It's not really comparable... but they compared it anyways

Blog post 9

The video showing a controversial environment conservation advertisement

It's not really "one of the worst tragedies in history", honestly any natural disaster will cause more people to perish than this, but the 9/11 incident definitely caused one of the most serious consequences of terrorism in history. Aside from the international conflicts, the 9/11 incident has been (unfortunately) brought into mainstream culture as an icon of many things, from terrorism, racism, to the consequences of working in a highrise and power of airplanes.

What's interesting is that the advertisement shown in this video, about environmental conservation again, compares one disaster to another.  The logic behind this, although quite clear, does not explain the motive behind creating an advertisement like this. Yes it is true that a tsunami will kill many more people than an airplane, but a tsunami is not an act of terrorism, neither is terrorism an act of nature. These are two completely unrelated acts that both resulted in tragedies. It is as if the designers of the advertisements are saying "car crash is bad, but genocide is worse". The severities of different tragedies is incomparable, because one incident of suffering of mankind cannot be worse than another. In all cases of disasters, people lose their homes, lose their lives, and lose their loved ones. Just because one disaster killed more people than the other does not mean one should be compared to the other.

It's also interesting to note that although 9/11 has been used to iconize countless things in mainstream culture, this is the first time I've seen it used as a comparison of severity to other disasters. Perhaps it's one thing that it's not effective at iconizing.

Getting rich through playing video games

Blog post 8

Although video games have long been considered for entertainment purposes only, the advancements in MMORPGs have turned many gamers into sly businesspeople selling in-game items or money for real life items or money.

Sites such as IGE are, to put into simple words, making money off of another company. They focus on selling in-game items and gold in popular online games such as World of Warcraft, Aion, Final Fantasy, or Lineage to players for real-life revenue. As to the method at which these companies, often referred to as "gold sellers" or "gold spammers" (when their avatars are seen in-game), they either negotiate underground deals with the online game, or use an army of bots to "farm" (collect) in-game gold and items. While it is usually slow to accumulate any wealth with only one in-game avatar, with multiple computers and hundreds of bots, these companies or individual sellers are able to accumulate unbelievable amounts of wealth.

 Screenshot of the IGE website, one of the most popular sites for this market for video game commodities

Although many gamers secretly purchase in-game advantages through these external sources (mostly so they can power up their character and advance faster than normal grinding), most players look down upon these "shortcuts" to fame and glory in the cyberworld. After all most online games are based on the power of characters. Whoever is stronger will be able to defeat others, just as the same in real life. The "real" route as intended by the developers of the online games is for one to grind endlessly until he or she has a strong character. In other words, whoever spends more time on the video game will ultimately be stronger. With the introduction of these gold sellers, now it turns into whoever has more money will be stronger. Most online game developers also dislike gold spammers because, evidently, these spammers are making real money off of their game without paying them a cent, since it is almost always free to create multiple characters from the same game account.

A complaint form to Game Moderators about gold spammers

Although it is definitely annoying to have spammers constantly advertising their services, I have to admit that making money off of simply playing a video game is ingenious. Although it's not exactly original since video game tournaments with prizes have existed for a long time, such as Starcraft tournaments, those tournaments are mostly based on skill, and not unlike a chess tournament. However selling in-game items is based purely on taking advantage of the intention of most players to get their characters stronger quicker than others, at little or no cost (cost of running computers such as electricity excluded). This type of gold selling was most prominent in Asian MMORPGs such as Aion: The Tower of Eternity (Korean: 아이온: 영원의 탑), Perfect World (Chinese: 完美世界), or Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (Chinese: 天龙八部), but have also spreaded to almost all free-to-play MMORPGs in the world.

Summarily, this is simply another business, and all businesses make money by taking advantage of consumer psychology and reducing costs to a minimum. This type of video game business does not offer a high rate of return (after all it's not too often to find someone who will spend several hundred dollars on in-game items), but has almost no cost associated. And this is all possible thanks to the cyberculture of online gaming, and gaming addiction.

