Perhaps sometime last week I read William Saletan's article on occupying virtual worlds. The article summarized the story of a Korean couple--heavy Internet users--who met online, got together, and had a sickly baby. The couple continued to play online games at Internet cafes, leaving the baby alone at home for most of the day most days. They even had another virtual baby online--one that was not sickly and was everything the couple wanted. One day, they came home to find their real baby dead.
Saletan argues that while the couple may have been culpable for the death of their real child, the increasing power of the virtual worlds we create cannot be underestimated. Every time we check these virtual worlds get better and better, and all the time it gets easier and easier to be drawn into them and to wish to stay in them. And this effect is not limited to MMORPGs and other video games; he says, "Every time you answer the phone in traffic, squander your work day on YouTube, text a colleague during dinner, or turn on your TV to escape your kids, you're leaving this world."
The plain truth of this assertion was apparent to me when I first heard it, but then last Saturday, after my tutoring appointment, I decided to stick around for a while before driving to my next destination. I fired up the web browser on my mobile phone and started to read articles (funnily enough the majority of my time was spent on Slate). When I ran out of articles to read, I decided to begin my drive. At first, I wondered why I felt so drained--I felt as if I traveled hundreds of miles to get where I was. Then I realized, in a way, I kind of did.
Song in my head: Matisyahu, "One Day".
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Monday, October 26, 2009
In passing
Today, my Geocities site, and perhaps millions of others' Geocities sites, some of them maintained and others not, quietly passed into history. The directories were destroyed, and any Geocities link now redirects to an offer for Yahoo! hosting.
Thankfully I was able to mirror my two sites in time (as Yahoo! sent all Homesteaders a cautionary email) and the sites now reside in my personal web space. But what of the others? What about that Led Zeppelin tribute website someone built in 1999 in honor for the first time she heard "Kashmir" as a pirated MP3 on Winamp? What about that site owned by a socially awkward teenage boy, who, since everyone else did, tYpEd LiKe tHiS and listed his top three school crushes but had to give them pseudonyms? (And before you ask, no, I did not do this... ^_^) What about what must have been thousands of resumes, hundreds of cookbooks, guitar tab sites, collections of pictures of precocious dogs, family trees, FAQs, tutorials for obscure programs, and the like, whose owners have moved on to other things like Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, or who have forgotten that they even had a website on Geocities? All that information--all that knowledge--is gone.
It would be foolhardy to compare the demise of Geocities to that of the Library of Alexandria. But it was the same kind of loss. Supposedly the Library had knowledge about anything and everything the Western civilizations knew up to that point in time, but groups of individuals who were misguided in their ideology (OK, OK, some of them were Christians) felt that its status as a pagan temple trumped its containing precious human knowledge, and so felt the need to take it down.
Similarly, homesteaders were allowed to post whatever they wanted however they wanted on Geocities, so long as you knew HTML and were willing to type into a text box all day to get it. But with the rise of social networking sites, where people are forced into talking only about themselves (and not what they know, for instance, about matrix algebra or what the Eagles were really saying when you played "Hotel California" backwards), Yahoo! had a change of heart:
To me, the closing of Geocities is an end of an era. When I started my "online presence", I came upon pages upon pages of people who were desperately wanting to share what they knew about the world. Now, I'm not saying that the websites were perfect, either; this was a time in the thick of the Browser Wars, before usability guidelines were agreed upon, and so people used rainbow text colors, large animated GIFs, black backgrounds beneath dark blue text (not unreliable markers for goth/emo sites), marquees, website layouts that shrugged off the boundaries of your 800-by-600 screen, frames vs. no-frames, and so on. (And plus, it was never more true then than it ever was that you shouldn't believe everything you hear on the Internet.) But you got the sense that people cared about what they wrote down, and they wanted you to know also. These were the days of free websites, visible counters, webrings, email pals, and the like, where it was the web developers who decided what you learned about, and when we said web developers, we meant all of us. And perhaps sometimes we talked about ourselves.
