Critical Response Blog #10 11-15-07

Being that this is my last blog, I've decided to reflect on this whole blogging experience. Before this class, I had never written a blog and am not sure if I had ever read one. I am not going to lie, I was a little skeptical on the idea. I thought blogs were just places for people to vent on when they had a bad day or a place to share really good news; I guess I never really associated blogs with intellectual thinking. But once I started writing my blog responses, I started to see some positive things coming out of it. Normally when I read a book, I can stay focused on it and am not easily distracted; I also seem to have a knack for understanding the text while continuing to read at the fast pace that I do. However, there were times while reading the assignments for this class, I seemed to struggle with that task. I would catch myself drifting off and just simply reading the words on the page, making no attempt to understand the meaning of them. I then realized that I needed to pay attention to what I was reading or I wouldn't be able to write my blog. Knowing that I had to write a blog, helped me focus my thoughts and pick out key points that I could relate to and write about. Especially being that these books aren't leisure reading books, it was nice to have some type of guideline for my thoughts.

As the semester went on, I found blogging easier and easier to do. I noticed that while I was reading, I would pick out topics that struck me as something that I could blog about. I also starting bringing in aspects of my life into my blogs to help make a better connection to the reading. I brought in my own experiences with video games, which were quite plentiful, and I even made a connection back to the lead singer of my favorite band. I never thought that that would ever happen, but it was actually pretty cool. Overall, I think that this experience with blogging has been a positive one. It wasn't as difficult or annoying as I thought it was going to be and I believe that in the long run it made me a better writer.

Critical Response #9 11-8-07

The section that my group was assigned to read was Chapter 7: Aspects of the Self. This chapter talked about how people have used internet based games called MUDs to help them figure out who they are and what their identity is, or to help them try and change the person that they are into a person that they would like to be. I thought that Turkle addressed the use of MUDs as a type of therapy in an unique way. She presented different cases of people who used MUDs to help them conquer a character flaw or get over a tramatic incident in their past. One example was about a boy named Stewart, who really didn't have many friends, had a heart disorder, and didn't have a really good relationship with his parents. Turkle described how in the MUD, his avatar gained friends that were from foreign countries, had respect from his fellow player, and even courted and married a fellow avatar. She leads you to believe that playing on this MUD has helped Stewart overcome his social anxieties, but she was doing exactly that leading you on. Come to find out, playing on the MUD, according to Stewart only made his life worse and increased his social isolation. However, once Turkle described the type of person that Stewart was, you realized that it wasn't the game that made things worse, it was his unwillingness to change. It brings up the question of whether or not, these games can be therapeutic or if they just make the problem worse. I believe that the MUDs can be therapeutic, if the person playing them is willing to make a change. Having someone to talk to that you never have to see face to face can be easier than talking to someone face to face; it takes away the anxiety and frees up inhibitions. But if the player is only playing to boss people around and fish for compliments to make themselves feel better for the moment, then nothing positive is going to come from playing.

I have never actually played a video game where you can create your character and wander around a virtual world, interacting freely with other people, so I can't relate fully to how therapeutic they can be. However, I do play role-playing games quite often and can say from personal experience that they help me deal with stress, but I dont think they have helped me change my identity or get over a tramatic event, they are more of a stress relief. Sure they may help me take out my anger in a way that doesn't harm anyone and I may sometimes wish that I was like the characters that I play as, but it has never made me consider changing my identity. As many other people do, there are certain things about my personality that I would like to change, but I don't think that playing a video game would help with that. I believe that it would be something that I would have to decide to do on my own and something that I would try out in the real world. I think an identity change can only happen when it is practiced in the real world. Changing your identity in a game is only a temporary thing and just shows in a way that the person doesn't have the courage to attempt that change in their real life.

Research Report Abstract

Prescription drug abuse is becoming a major problem in society today, so in my research report, I have decided to look at the who is abusing prescription drugs, and why. College students and high school students seem to be the age groups that abuse prescription drugs the most, and they abuse prescription drugs mainly because they get addicted to medication they were initially prescribed to cure an ailment, such as anxiety medication or pain killers. I chose to conduct an online survey consisting of 7 questions of college students from Central Michigan and other universities. Prescription drug abuse is just as big of problem as any other drug problem and needs to be addressed in the age groups it most affects.

Critical Response #8 11-1-07

For this blog, I have decided to talk about Sherry Turkle's discussion of identity in video games. Turkle talked about different people who play MUDs and what their identities were in these games. Some of the people that she talked to said that they have four different characters in four different games that represented either different sides of their personalities or people that they wish they could be. That didn't come as a shock to me because I think we all have sides of ourselves that we don't share with people, but wish every now and then that we could. But by being able to create a character on a game that is nothing like you, it gives people a chance to let that side of their personality come out. No one has to know who is playing that character, which spares the creator from judgements from other people. In a society like ours, where there is so much emphasis placed on beauty and other superficial factors, a lot of people are labeled as outcasts because they don't fit the "mold". But through video games, they have a chance to be one of the people who fit that mold, they don't have to be an outcast anymore. That fact, I believe, has a lot to do with why people flock to the games, where you can create an avatar and leave the outcast persona behind.

While I was reading the section on MUDS and video games in general, it made me think of the lead singer of my favorite band, Breaking Benjamin. Ben, the lead singer, is a self-proclaimed hardcore gamer and in an interview that he did, he was asked why he liked to play video games so much. He answered by saying that he really enjoys the idea of going to a totally different world, where there are no rules; you can totally immerse yourself in it and leave your life behind for a little while. As I thought about this quote and the things that Turkle was saying, it clicked in my head that being able to immerse myself in another world and leaving my life behind is one of the main reasons I started playing video games in the first place. There have been a countless number of times where I have had a bad day or a stressful day, and the first thing I do is turn on my PlayStation to try and just get away from it all. I don't have problems that don't have solutions and I don't have to deal with people that anger me. I think that having the ability to immerse ourself in another appeals to a lot of people and it provides a getaway for people who lives might not be the greatest thing in the world. Its an outlet that I think a lot of people enjoy and would be lost without it.

