Before this week, I had never used the term digital native, although I am indeed a digital native. This term does make complete sense though because, unlike people of our parents’ generation, people that have always lived with the Internet don’t know anything else. It is crazy to think that there can be such a major technology gap between people one generation apart. This unique gap has led to the interest, as well as criticism, of digital natives.
Among all of the criticisms of digital natives, one problem that really stood out to me is the problem of digital piracy. Internet piracy is extremely widespread these days and I am sure most of my peers can admit to viewing a movie that was streamed illegally or listening to a song that was downloaded illegally. Because digital natives have been exposed to this culture of having whatever they want, when they want it, they expect to be able to have this in terms of movies and songs, as well. I found an article in the Huffington Post that discussed how this digital piracy is affecting the future of online tv, movies, and music.
This article begins by stating how a recent study concluded seventy percent of 18-29 year olds had bought, copied or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies. After laying down the facts, this article goes on to consider that perhaps it is not the fault of the illegal downloader or streamers at all, but the fault of the industry. No person wants to pay for something that they know they can get for free, even if they know it might be illegal. Websites such as Netflix, Spotify, and Pandora have had some success with finding ways around people buying songs, but not completely eradicated illegal streaming. It seems to be the opinion of this article, as well as my peers, that digital natives are unlikely to change their habits. There has been some progress, but the industry must continue to work with and adjust to the world of digital natives continuing into the future.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/18/online-piracy-youth_n_1286911.html

I would hope that anyone who watches this hears the echo of their own complaints and realizes how silly it is to be frustrated with things in our day to day life. I remember a conversation with a friend on campus while eating at a dining common buffet style. Imagine how you would describe a buffet to a third world person. “there is a room where you can take any food and as much food as you want, until you’re full.” And that we clean a gallons of water just to use in a toilet .. I may be getting side tracked from the point of this weeks readings but I think this video still ties into a larger theme of social privilege that devices give us. The poor without technology are becoming even more distant socially than ever before.

In the research article, Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham mention the social construction of loss.  It is the idea that each new technological innovation is “accompanied by a nostalgia industry that immediately valorises a pre-technological, innocent world that was simpler, better, fairer, and easier to live in. Similarly, the Digital Native identity is premised on multiple losses: loss of childhood, loss of innocence, loss of control, loss of privacy, etc, which together imply the loss of political participation and social transformation; the loss of youth as the political capital of our digital futures. (12)”

In the video this point is also made that children and teens are losing so much. It seems like a lot of the conversation is based on these losses and gains and it’s sort of like a tug of war but fear and negative implications tend to get the upper hand.
I think the fact that they called it a nostalgia industry is something that deserves close reading because it does offer a way to capitalize off the fears people have. Things like self help books or books against the new technology can be more easily sold, and also older technologies can keep you in their service. For example, DVD’s or VHS tapes surely don’t want to admit that Blue Ray is better….. the same goes for records, which are still popular among certain groups. Anyway, nostalgia as an industry seems like an interesting idea to me.

The article I chose to look at this week came when I googled “pre-internet nostalgia” and instead of finding what could be a pretty biased paper, I found a guy who worked in the technology industry but was also born before the popularization of smartphones. He would not be classified as a digital native, so he has some perspective on  what it was like before…. but instead of saying one way is better than the other he explains some of the feelings a lot of people go through, such as when they leave their phone at home: “I’m discombobulated this morning: I forgot my iPhone, so I have that homesick, disconnected feeling you get when you realize you’re phoneless.”  He describes the connection we have to our phones are a part of our re-wired system which is better described below:

“What’s really happening is that, after more than 10,000 hours of exposure to the internet and digital technologies such as my iPhone, my brain has been rewired – or, rather, it has rewired itself. Science has a name for this process: Hebb’s Law. When neurons fire together, they wire together. It’s no coincidence that the 10,000-hour rule has recently entered our culture’s popular imagination, explaining to us that after doing something for 10,000 hours, you become an expert at it, because that’s how much time your brain needs to fully rewire itself to adapt to a new medium.”

