In this world, everyone can be a kind of journalist. This is good because so many more interesting stories can be found and told, but it also allows a bunch of junk that is really meant for private conversations to be posted. It also raises the question about who should get the benefits of being a "journalist." Where is the line between protecting your sources and withholding evidence?
Also, with so many amateur posts our there, how is a cap on the rumor mill and the death of lies made? Basically, the audience polices those things. Wikipedia is the biggest example. If someone takes the time to put BS on an article, the viewer who can identify it as BS clicks the edit button and removes the rumor/lie. It takes only a few seconds to remove falsities while it takes longer to create them.
Essentially, Wikipedia works because enough people feel passionate about the articles. Someone feels passionate enough to clarify that there are two kinds of asphalt, the road surface and the chemical. If you were to post some lie on that article, the person passionate enough to clarify will probably see this lie and delete it soon after it is made. Granted someone else has the ability to take care of it before the passionate person can change it, but most of the edits are generally made by passionate person and about two other "half-passionates." The remaining edits are made by many people who will generally edit the article only once. In effect, if all of the passionate editors lost their passion at once, wikipedia would probably crumble in a week.
This talk of editing and passion reminds me I have an email I need to send to the creator of a website that looks at the video game Final Fantasy X and its symbolism with respect to culture and religion. The part of her site that annoys me the most is that she says the character Sin returns ten years after each of its defeats. Never in the game did it say this, and there is proof that it had not been ten years since Sin's last defeat since Chappu was killed by Sin 2 years prior to the ten year mark...
Let's get back on subject though....
In Design to Thrive, we learn that RIBS is not a fail-safe guarantee that the online community or social network will thrive ( O.O No way! Really?? Such a shocker!). Outside events can cause the online community to fail. Probably the biggest outside influences that could cause the network to fail are the government and the owners of the servers that the communities live on. With the large amount of people being able to create using these communities/networks, there needs to be censor to "keep the children safe" as well as to maintain power. Currently, the government rules of internet censor are rather lax. As time passes, this won't be the case. Also, sites like Youtube have in their license agreement that they can sell their half-license of your work to other companies at any time.
There are other outside forces that could cause problems as well. There is not a single answer for how to survive them.
No, the Calm totally lasts ten years, although Chappu does die a year prior to the events of FFX fighting Sin with the Crusaders; Wakka states both (or at least the fact that Yuna arrived ten years ago, at the start of the Calm) the night before everyone leaves Besaid (http://www.ffwa.org/ff10/script.php?page=p1-03). I presumed the Calms grew gradually less calm and that more attacks (or at least more appearances of Sin) happened as the end of a Calm neared. I figured Chappu's death was due to retaliation from Sin after the Crusaders' attack. It still doesn't make sense that, as willing as the people of Spira were to send out their summoners as sacrifices, they wouldn't throw out some summoners before the Calm ended to prevent mass destruction a la Kilika and elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that this comment was made in lieu of me doing a whole load of other work that's actually due tomorrow morning probably exemplifies the "passion" thing as well; FFX is my favorite game ever and I was delighted to see it pop up in the middle of your blog post. Every time I try and hash out religious symbolism within it though, my brain explodes.
Yay! Another FFX fan! So far it is my favorite Final Fantasy as well. FFVII Dirge of Cerberus comes in at a close second, and XIII (which I admit I only watched not played) comes in at third so far.
ReplyDeleteAre talking about this line?
"Yuna came to this village ten years ago, when the last Calm started."
That just says when the last calm started. It doesn't say that it hasn't already ended. I think you're the first person I have come across who has thought that perhaps the Calm got less calm as it drew to its end. It is an interesting idea. I'm leaning against it since the Calm revolved around the appearance of Sin. If Sin's initial reappearance in Spira was not the cue that the Calm has come to an end, what would be?
I agree in that I thought it was crazy that they didn't have like summoners on standby or whatever for when the Calm ended. After doing it 1,000 years, you would think they would have a little better process/preparation....
If you are interested I'm leading a discussion in March on FFX. The topic of the discussion will look at game as a reflection of culture, and it is likely that religious symbols (not all of which are Christian) will be discussed. Just shoot me an email if you would like to come, and if you can't come, you can get a hint of the different symbols we might talk about at http://browardvirtualschool.net/hollyguerrio/proj2/index.htm
This is a change of subject but...
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about “keeping the children safe” in terms of obligatory action? You refer to it as though it’s absolutely necessary (I realize that I sound like a horrible person right now….but it’s a question I suppose for the question’s sake). Is it? Don’t get me wrong, we have entered a new stage of communications and even interpersonal relationships, and this fact needs to be addressed on behalf of the generation inheriting it. But do we need to take precautions or put barriers in place that keep people safe? Or should we alter our paradigm entirely? Perhaps it is time to begin really adjusting the way we educate young people about communication, for example. Some of this is already happening intuitively. I know middle schoolers now who have never known a world without high speed internet and cell phones. Still, we as a society seem to, in many respects, maintain older models for addressing our relationships, our inter-personal communication, even our own expression. I suppose my real question here is, what specifically do we need to change – how do we, alongside technology, revolutionize – to adequately and effectively use these new technologies as a society that still cares about our children’s safety, about maintaining real relationships, about observing people’s rights to creative property, etc?
Yeah. I personally, haven't decided on how to answer that question. I just know that I grew up with parents that censored a lot of things for me that, in the long run, I have been glad that they had, so I tend to speak like that generation. I'm all for a new way of responding to the new media, but I do think that there are /some/ things that should not be easy for really young children to find.
ReplyDeleteMy boys are FFX fans; I prefer George RR Rogers's Fire and Ice series personally.
ReplyDelete