Critical Response Blog #7 10-23-07

For this week, I decided to write about the bias and objectivity in the news. Its hard these days to find any news broadcast or article that tells it the story from both sides, that just presents the facts. It can be seen with coverage of the war, coverage of the presidential election, or coverage of the entertainment world. It seems that the news reporters or journalists have the final say on who is portrayed as a hero or the enemy, who is the favorite, or who is a train wreck and who is a success story. As viewers, we may feel informed after watching the evening news, but in reality we are only hearing one side of the story.
For the past couple of the years, it seems that you can't turn on the TV or read the newspaper without hearing some mention of the war in Iraq. We are either being told the death count for the day, or that there are discussions being held to pull the troops out. However, its been so long since we first invaded, that I'm not sure if the majority of Americans still know why we are over there. We removed Saddam from the picture and most people thought that was the only reason we were over there, so the question remains why are we still there? And I don't know if we will ever get a straight forward answer. The media always gives the answer that will please the majority of the audience and keep them content. We will never hear the other side of the story watching our news programs because they won't show America in as good of a light as our news does. Its all about making sure that no matter what the real reason is, the American soldiers are the heroes and they are doing what is right. Being that we live in America and they are our soldiers, it is almost impossible to avoid bias when reporting about it, but it sometimes seem that the bias leaks over into bias about the Iraqi people. It goes from just the US being portrayed as the good guys to the US being portrayed as the good guys and all the Iraqi people are the bad guys. Bias is expected when discussing national matters, but there is a line between being bias and being degrading to other people and some news broadcasts cross that line.

To me, it also seems that the media defines what is trendy and popular in our culture today. Radio stations only play certain songs by popular artists and celebrities are only photographed in the clothes that are "cool". The media basically makes a statement that if you don't listen to this music or dress that way, you aren't cool. I take offense to this because I don't dress the way celebrities do because its not my style and it doesn't fit my personality and I think my music choices are just fine even if they aren't mainstream. My favorite band, Breaking Benjamin, isn't the most popular rock band out there, they are moderately popular. If you like rock music as a genre, then you have probably heard of them, but if you only listen to mainstream radio, you have no idea who they are. But because they aren't mainstream, they aren't played on the radio very often, they aren't performing at awards shows, and they get to do very many TV appearances, which limits their exposure to the masses. I honestly don't think the media should have as big of a say in popular culture as they do. People should make choices for themselves, instead of doing something because E! news said it would make them cool.

Research Paper Blog

For my research paper, I am researching the topic of prescription drug abuse. Some of the questions that I want to answer with my research are what age group abuses prescription drugs the most and why, what are some of the consequences, and what treatments are out there for this addiction. I plan on mostly using statistical data to show the different trends and scientific journals to show some of the proven consequences of prescription drug abuse. The method of research I will be using is analysis. I don't think enough would admit to abusing prescription drugs on a survey or interview for it to be an effective method and I don't think that people are going to let me sit and watch them abuse prescription drugs and they aren't going to do it out in the open. That leaves analysis as the best method for conducting research. Since I'm not directly dealing with people face to face, I don't have to worry too much about ethical considerations there, but when writing my paper, I'll have to watch how I word things so i don't generalize and say that everyone who takes prescription drugs abuses them.

Critical Response #6 10-18-07

Now that I have finished reading Steven Johnson's, I can honestly say that I felt that I got more out of this book than I got out of Neil Postman's "Technopoly". I felt that I could connect to Johnson more than I could Postman, so it was easier for me to read the book and actually think about it rather than just reading the words on the page. A big part of why I was able to connect so much better to Johnson was because the examples of movies, TV shows, games etc., that he used to prove and explain his points, were things that I was familiar with, so I could pull up that reference in my head and know exactly what he was talking about. With Postman, half the time I had no idea who or what he was talking about. He brought so many different people that I had a hard time keeping them straight in my head. Johnson had two or three examples and stuck with those examples throughout the whole section. Another thing that I liked better with Johnson was that he used language that anyone could understand, he literally wrote it in plain English. At points while reading Postman, I felt like I was trying to feed a book in a foreign language. All of this favoritism toward Johnson could simply be stemming from the fact that I enjoy playing video games, watching movies, and being on the Internet, so I enjoy reading about those activities a lot more than reading about technopolies.
Speaking of reading about activities that I like to do, in the last few pages, Johnson talks about how people today don't feel that they have time to sit down and read a good novel and completely immerse themselves in it and I completely agree with that. However, Johnson seems to put all the blame on other technologies, such as video game systems and the computer, for why people don't have time to read anymore. I'll admit that that is part of the problem, but I don't think it is the whole problem. People just don't have enough hours in the day to be able to sit down and read a book. Most adults are working more than 40 hours a week to try to support their families and kids today are encouraged to get involved with sports and extracurricular activities or to at least go outside and play, that they don't have time to read a book. I can sympathize with this because as a child, I loved to read and I still do, but ever since I started college, I don't have time. Between going to classes, doing all of my homework, studying for tests, and trying to have some semblance of a social life, there is no extra time to squeeze in a book. And it could easily be argued that I could be reading a book instead of playing my playstation, but a game I can quit anytime and next time just pick up where I left off. It's different with a book, once I stop there is no justing picking up where I left off, I have to reimmerse myself in the book and get back in the story and remember what is going on. If I had the time to read, I'm positive I would take advantage of it, as I'm sure all the other people who miss reading would.