The Human Database

Blog post 7

Warning: this post contains information describing extreme maltreatment of animals, viewer's discretion is advised.

"Human Meat Search" - although very grotesque at first glance, the actual functions of this cult search engine is even more so.

The phenomenon of "human meat search engine" (Chinese: 人肉搜索) started with a group of very disturbing pictures posted on a popular internet forum. The pictures depicted a group of fashionable young women with high heels stomping a kitten to death, with the camera focusing on their heels as well as the bloody bits of the victim kitten. This immediately became a viral phenomenon not unlike the infamous Two Girls One Cup video as countless internet users began to search for the identities of the girls as well as the photographer. After a long searching involving journalists, bloggers, forumers, and even the police, the identities of one of the girls as well as the photographer were found.

The ultimate effect of this phenomenon was not the the apologies issued by several sadistic psychopaths. It spawned an entirely new form of internet search called "human meat search engine", where the internet is used for the spreading of personal information, tracking down specific individuals, or more often used for posting gossip, scandals, and shock news. In the words of many, it has "personified" internet search, moving from the traditional search for objects, ideas, and hard facts to the identities of every individual on earth. Anyone is able to post personal information on the web and it would be picked up by "meatified" search engines and forums, such as Baidu (largest search engine in Asia) and Maopu (Chinese social forum and search engine), whether the person wants to glorify his favourite celebrity, take revenge on a friend by posting his or her personal information and twisting them, or even track down a missing individual. This new form of internet search penetrates the layer of privacy that had traditionally been offered to all netizens, thus the name "human meat search".

Mop.com, one of the largest social forums for all kinds of purposes in Asia, including the human meat search engine.

Although the term of "human meat search" is new, the act of posting personal information is not. Human meat search simply tracks down the bits and pieces of personal information that we leave on the web, in sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Xiaonei (Chinese equivalent to Facebook), forums, online games, and even shopping sites. It connects everyone and makes searching for information more convenient, however it also lifts that layer of anonymity and security of netizens. The cost of being more connected and knowing more, is that someone will know more about you.

The Ten Forbidden Mythological Beasts

Blog post 6

Warning: This blog post contains some profane (but censored) language and crude humour, viewer's discretion is advised.

Around two years ago, the "Baidu Ten Mythical Creatures" was born from an internet prank. It wasn't simply an internet prank aimed at making fun of the government (again), it represented the People's resistance against the iron fist of Chinese governmental rule, and the power of the internet community. "These hoaxes, ten in number, originated in response to increasingly pervasive and draconian online censorship in China, and have become an icon of citizens' resistance to censorship." (Phrase from Wikipedia)

[Reference Link]

Leader of the Mythological Beasts - the alpaca, or in hoax language, Cao Ni Ma (Chinese: 草泥马, lit: Grass Mud Horse), a homophone for the Chinese profanity "f*** your mother"

The hoax started when some person posted an article in the Wiki section of Baidu, the Chinese equivalent for Google, representing the largest search engine in Asia, writing about ten fictional deities that had no apparent source of origin. Upon closer examination, each of these names was a homophone to a profane word or phrase. The obvious purpose for this hoax was to circumvent the government censorship on internet communication (such as blocking various sites, banning use of profane language, etc) in a humorous way, showing that the internet community can easily find other ways to get around the censorship. By turning profanity into mythological creatures, the government can only watch as "new forms of profanity" are created right before their eyes.

The following list contains some of the creatures, for a full list see reference link:

Cao Ni Ma (Chinese: 草泥马, lit: Grass Mud Horse) - Icon is the alpaca. Homophone for "f*** your mother"

Fa Ke You (Chinese: 法克鱿, lit: French-Croatian Squid) - Icon is the small and agile sea squid. Homophone for "f*** you"

Ya Mie Die (Chinese: 雅蠛蝶, lit: Small Elegant Butterfly) - Icon is a small butterfly from Qinghai discovered in January, 2009. Homophone for "yamete" (Japanese: 止めて, lit: "stop it", commonly cried out by females in Japanese pornography during sex)

Da Fei Ji (Chinese: 达菲鸡, lit: Daffy Chicken) - Icon is a type of energetic rooster that resembles Daffy Duck. Homophone for the Chinese slang for masturbation, "da fei ji".