I think it’s important that digital natives know that their habits can be changed and that they can always innovate as Nishant Shah in his video example where a women’s groups in India was able to make a point about women’s rights through facebook. We know what the internet can do fairly well, so we might as well push the envelope and try new things that can hopefully help people.

pre internet brain

http://www.content-loop.com/douglas-coupland-miss-pre-internet-brain/

I’ve never played an online game in my life, but in my high school there was a signifigant number of people who had been in rehab for “gaming addiction”. The kids who were gaming addicts formed a sort of click of dweebs, but the worst part was their nerd status was not even accompianied by high grades. Despite having been rehabbed, boarding school created a low-supervision environment that allowed the kids to stay in their room and constantly game. The need to game took precedent over homework and other normal parts of life. They were constantly late to class and didn’t show up to weekend requirements.

One girl described her addiction to me. She would pretend to be sick to skip school and game, spending more than 15 hours a week hooked up to the controller. I believe her addiction was World of Warcraft, but the signs of addiction are the same for most online multi player games. After being rehabbed and sent to boarding school, her addiction had began to dissipate, but she fell in with a crowd of other gamers– enablers. She began to game again, maybe not to the point of addiction, but probaby more than a former addict should.

This is another problem with gaming. The gamers at my school didn’t have many social skills, and could mostly relate to other gamers. Of course, one of the activities they could do together was game, enabling each other in their addiction.

Other facets of the internet aren’t addictive as gaming. Many people can effectively use informational, social, and recreational sites without getting “addicted”. The game is different in that it creates an entire world where you can be what you want without the social constructs of normal life. This reminds me of the movie “Vanilla Sky” with Tom Cruise. Cruise’s normal life is in shambles so he signs up for a program called Life Extension, which allows him to live in a perfect lucid dream world. Real lucid dreams are difficult to accomplish, but in the game you can live in that perfect world without having to surrender conciousness. Just like with alcohol and drigs, where you enter into a different, some believe more tolerable state with substances, the game lets you leave real life and forget all your problems.

The article stated that youth that are growing up in the digital age are self-centered consumers who ignore the importance of privacy and who also steal and plagiarize. BUT they are also promoting tolerance, freedom, diversity, innovation, and political awareness. Because humans are not perfect but also strive for a better life, I see some truth for this all. Especially on tumblr. I used to religiously go on tumblr when I was around 18-19. I did not care about the NSA (I used to say..”if I’m not doing anything wrong…”) and did not care that everything is filtered and made to sell us SOMETHING. I cared about new clothes and fashion and bought whatever I wanted without being aware of anything important. I haven’t used tumblr in a while but recently I was on my sister’s computer and decided to just scroll through her feed. I think a lot of the youth might be more self-involved (aka I saw a lot of selfies, personal posts, wishlists, etc) but they are very educated as well. I saw a lot of discussion about race, feminism, equal rights, and there was overall a lot of awareness. The youth is not perfect and to expect them as such is ridiculous. My sister is growing up in the digital age more than I am but I see so much intelligence, especially compared to my own 18-year-old self. The internet is a new platform where the youth can express themselves in ways that were not possible before. They are forming communities (which you can see on tumblr) and engaging in exchanging ideas and thoughts. I think people are calling the youth self centered/etc because they are so exposed in the internet whereas before many would just write in their diary (as we’ve mentioned before). I have faith in my generation and the younger youth.

As we discuss race in cyberspace, many sources, hashtags, and videos come to mind. Theresa M. Senft and Safiya Umoja Noble wrote a very insightful article about the touchy, complicated, but substantial concept of race and how it is ideologically understood, and how the notion has progressed within the networked world. As an anthropology major, the concept of race has been addressed many times in lecture and discussion; Senft and Noble discuss how it now refers to nationality, religion, ancestry, class, and biological categories, to say the least we really don’t have any clue on how properly digest these socially constructed divides. It is important to state how this concept shapes individual thinking, and effect how humans are being treated. There is a hope that we are now in a post-racial era, as those differences have become invisible, however this hope is almost impossible. We live in an ocular world: our vision is the center of how we digest and understand the word. Every view is convert, coded, and cultural. If anything I believe our world has become more visual, which highlight the differences by segregating behaviors of those who, as the authors say, are undereducated, under motivated, and underemployed. But what can we do this “othering” that occurs with every glance.

