The importance of the Web and web 2.0

As I have progressed through this interesting module, I have come to understand just how important the web/web2.0 is and how important the original ideas of this concept were. It seems imperative in the world we live in today that we keep on eye on the internet as it evolves, because it seems that the internet war has begun.

The original concepts of the internet were to connect people, connect data and transparency. It is true to say that today all of these concepts have worked to a certain extent. We can connect through social networking, we connect through blog's which may link to other blog's and we can search the internet on governments and what they are doing in their countries.

The idea of the internet is to have no walls between data, every piece of data should be available, be transparent to connect to. The internet has it's own rules to play by or none, but the internet's original concept of transparency and shareable data has started to erode in some parts of the world as a wall in some countries is starting to pop up. This is due to corporations maybe wanting to hide information on a search engine (maybe a CEO did something the public doesn't want public) or it could be down to your government wanting to hide information or stop the flow of information from entering their country. Twitter has recently been accused of stamping on free speech as the website has started to select which tweets may be permitted to enter a specific country. "Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country - while keeping it available in the rest of the world,". In some aspects I can see why a country may ask twitter to withhold a tweet, maybe the tweet holds false information which spreads lies or maybe information to spark a "planned revolution" which some allude to Libya as a case of this (see video).

Although saying this, you can't really blame twitter as it is acting because the government of that country is asking it to take it down. For example the company was threatened with being sued if didn't take down Hezbollah accounts down in Israel. So you can't really blame Twitter for being pushed into a tight corner.
On the other hand, twitter should also remain impartial because part of the Arab spring was motivated from information spread on twitter as well helping the protesters to organize and make ground such as Tunisia. This is why it is prevalent to keep the web open and transparent and helps to ensure democracy is kept intact, and gives a voice to the people by helping the communities to connect. This is what Tim Berners-Lees creation was about, an open and transparent network. He told The Guardian "Mobile operators and internet service providers must not be allowed to break the principle of "net neutrality" – that there should be no favouritism for connecting to certain sites online – Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, warned today." 



As well as this, the web is under attack around the world from bills such as ACTA which was designed by 39 countries who were not representatives. The United States also tried to pass PIPA and SOPA which did not ratify due from the outcry of playing foul from the population. They are now trying to implement CISPA which is similar act with the terms basically written more fancy. I think ACTA should not be ratified by the European Parliament because it will only benefit a small group of people who will profit immensely but affect millions of people around the world. There have been protests all over Europe which has led to some countries suspending the signing. Polish MP's wore Anonymous style Guy fawkes masks to protest the signing of the bill just as protesters did.









Tim Burnes-Lee says


"It is threatening the rights of people in America, and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world. Even though the Sopa and Pipa acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it's staggering how quickly the US government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens."

Cyberwarfare

Cyber technology has created another path for warfare to be executed in, cyberwarfare. Year on year, attacks being executed through the use of cyber technology are increasing, with the advancement  in technology, new ways of war are being dreamt up to combat the perceived threats. This increase is for multiple reasons, one that different countries are trying to gain information through cyberspace from enemies or using means to halt economic progression, two that countries are looking for new ways to gain the upper hand in warfare, as well as domestic and corporate organizations receiving attacks or online protests from the average civilian engaged in groups such as Anonymous. This could be why we have seen new bills trying to be passed into law in some countries such as PIPA, SOPA, CISPA and ACTA.

There are many reasons, it would seem, to invest in using cyberspace as a warzone. Most modern countries depend on cyberspace as a lot of they're infrastructures are in the cyber domain such as powergrids, communication tools, financial transactions and governmental agencies among other things. Taking out the infrastructure of a country is key in war to disrupt the opposing countries abilities to fight back. Although many say this threat is increasing, many people think that this threat is being hyped up by the cyber industry as a means of increasing revenue as it's services are more likely to be needed. It's not a profitable business if there are no threats. “There is no chance whatsoever that nuclear power plants will be hacked, that electric infrastructure would be hacked and taken down for any significant period of time,” said Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the CATO Institute in Washington. “The worst we can expect is disruption – that's not war, it doesn't really terrorize. So the threats are serious but they're not to the level of war on terror."



Although saying this, we can see cyberwarfare taking place. Iran's nuclear facilities were targeted and infected with a virus called Stuxnet. Many suspect that either Israel or America were behind the infection due to the paranoia that they think Iran is planning to build a nuclear bomb, even though they say they are building parts for nuclear power. Stuxnet has been described as " the first cyber-weapon" as the scale of the attack and complexity of the virus has never been seen before. It infected around 16,000 computers due to the ability of self replicating. Ralph Langer said
" With Stuxnet we have opened a new chapter in history. There is now no way we can stop the proliferation of cyber-weapons".

