Human Issues In Computing

1. Human Issues In Computing Social Networks: MMORPGs and other cool stuff

2. Albert Einstein once said, "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.“ ~ Mechelle M. De Craene. “Special Needs, Social Computing & The Digital Divide”. <http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604274>.

3. Cool Thing: Nikon's Universcale experience the sizes of various objects • Computers allow developers/creators to construct dazzling, new innovations, such as an ‘infinite’ yardstick.

4. Cool Thing: Nikon's Universcale I know, it's on a corporate site, and you have to sit through some pretentious Japanglish while it loads, but being able to use your mousewheel to scroll from femtometers up to the 100 billion lightyear scale is dazzling... ~ http://www.metafilter.com/59861/Universcale :: a blog response • The structure of the internet allows observers to become participants instantly reacting and recording their input on such creations.

5. The Computer as a Communication Device In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. ~ J. C. R. Licklider, Robert W. Taylor “The Computer as a Communication Device” Science and Technology, April 1968

6. A communication system should make a positive contribution to the discovery and arousal of interests. The Computer as a Communication Device

7. The Computer as a Communication Device • Message Boards • Instant Messengers • Weblogs • E-mail • Handhelds • Voice over IP

8. Cool Thing: The Internet? • Miniwatts Marketing Group: Internet usage statistics • Parks Associates: Internet Finding Few Newcomers in 2006 • Reuters: Many Americans see little point to Web • Stanford: The Internet Study

9. Social Network Website: Definition • Many2Many: Danah Boyd • A “social network site” is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile. ~ Many2Many. November 12, 2006.

10. Social Network Website: Profile Includes: • an identifiable handle • information about that person • also may include a photograph and information about last login • have a unique URL that can be visited directly

11. Social Network Website: Traversable and Public • Participants may list other profiles as “friends” or some equivalent. • This articulated social network is displayed on a profile for all other users to view. • Each node contains a link to other profiles so individuals can traverse the network through friends of friends of friends….

12. Social Network Website: Semi-persistent Public Comments • Participants can leave comments on others’ profiles for everyone to see. • Comments are semi-persistent as they may disappear over some period of time or upon removal. • Comments are typically reverse-chronological in display. • Profiles are a combination of an individuals’ self-expression and what others say about that individual.

13. Social Software: Definition • Life with Alacrity • The term 'social software', which is now used to define software that supports group interaction, has only become relatively popular within the last two or more years. However, the core ideas of social software itself enjoy a much longer history, running back to Vannevar Bush's ideas about 'memex' in 1945, and traveling through terms such as Augmentation, Groupware, and CSCW in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. ~ Life with alacrity. October 13, 2004.

14. Social Software: Definition Wikipedia • enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication. • using these tools may create actual community • collaborative software applies to cooperative work systems and is usually narrowly applied to software that enables work functions. • distinctions between usage of the terms "social" and "collaborative" is in the applications not the tools, although there are some tools that are only rarely used for work collaboration.

15. Types of Services • Social communication • Friendster, myspace, virb, Xanga, meebo, ventrilo, IRC • Social network services • Ryze • Social network search engines • eurekster • Social guides • chowhound, Restaurant Guide • Social bookmarking • digg, del.icio.us, reddit • Social citations • citeulike, Bibsonomy • Social libraries • lib.rario.us • Virtual worlds/MMOGs • World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, Maple Story

16. MMORPG: Definition Wikipedia • A genre of online computer role-playing games (RPGs) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world.

17. MMORPG: Overview Wikipedia • Though MMORPGs have evolved considerably, many of them share some basic characteristics. Most MMORPGs are based on traditional Dungeons & Dragons gameplay, including quests, monsters, and loot.

18. MMORPG: World of Warcraft With such a rapid growth of the network, we started to see several bottlenecks in the infrastructure that exposed themselves very quickly when the expanded hardware immediately took on massive load. These bottlenecks were solvable, but they required additional upgrades to the backend systems to accommodate the load--which, again, we hadn’t planned to see, even with the extreme estimates, until later in the year. Blizzard Interview by: Tycho Mon, January 24 2005 - 04:35 AM http://www.penny-arcade.com/2005/01/24