HW 7: Video games and government conspiracies!
Interest Statement for Semester-Long Writing Assignment
There are many different areas of social computing that interest me, especially the ones that play a role in my life. This includes aggregators (like iTunes), e-mail (Yahoo), instant messaging of course (AIM), social networking services (like Facebook and MySpace), wikis (WikiPedia), blogging (obviously), and virtual worlds/massive multi-player online games. Of these options I’ve tried to narrow down which one I’m going to concentrate on. Considering I want to be a video game animator someday I thought it may be a good idea to work on a paper regarding the online multi-player games Project Entropia and Second Life. I chose these not because my favorite games, but because they way these particular games is fascinting. They are based on a real world economy, meaning you download the games for free, and can make virtually thousands of dollars by selling virtual real estate, designing and selling clothes, and of course spending money on land or houses or nice furniture. One woman I read about in Germany I believe makes about $100,000 a year from playing these games alone…she doesn’t even work, she just plays. I’m also considering writing about blogging because it has been known to cause great change and awareness. Blogging and online communication is how most people were heard after 9/11 when the governmetn and the media wouldn’t listen to their accounts. So many people support the theory that something simply wasn’t right about that day, and now several documentaries have finally been made and are available as well on various aggregators across the internet.
It’s hard to choose only 3 marginalized groups to focus on for this project, because there are so many that concern me already…discrimation against gender, race, sexual preference, religion, and age. I think that race and social status is definately one I could research and look into if I decide to go with an essay about the 9/11 conspiracies and theories. If I choose to go with a paper about online worlds, there’s plenty I could research about how video gaming really affects teens, and stereotypes about those who play (and profit) from such games.
Since I’ve barely ever traveled in my life (sadly…), I just don’t know much about the rest of the world. Trust me, I’ve tried but I’m too poor at the moment, and have only been to a few various locations within the US. I watch the Discovery channel, and the Travel channel, and many documentaries, and have many friends from different countries who even speak different langauges. What I’m saying is, I don’t think I am uncultured…I just don’t think I’m worldy enought to truly empathize with what other people are going through in other parts of the world, so for my writing assigment I think I’d like to focus on Amerca. I may also write about other parts of the world, but I’m thinking I’m going to focus on the major industrialized countries if I write about technology such as online video games.