 Ya Mie Die (Chinese: 雅蠛蝶), one of the creatures

The hoax represented one of the most successful "rebellions" in internet culture against censorship. These ten beasts have become so popular that they are now used in everyday slang language, have sprung other fan-made "mythological beasts", and even spread to the commercial market. Keychains, backpacks, and action figures of these animals are seen everywhere in gift shops (mostly online since it's safer) and represent a niche in Chinese cyberculture - the countermeasures against an iron fist government. It's pretty amazing what the internet community is able to accomplish, because the entire movement started out from nothing more than a small wiki article on an online encyclopedia.

Internet Egos

Blog post 5

It's relatively difficult to change one's identity in real life, due to limitations such as voice and appearance. However cyberspace has made it entirely possible to create multiple aliases of oneself, one for each day of the week, each of the seven sins and virtues, or simply creating imaginary egos.

 The person behind the screen is not important, the only important thing is what person is projected onto the screen.

Because everything is digital, and stored and transferred in a non-discriminating method, the person behind the screen is no longer important. What we see and hear is the person that is projected onto the monitor, what we think s/he is. This created two things. False identity for the receiver, and a false identity for the creator.

Games like World of Warcraft is great for making online friends, doing online things, but it's also as unreal as it can get.

Without the need for identification, online chatrooms, games, and forums use virtual identities for communication. It could simply be a way to test out the other side of one's personality, or experiment new ideas and fantasies without the repercussions of real life, or it could be a way hide information that the person does not want to reveal. In video games, it would be for the purpose of roleplaying. The common thing behind all of these mediums is that real identity is no longer important. What one accomplishes in the virtual world rarely means anything for the real world, however it often does make one feel better about themselves. I call this internet ego, or internet pride. Hey at least I can accomplish something on the internet, be it flaming others, spamming, writing a virus, getting to level 50 in WoW, or getting a virtual girlfriend.

High level characters in the MMORPG Aion. A pretty nice virtual accomplishment... at the cost of RL time of course.

On the other hand, it is also easy for the boundary between virtual life and real life to thin out for the player. There are people to meet online, chores (surfing the web) to do, homework to do, games to play, and even develop relationships, what's the difference between this and real life? There are many instances of people who get lost in the virtual world and ends up neglecting their real lives. I found it amusing that this site actually teaches you how to fake an identity: [How to create a fake online identity]. Some pretty amazing but eccentric stuff, such as fake name generators. Although there are the less eccentric uses such as protecting privacy for surveys, offers, and online purchasing, mostly it is used for online games, chatrooms, or simulators such as Second Life.

It's hard to get that sense of satisfaction unless you actually do something in real life. It's so much easier in the virtual world to accomplish something and get that huge ego isn't it? It's a pretty pessimistic viewpoint, but a realistic one due to the addictive qualities of the cyberspace.

Bloody Pirates

Blog post 4

"Bloody pirates!", said by both Elizabeth and Ragetti in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, is one of my favourite phrases in the movie since it sounds funny, is short, and easy to remember.

After hundreds of years, piracy has evolved from stealing goods and killing innocents to "stealing" (debatable term) virtual commodities and "killing" (debatable term) people's source of income. The question of why anyone would spend money on something that they could otherwise obtain for free is something that I consider an open-ended philosophy. On one hand it may seem like virtual commodities is no different from physical commodities, and one is stealing if s/he obtained the item for free when other people paid for it. On the other hand, most pirates will argue that they indeed bought the good at full price, and is only "sharing" it with others, just like how one could buy a TV and share it with his friends, instead of having each friend buy a separate TV. Then the argument deepens into the fact there is no such thing as "sharing" a software, because each person could easily use it independently on his or her own computer, and according to the company's regulations he or she is supposed to buy the software package for that purpose. Then the pirate will respond with some legal holes indicating that companies have no right to restrict how one uses or modifies the software that one purchased. The argument goes back and forth with no end, not different from a tennis match, or two equally adept debaters in law. 

