and I think this is also relevant to the ideas presented in O'Reilly's book. We often see discussions about knowing the audience and bringing them to certain and specific actions which brings into question the kind of rhetorical situations we react to online.

This is another satirical look at what's going on online and how sites like myspace seem to be loosing relevancy. In some ways the video is actually a little disturbing, but it does at least partially bring into question what makes a good social networking site and what causes us to favor sites like facebook over sites like myspace. For instance, was myspace too customizable to the point that it left the user with too many choices and left visitors feeling out of place every time they visited a page that blasted music at them they didn't actually enjoy?

This is a short cartoon that satirizes the experience of using twitter to communicate. It has some funny phrases including when one friend inquires about people on twitter "who are they talking to?" the other friend responds "this is how we communicate now in bite sized yippity-yap!" Once the first friend becomes extremely cynical and essentially awakens the people in the "twitter-sphere" from a zombie-like slumber, the whole reality begins to crumble. As silly as it is, it says some interesting things about social networking and the public's perception of the different forms of communication.  Also, it's worth noting that the video was made prior to some of the Iranian and Egyptian conflicts in which twitter played such an important role in empowering the masses (but is it the opiate of the masses?).

I know I talked a little in class about how facebook has had an affect on dating and people's perceptions of flirtation, so I thought I'd share this short article that discusses some of the potentially negative affects of dating through facebook. I'm not propagating that idea (my finance and I just looked through our very first facebook messages yesterday and it was heart warming) but it's interesting to see how others view the potential friendships and heartbreaks of this particular digital social sphere.

I thought parts of this article were interesting and relevant to the reading we're doing. O'Reilly discussed privacy to some extent in this first half, but, I thought it might be interesting to look at some policy about privacy protection more deeply.

This probably seems ridiculous that I'm sharing this, but this directly relates to a paper I wrote last semester about the rhetoric employed by AXE and now I think they're making a move that applies to this class. Here we have some combination of McLuhan's idea of media being an extension of man and we see elements of IF as people actively contribute the making of a graphic novel and then are characterized by the creators for their input all the while fusing their digital selves to some sort of global and digital AXE alliance. Imagine how difficult it would be to by a different product once you become part of their story and your digital self participates (to channel the ideas of Barry Brummett) in this particular reality.

I found this site for a company that creates products that allow us to mix our real-world and digital experiences at once. One interesting product creates the image of fire or waves on a pool table that chases the pool balls as you hit them. I wonder in what way this is like e-literature.

This is a video of Marshall Mcluhan discussing how the medium is the message in 1977. It's interesting to both see him and hear his voice while he talks about his opinions we've already discussed in his book.