But the new paradigm--the new ideology--is to share things about yourself. You are the most interesting person you know... why would you not want to write about it? So the Web of today is cleaner, easier to read, more usable for keeping in touch with friends and colleagues, and a whole lot easier to use.
Perhaps it was a trade-off. But at least in my book, we end up on the losing side.
Oh, well, there's still Angelfire. ^_^ (Wonder when these guys will close, too?)
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Owl City, "Fireflies". I'm gonna write a "Why I like this song" on this as soon as I have time. But I guess you won't see it on Geocities.
P.S. The title of this post links to my homestead
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Code/4023
As you can see, you get the nag prompt to join Yahoo! hosting. I told you they're all gone.
Thankfully I was able to mirror my two sites in time (as Yahoo! sent all Homesteaders a cautionary email) and the sites now reside in my personal web space. But what of the others? What about that Led Zeppelin tribute website someone built in 1999 in honor for the first time she heard "Kashmir" as a pirated MP3 on Winamp? What about that site owned by a socially awkward teenage boy, who, since everyone else did, tYpEd LiKe tHiS and listed his top three school crushes but had to give them pseudonyms? (And before you ask, no, I did not do this... ^_^) What about what must have been thousands of resumes, hundreds of cookbooks, guitar tab sites, collections of pictures of precocious dogs, family trees, FAQs, tutorials for obscure programs, and the like, whose owners have moved on to other things like Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, or who have forgotten that they even had a website on Geocities? All that information--all that knowledge--is gone.
It would be foolhardy to compare the demise of Geocities to that of the Library of Alexandria. But it was the same kind of loss. Supposedly the Library had knowledge about anything and everything the Western civilizations knew up to that point in time, but groups of individuals who were misguided in their ideology (OK, OK, some of them were Christians) felt that its status as a pagan temple trumped its containing precious human knowledge, and so felt the need to take it down.
Similarly, homesteaders were allowed to post whatever they wanted however they wanted on Geocities, so long as you knew HTML and were willing to type into a text box all day to get it. But with the rise of social networking sites, where people are forced into talking only about themselves (and not what they know, for instance, about matrix algebra or what the Eagles were really saying when you played "Hotel California" backwards), Yahoo! had a change of heart:
However, we have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and build relationships online in other ways. Beginning on October 26, 2009, you will no longer be able to use GeoCities to maintain a free presence online — but we're excited about the other services we have designed to help you connect with friends and family and share your activities and interests. —Why is Geocities closing?In short, if you want a "presence online" but are not self-centered, then you're going to have to buy webspace.
To me, the closing of Geocities is an end of an era. When I started my "online presence", I came upon pages upon pages of people who were desperately wanting to share what they knew about the world. Now, I'm not saying that the websites were perfect, either; this was a time in the thick of the Browser Wars, before usability guidelines were agreed upon, and so people used rainbow text colors, large animated GIFs, black backgrounds beneath dark blue text (not unreliable markers for goth/emo sites), marquees, website layouts that shrugged off the boundaries of your 800-by-600 screen, frames vs. no-frames, and so on. (And plus, it was never more true then than it ever was that you shouldn't believe everything you hear on the Internet.) But you got the sense that people cared about what they wrote down, and they wanted you to know also. These were the days of free websites, visible counters, webrings, email pals, and the like, where it was the web developers who decided what you learned about, and when we said web developers, we meant all of us. And perhaps sometimes we talked about ourselves.
But the new paradigm--the new ideology--is to share things about yourself. You are the most interesting person you know... why would you not want to write about it? So the Web of today is cleaner, easier to read, more usable for keeping in touch with friends and colleagues, and a whole lot easier to use.
Perhaps it was a trade-off. But at least in my book, we end up on the losing side.
Oh, well, there's still Angelfire. ^_^ (Wonder when these guys will close, too?)
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Owl City, "Fireflies". I'm gonna write a "Why I like this song" on this as soon as I have time. But I guess you won't see it on Geocities.