 It's a good thing at least their icon is a ship

As to where the final stand is, I'm sure everyone knows, that's why sites are closed and prosecuted (TV-links), sites are re-opened (The Pirate Bay - these guys must be seriously fearless or seriously stupid to name a site like this), sites go under different names twice a month (iDWANEO), and sites move their domains around and try to form a community of bomb-carrying kamikaze pirates who face prosecution at any time but is proud at what they're doing (apptrackr). It reminds me of the classic war movies, before rocket launchers and nuclear missiles; people would rush in to attack the castle with arrows, ladders, and rams, while the archers in the castle would shoot at the attackers. After all the attackers are dead the second wave would replace the first wave, repeating the exact same attack pattern. Pirates today are much like the infantry below the castle desperately trying to get inside. A soldier risks everything (his life) and gains nothing but a tiny bit of financial reward and lots of pride after a battle, so does a pirate who volunteers to crack code at the risk of being arrested. A pirate is proud of what s/he does, and in a pirate's own words, "making virtual commodities more accessible to everyone".

For all your iDevice needs, and much more convenient than iTunes

Accessibility, that's one of the main reasons why anyone would download a pirated copy of anything. If you didn't have to pay the $500 or so for Photoshop CS5, if you didn't have to pay the $150 or so for Windows 7, and if you didn't have to pay the $69.99 for the Starcraft 2 that you legally bought from EB Games (congratulations), or if you're really cheap, spend the $0.99 on an iDevice game, who in their right mind would spend hours searching for a working copy of a cracked software, then get a headache at trying to scan it for viruses, then spend even more time whenever an update comes out (most pirated software won't contain automatic updates)? I think the pricing behind these virtual commodities is really strategically planned out. They're priced in a way so that the companies actually take into consideration the amount of copies that will get pirated. We price it so high that it doesn't matter if you pirate it or not, we will always have a large group of genuine software loyalists who will buy it anyways at the high price (developers, businesses, etc). Better sell Photoshop for $500 apiece to a smaller target market, than $100 apiece to all the markets. This is great for the business, but bad for the consumers. Honestly (in my opinion), unless you seriously have tons of money to spend on a thing like software, I would really hesitate before spending $500 on Photoshop unless your job says that you need it. Editing that odd picture like once a day, or once a week, is not worth $500 in my opinion. Or take something much cheaper for an example. Sometimes I'd like to merge video files together, or trim them, or edit my music files. These kinds of functions, in today's programming standards, should be pieces of cake. But when I go on the web to see how I can do these, 99.99% of the search results leads me back to the same annoying page - $59.99 for a piece of software that can merge my .avi files together. That's just ridiculous, how many times a day am I going to merge .avi's together? Doing that once and you expect me to pay $59.99 for it? Even worse, most of these programs (won't name any names here) do not have a working demo. The thing they consider a demo will add a horrible watermark to your output, and trim the length of your output, making it completely unusable. The days of the 30-day evaluation period is nowhere to be seen. As you can see, this is the reason why I, along with many others, will look for a cracked version of these trivial software. It's a company people haven't heard of, charging an outrageous amount for a simple program, so most people will not feel that stab of guilty when downloading a leaked copy.