One important source of media that was addressed was the use of videos to embrace a culture. These videos use humor to bring light to issues, and hopefully progress the way we categorize and understand other cultures. I know a gentleman name Todrick Hall, who graduated from my high school, and also directed a play I was involved in. He creates videos that use comedic relief to hopefully defuse “racial” differences. The authors say that many of these videos are made to gain back the misplaced superiority, people want to not be labelled but instead create their own description. This parody music video is one of my favorites, and within days had reached record numbers. The video has transformed the culture from the original video, and was filmed right in LA, with the last shot being filmed in my high schools theatre. It addresses many stereotypes that revolve around black culture. Please enjoy Toddy’s Ghetto Gangman Style! 

Race and Social Media states that theorists argue about race as a verb, “pointing out that it is through the process of racialization that we ‘race’ others in out minds eye, giving them a label that corresponds or contrasts with the one we give ourselves.” The article goes on to point out a consequence of this racialization being negative interpellation, “where we feel uncomfortably noticed and made visible.“

Reading Race and Social Media this week hit close to home for me this week–figuratively and literally.

A few others in the class have already discussed Asian Americans in social media, and I’m sorry to have to contribute to that. I really don’t mean to be redundant, but when reading this week, it reminded me of my hometown’s portrayal on Youtube in the recent years—most notably by Youtubers The Fung Brothers. This duo’s channel focuses heavily on all things Asian American—or at least what they categorize as such. The example I want to point to is their music video “626,” a parody of Snoop Dogg’s “Young Wild and Free.”

The music video basically highlights all the “best” parts of my hometown, the San Gabriel Valley, which almost exclusively consists of boba shops and Asian restaurants. Although I do agree my hometown is filled with great food options that can make any food blogger happy, my hometown is much more than just boba. Okay, let me first state, I hate the Fung Borthers. This hatred started when this music video first came out; and from then on, their channel continually consists of nothing but stereotypes of Asian Americans—almost caricatures of Asian American identity. We drink boba, we eat pho and dim sum, we somehow all have the same upbringing with strict parents, we wear the same brand of clothes, we all dance/sing, etc.

In regards to this week reading, I do feel negative interpellation from Youtubers such as the Fung Brothers because it, in a way, rubs it in people’s faces that what they portray is representative of all Asian Americans. The article this week brought up an important discussion to me—is social media too racialized? Where should the line be drawn when it comes to Youtube videos such as “Sh*t Black/Asian/Hispanic Girls Say”? For channels such as the Fung Brothers, although I’m happy (to an extent) that the Asian American minority is given a chance to represent themselves in popular culture, relying on just the fact that you’re Asian American may not be the right way to go. I am more than just the food my culture eats. I am more than my area code. My area code is more than just Asian food. So why are Youtubers like the Fung Brothers focusing so much on race for views?

One last thing: I am not about that #BOBALIFE or #that626. I hate boba.

The Galloway text that we read for class spends a lot of time discussing the ways in which the Internet and digital world has presently faced us with a reality that was not properly noted in earlier post-modernist theories. Post-modernist theory places emphasis on the existence of a hyper-reality, in which the individual’s subjectivities or narratives are tended to resulting in a diminishing of reality, or the ability to describe or depict such a reality. It is in this post-modernist and theoretical state that no theories can be universally proven true, as reality is no longer understood as being mirrored by the human but rather enhanced and abstracted as it operates and co-exists with the human need for self-understanding. Thus, reality does not exist objectively, but is inextricably bound to interpretation and subjectivity. In the text Galloway argues the opposite. Though he doesn’t refute the existence of subjectivity, he believes that the individual subjectivity is guided or subjected to the greater power or authority of a universal ruling system. Alexander argues that there is a displacement of racism or race, as it has been moved from the real to the hyper-real or online. Its passive and subtle existence doesn’t call for direct attention, but its existence, nonetheless, points to a more suppressed urge.