P.S. The title of this post links to my homestead
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Code/4023
As you can see, you get the nag prompt to join Yahoo! hosting. I told you they're all gone.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Liberation
First of all, Happy Liberation Day, everyone.
The word "liberation" has so many meanings today. For starters, on Guam they say that on 21 July they were liberated from Japanese control and placed back into American control. (I know, right? You ask them this time.) Also, this year being the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the Moon, we as a people were given a break from all the Cold War fear and had cause to be hopeful after all. We as human beings (maybe) stopped looking furtively at each other and became free to all look up together.
Well, I wasn't yet alive back in 1969. So it is with relish that I'm tuning in to We Choose the Moon to hear the audio exchanged between Houston and the Spacecraft. It makes me feel as if I were tuning in to a piece of much older electronic equipment to hear voices coming from more than 200,000 miles away. I'm planning on staying up to get to the tape where Neil Armstrong says, "That's one small step...", then I intend to go out to that section of Marine Corps Drive in Hagat'na to check out (and maybe photograph) the floats and the camps. Will it rain? Nobody knows, man, and that's what makes it exciting.
A random thought came to me as I was driving around today. Has it ever occurred to anyone out there who is a literary type that our preoccupation for aliens starting in the 20th Century could have been a message of hope? What I mean is, if people had to turn to beings from other planets to get aliens, does that mean that we ran out of humans to alienate? That maybe the "Otherness" of every human out there just ran out, and we were ready to see every human being as part of our in-group?
OK, just thinking out loud. Feel free to shoot this down... ^_^ But thanks for reading, at any rate.
Song in my head: The Pussycat Dolls, "I Hate This Part (Right Here)".
All right, now don't bother me. I'm trying to hear what Buzz is saying.
The word "liberation" has so many meanings today. For starters, on Guam they say that on 21 July they were liberated from Japanese control and placed back into American control. (I know, right? You ask them this time.) Also, this year being the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the Moon, we as a people were given a break from all the Cold War fear and had cause to be hopeful after all. We as human beings (maybe) stopped looking furtively at each other and became free to all look up together.
Well, I wasn't yet alive back in 1969. So it is with relish that I'm tuning in to We Choose the Moon to hear the audio exchanged between Houston and the Spacecraft. It makes me feel as if I were tuning in to a piece of much older electronic equipment to hear voices coming from more than 200,000 miles away. I'm planning on staying up to get to the tape where Neil Armstrong says, "That's one small step...", then I intend to go out to that section of Marine Corps Drive in Hagat'na to check out (and maybe photograph) the floats and the camps. Will it rain? Nobody knows, man, and that's what makes it exciting.
A random thought came to me as I was driving around today. Has it ever occurred to anyone out there who is a literary type that our preoccupation for aliens starting in the 20th Century could have been a message of hope? What I mean is, if people had to turn to beings from other planets to get aliens, does that mean that we ran out of humans to alienate? That maybe the "Otherness" of every human out there just ran out, and we were ready to see every human being as part of our in-group?
OK, just thinking out loud. Feel free to shoot this down... ^_^ But thanks for reading, at any rate.
Song in my head: The Pussycat Dolls, "I Hate This Part (Right Here)".
All right, now don't bother me. I'm trying to hear what Buzz is saying.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The end of the internet
I got an email today that said that GeoCities was closing sometime in October. It's been a good run, I guess. I did not realize how prolific I had been with GeoCities websites. But, it's all the same; I'd have to either take them somewhere else or lose them forever.
And here I thought that the link to my last known homestead (SiliconValley/Code/4023) would last forever.
Do you know where your Homestead was?
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Michael Jackson, "Human Nature".
P.S. In reference to the title, my favorite "end of the internet" page is at http://mdesmond.com/end-of-the-internet/.
And here I thought that the link to my last known homestead (SiliconValley/Code/4023) would last forever.
Do you know where your Homestead was?
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Michael Jackson, "Human Nature".