Ok so the "combined retail value of $80" is a bit far-fetched, but supporting indie developers who is trying to support charity sounds like a good cause... especially for a penny

On the other hand, I think there are serious issues concerning pirating really really inexpensive software. The prime example is the fab of iDevice applications. I'm not going to go to wiki and pull out some stat because no one will be interested in it, so I'm going to have a rough estimate and guess at least half of the apps in the entire appstore costs $0.99. This includes classic games such as Cut the Rope, Street Fighter IV (on sale for tsunami relief), and Helsing's Fire, to absolutely amazing apps such as Ocarina, Virtuoso Violin, and SketchPad. It is beyond me why people are willing to pay $50 for a PSP title, yet around half the iDevice population are unwilling to pay $0.99 for a game that is nearly (and sometimes better) as good, especially to developing indies whose income depends on their sales. One of the most extreme examples of "stealing" from indies is the case with the Humble Indie Bundle. It is a package of 5 simple games set to "open price", meaning buyers can pay any price they want, from a minimum of one penny to no maximum. You can't even buy a piece of paper for one penny, yet people are willing to spend the extra brain cells and electricity to pirate the games. This hints that it is no longer a mission to save money, but rather a more political role in that the pirates want to continuously enlarge their presence in the software community. Costs money? We hack it. Free? We still hack it. All of this just to let you know who we are.

It's true that pirates will generate traffic for the software that they pirate, and if the developer is lucky, might even make more sales due to the help from the pirates. But in most cases, all we see is indie developers who are left with a broken spirit and walk away from the scene due to lost sales. There's simply no point to continue developing if their work is simply going to be hacked within minutes of release. Sometimes I think that pirates should seriously be hired by the government, or at least Apple or something, with their superb computer skills. I can't even hack a piece of log in minutes, but they can sure hack a game in minutes.

The Sound of Digital Music

Blog post 3

Digital technology has created a whole genre of music - cybermusic. No longer is music a pure display of artistic talent and one's connection with the mysterious realm of music, it is now a display of how expensive your software plugins are, how great your digital recording equipment is, how familiar you are with digital composition programs and their complex virtual interface, and how good you are at virtually marketing your virtually created virtual commodities.

 The beauty of traditional instruments - something digital technology can never simulate

Traditional music focuses on user interaction, Power of each pluck, force of each keystroke, movement of the arms, fingers, and mind, all affect the sound. The musician, in a way, is bonded to the instrument he or she plays. Digital music, on the other hand, uses VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plugins that act as “soundfonts”. Just as regular fonts make up each letter of the alphabet, soundfonts are digitally created fonts of music notes that can be stringed together by the user to create a tune. Digital music focuses on accessibility, as anyone is able to play around with said technology and create music. However, the musician is separated from the instrument he or she plays… the barrier is the computer screen and the incomprehensible lines of code that turns music into 0’s and 1’s. Digital music is rather like Lego, you take one soundfont here, one sound effect there, and you piece together various sounds in infinitely many combination limited only by the imagination… but each piece by itself is limited and artificial.

 Quantum Leap - SILK, by Eastwest, a collection of very high quality Asian ethnic instruments such as the Erhu (二胡), Pipa (琵琶), and Yangqin (扬琴). With quality comes price... up to $1000 per pack. So if you're planning to get some flutes, violins, guitars, drums, maybe even a saxophone, you're looking at around $3000 in virtual instruments. Yeah you're trading binary code for a real antique violin.

Companies like Eastwest fully take advantage of this new cyberculture - digital composition and transaction of music, by selling virtual instruments. I admit that these sound ridiculously real... because they were recorded with real instruments obviously. The engineering behind these sounds are absolutely superb, and in my opinion no other software comes even close to the realism that these instruments provide, especially with harder-to-mimic strings instruments such as the violin and erhu. However when virtual instruments start to also simulate the pricing of real instruments... then there's a problem. Would you trade your antique violin for a virtual violin? Perhaps it is "easier to play" (I mean all you have to do is click buttons instead of breaking your neck trying to play a real violin)? Perhaps it is easier to distribute your music when it's created virtually? Or perhaps easier to edit or enhance your music when it's in digital form? All of these are selling points for the massive markets created for digital music.