This got me thinking about other cyber-weapons and cyber defence systems and the danger they may pose the population. The Haarp machine is a programme in Alaska used to research the ionosphere along with experimenting with it. They say transmit frequencies into a small beam of information into the ionosphere from the facility which can travel to any submarine submerged in the sea anywhere in the world.
It is true to say that internet is trawling with silly conspiracies about the capabilities of what this machine can do from mind control, to weather manipulation, to anti missile defence systems and many more but some of this may have some merit. The U.S denies this but the United Nations is taking the machine seriously. A UN report says this "HAARP could function as an anti-missile and anti-aircraft defence system, permit interception and disruption of communications, weather and submarine and subterranean communications, among other things.  The HAARP patent papers also stated that the invention could “simulate and perform the same function as performed by the detonation of a heavy type nuclear device”.  It seems worrying to me that any machine could disrupt weather or perform the same act as a nuclear bomb without anyone knowing who did it. More over this technology it says in the report has seen a rise of cancer in the surrounding area. This is untested water when experimenting on our atmosphere so they could be walking or "beaming" into a catastrophe. This machine leaves no traces behind so it is worrying that they could run away with the idea. Europe and Russia have similar devices but are considerable smaller and less powerful.

As we have become so dependent on modern technology and cyberspace to communicate it is now easier to disrupt the communication between a population. When Egypt had the uprising in 2011, a country still in turmoil, the government turned off the internet. This was a massive blow to the protesters as they used social networking sites to organise and prepare themselves whilst also spreading and releasing information to the outside world. It could be argued that by turning off the internet this is a cyber-weapon itself. Egypt triggered the cyber communities to come together to help they Egyptian population. Communities such as Telecomix and Anonymous joined forces to help get communication flowing again by using dial-up devices and by flooding Egyptian fax machines with information to help them. They do the things our governments don't think to do or won't act on on doing.

Another type of Cyberwarfare being used is by turning off the mobile network or making it appear as if the mobile is working when it isn't. The MET police can now turn off your mobile network when they want to and load a fake one to track an individual's where about's without them knowing. As well as this, the MET can do this to specific points, blanketing the area so everyone in the radios is under the illusion. We have also seen this tactic being used in America in San Franciso where a group of protesters were assembling to protest the shooting of an unarmed black man by a BART officer. Bart is a train system which turned off the mobile networks to stop the assembly. It seems to me that this trampling on free speech.

"All over the world, people are using mobile devices to protest oppressive regimes, and governments are shutting down cell phone towers and the Internet to stop them," said Michael Risher, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "It's outrageous that in San Francisco, BART is doing the same thing."

I'll leave you with a video showing you the direction in which the digital battlefield is evolving.

Video Games, the magic circle and the players

Video games and it's players behold a dynamic and vast link with each other. The game and the player both have a voice in the game, which can be affected from either side by various means. Though this is true, it has become apparent that the virtual world and real life are becoming entwinded.

The magic circle is the environment the game creates which is supposed to be intended for all players, although, some players either distort the circle or intend not to abide by it at all. The magic circle is like a cloak or cage, which harbours certain attributes, rules and ideas to keep the virtual system running. If there is not a stable magic circle then the reality of the game itself and the success of it could be in jeopardy as players do not want to take part in broken game play.    

In order for the game to be in harmony, the magic circle's rules normally need to be adhered to for the virtual  world to be successful. Some way's in which the player gets joy out of the game is through achievement, progression,a sense of victory or multi player participation(with strict rules). If these fundamentals are broken  , then the developer is likely to lose it's audience along with it's revenue.

Hackers,cheats,spoil sports or you could say the outsider, are a group of players who undermine the magic circle's rules of play, environment and disrupt the magic circle's ethics. This group play the game to experience a different enjoyment as opposed to the average player who abides by the magic circle. They get an enjoyment from stepping outside the virtual norms, to hack or annoy without any regard to other gamers playing experience.

Bowyer says "to cheat, not to play the game that reflected the norm, indicated that there was another world, the world of deception, in which people did not play the game, your game, but their own”. 

I think that this is because it gives them the sense of being powerful and having an advantage of the game which other players do not. As well as this, it helps them to reach the end game, if there is one at all in the game they are playing. The average player will grow a hatred for this group as it shatters their game reality as well as ruining their chances of succeeding in their objective. If there is to much hacking then the player will simply stop playing the game because there is no enjoyment for them any more. This is why it is important for the game maker to monitor hackers and ban players otherwise they will lose revenue, especially in games such as World of Warcraft. 

         

         Johan Huizinga says “The spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its illusion-a pregnant word which means literally “in-play” (from inlusion, illudere or inludere). Therefore he must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community.”