P.S. In reference to the title, my favorite "end of the internet" page is at http://mdesmond.com/end-of-the-internet/.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Random variable
Has anyone ever thought of just how poetic a name the "Jaws of Life" is? I mean, it's a device with a pair of jaws which seeks to prolong the life of victims trapped in twisted cars and whatnot.
Song in my head: Jack White and Alicia Keys, "Another Way to Die".
Song in my head: Jack White and Alicia Keys, "Another Way to Die".
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Prisoner of war
Right before I slept a few nights ago, a clear picture came to my head. It was of a deserted North Korean intersection, with impeccably drab edifices flanking the perpendicular rivers of asphalt. In the middle of the intersection there stood erect a female traffic guard, looking straight ahead. She was smartly dressed, the white belt crossing her sea-blue blouse gleaming white in the unforgiving Sun, the unforgiving proxy of the Dear Leader's commanding gaze.
What would it be like to kiss her?
Would that set her free?
How silly of me to think that! Of course not... it wouldn't set her free. It would imprison me.
Hey, I didn't say the picture made sense. ^_^
In other news I think I haven't decided on a hobby to spend time on this summer, but perhaps SHIFT 2 would be a good candidate. It has taken up at least half an hour of every session I spend in front of my computer. Go check it out, and once you get the gist, come back here and try this level my sister and I collaborated on:
A080Z502125211233212A0522Z0Z10Z10ZAB10Z5Z210ZA03133110Z5213251251C005Z1522416012210Z33112C0050131C005013222Z5Z210Z10Z10ZAB5011210Z10Z6122161211602Z0Z5124210Z5Z15224153Z10Z5311210Z612114024153Z5324210Z10Z60Z23ZC004133210Z122516021150ZC006Z10112153Z10Z10Z10Z31131C0020Z10Z5Z210ZA05Z14Z210Z41122B0Z0225110Z10Z10Z70ZC006012110Z10Z52112B0Z52Z10Z10Z322515311210Z10ZC0053221C0030142311221242132451524510045110Z5211210Z31141A0321220013130122C0090451004514015210Z10Z312417122100Z132223312210ZB045100Z
Anyway, before you load the code, make sure to remove the spaces.
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Usher, "Love in This Club".
P.S. Also, the CC is a lie.
What would it be like to kiss her?
Would that set her free?
How silly of me to think that! Of course not... it wouldn't set her free. It would imprison me.
Hey, I didn't say the picture made sense. ^_^
In other news I think I haven't decided on a hobby to spend time on this summer, but perhaps SHIFT 2 would be a good candidate. It has taken up at least half an hour of every session I spend in front of my computer. Go check it out, and once you get the gist, come back here and try this level my sister and I collaborated on:
A080Z502125211233212A0522Z0Z10Z10ZAB10Z5Z210ZA03133110Z5213251251C005Z1522416012210Z33112C0050131C005013222Z5Z210Z10Z10ZAB5011210Z10Z6122161211602Z0Z5124210Z5Z15224153Z10Z5311210Z612114024153Z5324210Z10Z60Z23ZC004133210Z122516021150ZC006Z10112153Z10Z10Z10Z31131C0020Z10Z5Z210ZA05Z14Z210Z41122B0Z0225110Z10Z10Z70ZC006012110Z10Z52112B0Z52Z10Z10Z322515311210Z10ZC0053221C0030142311221242132451524510045110Z5211210Z31141A0321220013130122C0090451004514015210Z10Z312417122100Z132223312210ZB045100Z
Anyway, before you load the code, make sure to remove the spaces.
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Usher, "Love in This Club".
P.S. Also, the CC is a lie.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Fake chemicals
OK, so here's a really simple yet addictive game you can play in Wikipedia. I'm going to call it "Fake Chemicals".
- Go to the Wikipedia website.
- Think of a possible name for a chemical. Maybe you've heard generic names for drugs on TV ads, or the chemical name of some popular recreational substances, or industrial cleaners, stuff you put in your hair, etc.
- Type it into the search box.
- If there is no Wikipedia entry for the chemical, give yourself 2 points and write it down somewhere (I use a Notepad window).