Much of what Alexander argues and theorizes is related to ideas concerning technological determinism. For Alexander, technology has assumed a role in which it enforces these oppressive universal rules. Race is no longer directly confronted but is instead absorbed and diluted into a medium that distracts from its hard and compacted core. Alexander, by drawing attention to the inaccuracies of former post-modernist theories, he calls for a re-evaluation of what it is that post-modern thinking should concern itself with. The idea of sovereignty and authority should never be disregarded. These concepts have liberated themselves of the human form and now exist in the abstracted realm of hyper-reality.

After reading this weeks in Senft Noble’s Race and Social Media, it reminded me of a youtube video where race roles are reversed. In the article they discuss how racist acts in the media are highlighted in a way to not include the rest of the society and how almost the rest of society is not racist only the person who performed that act.

However, I feel like there are small comments everyday that occur that maybe people don’t realize that they are saying that are somewhat racist.

This video illustrates that in itself, by having black people say typically phrases they would hear but reverse and saying them to their white friends.

I thought this video was humorous but also illustrated a good point that a lot of the time there are comments made everyday that highlight race and while they may not seem outright racist maybe to others they do.

In a way I was also thinking does this show that there is racism a well towards white people, because of they way they are portraying them to act towards their friends…anyways just a thought I had

“A site which opposed racist, sexist language in online multiplayer is repeatedly taken down by hackers.”

I found an article related to bigotry in gaming. Posting below:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/sci-tech/2012/07/gamers-against-bigotry-hacked-gamers-favour-bigotry

Below is what I got out of the articles:

This weeks reading really had me reflecting on the online communities I am both a part of and that I am researching for my project. As a gamer myself I have regularly witnessed bigotry when playing online. Be it in a first person online shooter like Destiny or in a fantasy world massive multiplayer game like World of Warcraft. I have never paid too much attention to it because I was so used to hearing the foul language that it came in one ear and out the other. Now that I’m spending time reading about it and considering bigotry online, particularly in games I am starting to see racism within my own online communities.

In one of the games that I am playing for my research project there is a big emphasis on playing with other people. I am currently playing Final Fantasy XIV Online, and as anyone familiar with the Final Fantasy series would know, playing in small group parties is vital to progress in game. Within the game there are different races to choose from, ranging form elves to cat-like people, to humans and much more. One thing I have noticed is that the human character is the most popular chosen race. I have playing for about three weeks now and in this time just about every character I see, regardless of race, is designed with fair light skin. With so many possibilities and character customizations, it baffles me that people go to the norm of playing as a generic white human in game. Even the elf characters and the cat people I see are light complected. Worse is that the NPC, the computer based non player characters are all light complected from what I have seen so far.

Another aspect in game where race comes in to play is in the linkshell/free party system. A linkshell or a free party as an in-game community in which players can have a separate and private chat log exclusive to members of the specific group. These groups are generally specific to certain interest group such as LGBT players or characters of a certain language or level group. Within these communities discrimination is now allowed and I have experienced people expelled and banned from such in game communities.

This idea of gold farming is definitely present in the game I play, from Final Fantasy Online to Grand Theft Auto 5 co-op. Micro transactions in game and the purchase of in game currency from third party sources is a big business. I have a friend who admits to having spent real money on in game money to further the abilities and overall stats of his character. This also takes me back to the post/discussion in regards to Chinese people being paid to improve app download rates and statistics.

Back to the question of bigotry within online games. Yes I believe it exists, I say this because I have witnessed it. The use of game headsets and keyboards further allows players to express themselves. Often I find these instances more so in action games, primarily first person shooter games. The competitiveness within games can lead to radical expressions of emotion. I can’t say that the language used is of innate negative nature, it is more so a burst of expression without thought of actual words used. I see this as a cultural trend where the expression of aggression is deemed acceptable in western cultures. Only now that race is being considered online are there more precautions and safety a to what is acceptable and appropriate to say. Unlike posts and statuses, words said out loud, as in over a headset, can’t be taken back. This had made me consider to be more aware of what I say both online and in my personal life.