Transcript Human Issues In Computing - Department of Computer Science

Human Issues In
Computing
Social Networks:
MMORPGs and other cool stuff
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>.
Cool Thing: Nikon's Universcale
experience the sizes of various objects
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Computers allow developers/creators to
construct dazzling, new innovations, such
as an ‘infinite’ yardstick.
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
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The structure of the internet allows
observers to become participants instantly
reacting and recording their input on such
creations.
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
The Computer as a Communication Device
A communication system should make a positive
contribution to the discovery and arousal of interests.
The Computer as a Communication Device
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Message Boards
Instant Messengers
Weblogs
E-mail
Handhelds
Voice over IP
Cool Thing: The Internet?
Miniwatts Marketing Group: Internet
usage statistics
 Parks Associates: Internet Finding
Few Newcomers in 2006
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• Reuters: Many Americans see little point
to Web
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Stanford: The Internet Study
Social Network Website: Definition
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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.
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
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….
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Social Network Website:
Semi-persistent Public Comments
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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 reversechronological in display.
• Profiles are a combination of an
individuals’ self-expression and what
others say about that individual.
Social Software: Definition
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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.
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.
Types of Services
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Social communication
• Friendster, myspace, virb, Xanga, meebo, ventrilo, IRC
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Social network services
• Ryze
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Social network search engines
• eurekster
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Social guides
• chowhound, Restaurant Guide
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Social bookmarking
• digg, del.icio.us, reddit
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Social citations
• citeulike, Bibsonomy
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Social libraries
• lib.rario.us
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Virtual worlds/MMOGs
• World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, Maple Story
MMORPG: Definition
Wikipedia
 A genre of online computer roleplaying games (RPGs) in which a
large number of players interact with
one another in a virtual world.
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.
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