You can't substitute a live performance for a digital one... no software can mimic the intricacy of the human imagination

Eastwest is only one of the hundreds of companies who excel in the digital engineering and distribution of music, although a very adept one at that. But you can never substitute a live performance of Pachelbel's Canon in D, by a performance artificially created in a software like FL Studio 9. The strength of each note, the fluidity of each arc, all of these come from the human imagination and emotion. The music feeds on the performer's thoughts, where each note is unique and only exist in that single performance. These simply cannot be digitalized by software, because human emotion and imagination cannot be transcribed into lines of code. As a result, any digital piece will immediately sound bland compared to a live performance. Although digital technology has made music more accessible (excluding prices), everyone now has the same set of tools, where people are no longer limited by their imagination, rather now they’re limited by what sounds these plugins can make.

What to do next?

Blog post 2

When the first set of computerized gadgets that could simplify repetitive tasks appeared in the 1940s, its developers envisioned all the benefits these computers would provide to the humans at their own discretion. No longer did people have to use write down complex formulae to solve problems or manually write down information on journal pads to remember them, these bits of information could be processed and stored in these machines that seemed to be timeless and free of humanly restraints such as energy, time, and mental abilities. Technological advances made it possible for computers and other gadgets of artificial intelligence to fully integrate into human life and become unimaginably invaluable assets. From online banking, weather forecasting, and photo manipulation, to FaceTime chat, virtual simulation, and mass production, if the machine stopped, just for one day, the world would simply experience total chaos. Convenience has been transformed to absolute dependence, and the pride of owning a personal computer has changed to the notion of not owning one. Humans have not experienced any form of biological evolution in the last few thousand years, so what caused the sudden reliance on digital technology?

The greed, or curiosity, for the limit of everything, in my opinion, is one of the main factors. Rewind time back a few hundred years, horses were the upper limit of speed, silver and gold mines were the upper limit of a country's wealth, and the skill of a soldier and the sharpness of his sword were the upper limit of conquest and tragedy. There was nothing else to pursue, nothing else to rely on, other than one's own hands. The discovery of electricity and the development of the first computer brought to this world infinite possibilities. No longer were humans confined to the earthly limits of muscle mass, sharpness of steel, and mines of silver and gold, all of these could be improved or simulated by these artificially created machines. These machines were not God's creations, therefore earthly restraints do not apply to them. As technology continued to improve, the power of these machines seemed limitless yet humans continued to strive for more. If 256MB of RAM was possible, why not 512MB? 1024MB? 16GB? There is no upper limit to speed, to storage space, to the power of military weaponry. Humans began to depend not on each other, but on machines for the continuous search for more of this world. Computers have become the newest member of a human's biological system, a part of every department, as important as a limb or even the heart, because without it, humans are only just humans, not the all-knowing, speedy, powerful, and connected cyborg that we wish to become.

The other factor, in my opinion less optimistic, is the decrease in usage of certain human abilities as the reliance on computers increases. When calculators did not exist, the human brain was the only tool of mathematical calculation. When computers did not exist, mathematicians and engineers computed complex problems by hand with the aid of a calculator. After computers were programmed to solve complex problems, all mathematicians and engineers had to do was to choose the right program to use for the problem, and innovate new ideas. We moved from basic calculations, built on pre-existing algorithms, and onto a new level of thinking. It's not necessarily a better level of thinking, because no building is complete without its foundation. In my opinion people today lack some of the basic skills that made the higher level of thinking possible. That's not to say it's a permanent absence; rather an inability to realize that potential because there is simply no need for it. Strand a man in the wilderness with a bucket and it's almost guaranteed that he'll eventually learn how to fetch water from wells, how to make fire from wood, and how to defend himself against danger. But are these skills really needed, when digital technology has taken the responsibility of performing these tasks? Will cooking still be considered a culinary art the day when computers can be programmed to cook?