Glitchers on the other hand, are a group of players that don't really ruin the magic circle for other players but often take advantage from development errors. They do not altar the game's system. 

P. 114 –Playing with Videogames, James Newman, Routledge, 2009.

"Glitches vary significantly in their scale and severity and range from graphical artefacts or anomalies that do not dramatically affect or alter gameplay to those that can crash the game, and even the system on which it is running, or corrupt save data, thereby eliminating a gamer’s recorded progress."

It could be said that they take advantage of the magic circle for their own pleasure but do not distort it. Here are some of examples of glitching. 

                                                                 Halo 2 plasma glitching

                                                           World of Warcraft Glitching

Although the magic circle is intended to keep the game intact and running whilst keeping the theme and feel of the game coherent, this does not mean that the game cannot be affected by real life attributions or by game modifications. As well as this, businesses often invade the magic circle with advertising as well as Governments using games to advertise for they're Political campaigns. 

"JJ Richards writes that the ads-in-videogames market should reach $1 billion by 2014 and that Massive has already surpassed its quarterly sales targets."

Expect to see a rise in in-game advertising as the market is growing rapidly. Will this effect the coherence of the magic circle as it becomes more rife? It could be a deterrent for gamers to play certain games or it may just go unnoticed.

The Political world has also entered into gaming, well at least the U.S parties have. Political campaigns have seeped into the magic circle as to broaden they're influence on the voters for elections. In 2008 Obama had a lot of advertising in-game in Second Life. This included a virtual party Headquarters, billboards and also t-shirts with his face on. Other politicians included Hilary Clinton and John Mcclain who did similar things in Second Life. 

Whether it made any political impact is unknown but it seems there is a growing trend for this kind of campaigning.  

My final point is that i have found that the Virtual world and real life seem to me moving together. For example, a synthetic marketplace in an online game although virtual, has the ability to have real connections to the real market outside the game. This because company's have been set up to farm resources on a mass scale in game to sell to other players for real money. It is illegal but a very lucrative business, for example World of Warcraft has 10.2 million subscribers, if only a handful use an external company's service for resources then they have made a handsome revenue."In 2009 the global market for gold farming was valued at around $3bn annually". Here we have a connection between the real life economy and the virtual one, which can have an effect on the value of items in game e.g inflation and deflation. This merging of the economy begs the question, is the current definition for real life correct when we can see the line being blurred in so many ways?

Two worlds blurring together.

Game studies

The gaming culture is an interesting topic to discuss as it is rife in nearly every aspect of life. It could be said that there is a human need to game. This is apparent throughout history as we can see that gaming was a huge part of ancient civilizations. Gaming is a very sociable medium and also a way of engaging with the world so it is not surprising that we can see game playing throughout time. Although saying this, in the present day it is commonly said in the media that gaming is an anti-social medium and that it is dangerous and desensitizing which I agree with in some aspects.

Many people often think that gaming has only occurred in the last few hundred years.This could not be further than the truth. The Ancient Egyptians loved to game with each other, one of the most popular board games was called senet and is still played today. It could be said that gaming is a form of escapism, helping humans to relax and forget about the rest of their worries for a small snapshot, just like getting lost in a good book.

Multi player games gives people the opportunity to interact with each other, especially with online gaming such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. This games are based on the idea of interacting with other people around the world or your friends, so it is a contradiction when news outlets state that gaming is an anti-social medium. I do agree though that there is a danger of addiction with gaming, especially with MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft. Where as before humans gamed because it was a fun activity and a natural thing to do , I think there is now a danger of hyper-gaming and addiction. As technology advances, the gaming spectrum is broadened with new graphics and possibilities meaning that the game hooks are becoming more effective, resulting in a larger chance of game addiction. Too much immersion is never a good thing. I'm sure company's such as Blizzard would be happy with addiction as it keeps their revenues rolling. A drug cartel wouldn't stop selling heroin just because their customers become addicted.

We can see for ourselves the human need to game by thinking about children and how they act on a day to day basis.Children playing outdoors helps them to absorb basic knowledge about the surrounding world.  Children often invent games of their own with their own rules and style, we can see that this a way of them communicating and investigating with the surrounding world and people. These investigations help the child make decisions in what will form the personality traits of them growing, or maybe when a child plays hop scotch and falls over this will help make future decisions on how to jump more effectively. 

I would like to conclude that gaming is a fundamental human need that helps us develop in a for ever increasing stressful world. It is one of the key ways for us to relax and forget about our worries. But we need to be aware of the corporations who are of course out to make money, and don't think twice about the amount of immersion they allow to be presented to us as it can detrimental to our health.