- If there is a Wikipedia entry for the chemical, give yourself 0.5 point.
- Stop doing it when you're tired of it, or if you're not bored anymore.
My list of fake chemicals? I scored 28 points!
- Cycloparaben
- Isoquinone
- Pentathone
- Hydroxycalbutenal
- Dimethizone
- Lamic acid
- Hydrokeratinol
- Pentaphthalate
- Stereoxanthylline
- Metrocyanibinol
- Polymethylacridase
- Propanodione
- Multidecanine
- Hydroproxin sulfate
As an option, try scoring your chemical names Scrabble-style, by adding up the Scrabble values of the letters in the chemical. That means q's and x's and the like would score very high.
What can you do with your list of words? Nothing, really... but if you're a science fiction writer (or know someone who is) this list may come in handy someday. ^_^ Oh, and advance apologies to any Biology or Chemistry majors whose sensitivities are offended by this kind of nomenclature-wrangling. ^_^ It's all in fun, I promise. And tell them the Math Wizard thought you'd have a laugh for it.
I watched my old school's rendition of The Little Mermaid tonight. It was great, as their productions always have been. The parents section went wild when my sister's class appeared on stage; hey, my sister and her friends were celebrities in their own right. ^_^
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Regine Velasquez' version of "Harana".
P.S. OK, found one more... Phosphydactilone. This is addictive... ^_^
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Spring break
It seems like a whole week passed between my last post and this one. So much has happened in the last weekend, and it will be a challenge to make this one short. But I shall try.
It has been a pretty medical weekend, what with me getting my blood checked and my leg filmed in X-ray. I hope that it is easy to send developed X-ray film to the Philippines. I was happy with what my lower leg looked like on the film, and I hope that my orthopedic surgeon would be happy as well.
I'll be aiming to stay home more. So far I'm succeeding, leaving the house only when necessary.
I was aiming to disconnect from the Internet this Spring break. Well, you know how that's turning out. Maybe Friday I'll disconnect.
The youth retreat earlier today was a lot of fun. It was the most spontaneous one I've ever been on.
That's all I have to say for now. Thanks again for reading.
Song in my head: The Pillows, "Carnivore".
It has been a pretty medical weekend, what with me getting my blood checked and my leg filmed in X-ray. I hope that it is easy to send developed X-ray film to the Philippines. I was happy with what my lower leg looked like on the film, and I hope that my orthopedic surgeon would be happy as well.
I'll be aiming to stay home more. So far I'm succeeding, leaving the house only when necessary.
I was aiming to disconnect from the Internet this Spring break. Well, you know how that's turning out. Maybe Friday I'll disconnect.
The youth retreat earlier today was a lot of fun. It was the most spontaneous one I've ever been on.
That's all I have to say for now. Thanks again for reading.
Song in my head: The Pillows, "Carnivore".
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Open window
I think I should get more sleep. Last night, after Wendy's night, and having headed home, I stayed up. But it was for no particular reason other than to stay up. I think it has something to do with the things going on in my life.
A few days ago, while conversing with her, Kim said that I should not dwell on my past mistakes. At the time I agreed with her, but after she signed off, I asked myself. If I don't dwell on my past mistakes, where would I dwell? It seems to me that I have been wallowing in what Dickens called a "Slough of Despot" for what would be almost two, three years now, and frankly, I don't know any other place to dwell in--any other place to call home.
Maybe I should now instead dwell on how to fix things. It would be more productive.
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Gary Numan, "Cars".
A few days ago, while conversing with her, Kim said that I should not dwell on my past mistakes. At the time I agreed with her, but after she signed off, I asked myself. If I don't dwell on my past mistakes, where would I dwell? It seems to me that I have been wallowing in what Dickens called a "Slough of Despot" for what would be almost two, three years now, and frankly, I don't know any other place to dwell in--any other place to call home.
Maybe I should now instead dwell on how to fix things. It would be more productive.
Thanks for reading.
Song in my head: Gary Numan, "Cars".
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