Oh what to do next?

With all that said, the way in which we use these tools of convenience is drastically different among people. Using them as assets for a goal, or simply distraction? Technology has created an all-new dimension to life, a virtual dimension where people project their ideas and emotions onto a timeless and limitless space. Anything is possible here. People no longer had to write by hand, search by hand, and think by mind. One of the greatest treasures of human knowledge in history, the Yongle Encyclopedia, which took thousands of scribes, researchers, and court officials years to write in the beginning of the 15^th century, would probably take a dozen writers and researchers several months to complete now with the aid of digital technology. The power of the internet is unimaginable, because it links everyone’s knowledge and capabilities together in a cohesive network at unprecedented speeds. Knowledge, or any piece of information for that matter, is no longer restrictive; anyone can obtain any bit of information at any time, with the exception of classified materials such as military secrets or religious documents (but of course, with the exception of terrorists or professional hackers, who in their free time would access these anyways?). With this kind of accessible power, it is inevitable that the ability to control oneself on how to efficiently utilize it is very difficult. With everything accessible at our fingertips, how can we judge what is the most efficient way to spend our time on?

I admire this person's perseverance

The amount of distraction sitting in front of a computer screen, in my opinion, is comparable to trying to work on an essay on a table surrounded by the aroma of cuisine, imagery of posters, sound of music, noise of chatter, and clicks of gadgets. The entire world is at one’s fingertips, how much reason is needed to resist deviating from productivity?

The atmosphere itself is like a pair of eyes, constantly watching for signs of slacking off

Personally, I think it is extremely hard to focus on the task at hand when so many things are accessible, often straying from “digital wisdom” into “digital distraction”. It is almost as if the little buttons, text, and pictures on the screen, or the interface, is controlling me, as the user, when it should really be the other way around. Aside from the obvious distractions such as Facebook (which I do not use) and YouTube (which I seldom use unless searching for visual how-to guides), it is easy for me to simply get lost in the barrage of links on a site like Wikipedia, straying away from my original research topic and following solely on the instincts of curiosity. Because many apps are now networked to each other, programs such as music players and torrent managers now have an array of advertisements, links to countless media, and even mini-games on their interface. No program is single-purpose anymore; they are all designed for the user’s attention, in other words, distraction. For example, the torrent downloader that I use, Thunder, has so many advertisements, links to other media, and integrated apps on its interface that the actual download interface itself is cluttered. Popups will constantly appear near the task icon, showing suggested downloads, popular music and games, celebrity gossip, and of course, advertisement selections based on a record of my searches.

Honestly you'd think this downloader allied itself with AdMob or something

It’s easy enough to ignore these when working, especially if they are of no interest to me, but what if the advertisement happened to be an item that I am looking for? Or if the alert was of my favourite singer’s new album that just came out today, with download links (honestly who in this day and age buys physical CD albums anyways)? It would then be difficult to ignore these distractions. Time spent on distractions in front of a computer, in my opinion, is timeless. Why? Because no one will bother looking at the clock in the lower right corner of the screen when surfing the web on their favourite site, chatting away on msn, playing a computer game, or even doing e-shopping. The only reminder of time in our minds during these leisurous activities is the amount of distractions left to satisfy our curiosity and fulfillment; in other words, the discovery of that item I was shopping for, the advancement to the next stage in a game, or the dead end in a quest of link-stalking on Wikipedia.

Choices, choices, and more choices, it's all about keeping yourself "busy"

Our minds simply cannot focus on the task at hand when working on a computer (with the exception that all networks are disconnected and all apps are uninstalled), at least not as well compared to working in a quiet library supervised by the scratching sounds of pens on paper of other working colleagues (let’s face it, it does not look good to be discovered playing Cut The Rope on your iPhone or drawing doodles in a library when your classmates are working). The mind is constantly wondering about what is happening on the various apps on the computer. Who is chatting on Facebook? What news articles are posted on CBC? Who replied to my thread in that forum? When is that raid going to start on WoW? Although some people claim that they are “excellent at multitasking”, it does not change the fact they cannot focus on that most important task – working. Sure you can be great at remembering what you were doing, and snapping out of all those distractions, but what about your productivity? Can you still write that wonderful poem while constantly being barraged by spam on msn or Facebook? Therefore “excellence in multitasking” and “productivity” are two completely unrelated terms, and therefore people who multitask are just as affected by the distractions on the computer as people who get pulled deeper into distractions. I think that I am not bad at multitasking, because I am able to finish an essay while logged onto msn, QQ, and writing music all at the same time, without really deteriorating the quality of both work and leisure. But the fact is it will take a much longer time for me to write that essay, to chat with my contacts (periods of involuntary AFK of course), and to compose that song, because the amount of time and energy spent in continuing a leftover task has to be calculated into productivity.

Even Steve Jobs agrees with me on more choices

The amount of freedom granted by digital technology in our pursuit of information and entertainment is comparable to a buffet. There are healthy choices, and there are the mouth-watering dishes that would annihilate diets. Digital technology greatly improved the speed at which we perform tasks, but also greatly increased the amount of tasks that we voluntarily or involuntarily engage in. Realistically it’s a trade-off between convenience and productivity, and in this day and age, sacrificing productivity for convenience and accessibility is understandable.

The reality of alternate reality

Blog post 1

When a person looked at a computer three decades ago, he saw lines of code, a representation of his hard work at producing something that simplified an otherwise manual and repetitive task.

When a person looked at a computer two decade ago, he saw colors, buggy software, and the emergence of the video game craze that caused many to abandon their badminton rackets in favor of staring at pixels for a sense of fulfillment.

When a person looked at a computer a decade ago, he saw more vibrant colors, 3D images, and an electronic network that not only simplified the world, but simplified our minds as well.

When a person looks at a computer today, he sees alternative reality, a world that is gradually blending into our real world and blurring the boundaries, one that is creating a huge consumer market for virtual items and even concepts. No longer is the entire human race focused on fueling our real-world economy in the ways of real labour, real production, and real consumption; a massive portion of our labour force is now targeting a completely nonmaterial world, creating nonmaterial objects to satisfy the desires of people who project their reality onto a computer screen or TV.

Mixamo, a website dedicated to the virtual creation and exchange of simple animations based on 3D humanoid and some quadruped models, is a prime example of the increasing dominance of this projection of real life objects and even concepts into the virtual world. Creators, often choosing to remain anonymous, are able to create 3D poses and animations and export them into universal formats such as the popular Biovision Hierarchical Motion Capture Data file (.bvh), the Collaborative Design Activity file (.dae), or FiLMBOX file (.FBX). After creation, the user is then able to re-upload them into design software such as Maya, Poser, Unity, or 3DMAX, or for direct use in online platforms that support avatar customization such as Second Life. All of this comes at a price however, so not only are creators fueling with imagination, they are fueling Mixamo's pockets with cash as well. Different pricing arrangements can be made, and there also seems to be a market of virtual avatar animation on sites such as Animeeple, where users buy and sell creations with real money.

However the most attractive feature of Mixamo is the ability to transform real-life motion into virtual avatar motion. Mixamo owns a motion capture lab where creators are able to capture real-life movements and transcribe them into keyframes in electronic format.

This integration of reality into alternate reality is making it possible for a person to have a self-defined "identity" in places where their physical bodies and minds do not exist. One is no longer "training on a sandbag" for physical exercise, but for a parallel dimension where their avatars may be training for physical exercise. Why live the harshness of the real world when any fantasy is a reality inside a computer screen or TV? Why endure physical stress when the mind can simply relax in a virtual world, relying solely on the perception of the eyes? Mixamo is one of the many contributors to the blurring boundaries of reality, where humans no longer only create and live on mother earth, but in the timeless and limitless entity that is cyberspace.