Nerd Arts

The strike began in the early morning today (round Midnight, Second Life Time) and when I visited IBM’s main hub, a crowd was already gathering.

Most of the activity seemed to be concentrated on the IBM Italia region on the corporate campus– unsurprising, since the protest is over a paycut impacting Italian  workers of the company.  In any case, they continued streaming in, and the leaders kept count of unique visitors.  At the end, the Uni Global Second Life spokesman told me they’d counted 1850 in all.

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Internet addiction more serious than OCD
Internet addiction should be grouped with extreme addictive disorders such as gambling, sex addiction and kleptomania, an Israeli psychiatrist said.
Dr. Pinhas Dannon of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine said 10 percent of Internet surfers are afflicted with “Internet addiction disorder,” which can lead to anxiety and severe depression.

Internet addiction is classified by mental health professionals as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a mild to severe mental health condition that results in an urge to engage in ritualistic thoughts and behavior.

“Internet addiction is not manifesting itself as an ‘urge.’ It’s more than that. It’s a deep ‘craving.’ And if we don’t make the change in the way we classify Internet addiction, we won’t be able to treat it in the proper way,” Dannon said Friday in a release.

He said the two groups at greatest risk from Internet addiction disorder are teenagers and people in their mid-50s suffering from the loneliness of an empty nest.

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Teen Girls Play with Technology at IBM Camp
By Carmen Nobel
August 17, 2007

IBM and 30 junior high school girls spend a week crafting “binary code” bracelets, building Second Life projects and, hopefully, falling in love with technology.

On a recent August afternoon, 30 adolescent girls sat captivated in a conference room at IBM’s Watson Research Center in Cambridge, Mass. Wide-eyed, they watched a scientist from M.I.T. (Massachusettes Institute of Technology) dip a pink carnation into a vat of liquid nitrogen, and then shatter the frozen flower against the side of a tank.

“Whoa!” said the girls, in unison.

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MR t1 is a project that constantly checks the current speed of the connected network and if it reaches that of a standard T1 line (1.5mbit/sec) or higher then a Mr.T sound sample is triggered in the form of ‘I Pity The Fool’ or one of Mr.T’s other various sayings. The project playfully examines the metaphorical connection between fictional characters from mainstream entertainment media and the naming conventions of modern communication systems such as the Internet. It also stems from the experience of working in many different lab environments where bandwidth speed has always been an issue concerning people using shared Internet resources.

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from coin operated

A McDonalds youtube video has recently got some mainstream media attention (which has potentially made it 100 of times more valuable). The video shows two suburbanites beatboxing and rapping into a McDonalds drive through window. The video currently has just under 8 million views on YouTube. So my question is this, how much is this video worth (if a marketing company were simply to pay for results based upon views) and what does it mean that over 8 million people chose to watch this advertisement (many not knowing they were even seeing an ad which is always more expensive in itself). Places like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and the rest of the web 2.0 places are ripe for the taking, yet most major media hasn’t caught on to the idea of internet marketing. It will be interesting to see what YouTube looks like in five years. I imagine it will look something like PornoTube where top spots, links, and everything else is paid for. And most people won’t care because, well, shit, it’s obvious they don’t mind watching commercials anyway.

NPR has a great short segment available online about video game addiction.

America has become obsessed with labeling and classifying all human characteristics.
It is no surprise that with the rise of the gaming culture along comes bullshit organizations like the American Psychiatric Association who wish to immediately classify anything they don’t fully understand as an addiction. Don’t get me wrong, there are some gamers who may game to the point that it effects their jobs, or social life, however one needs to approach the subject of video game addiction from a viewpoint of a new social phenomenon. World of Warcraft tends to get the most flack, because players may game for hours and hours on end, however this is also due to the fact that World of Warcraft is also a social atmosphere where one can socialize with other characters. I think as these older doctors talk about digital/virtual experiences they forget that these things are just babies. One wouldn’t chastise a person obsessed with other hobbies which are repetitive and somewhat obsessive as well as rewarding. Take playing the piano for instance. A pianist sits at a chair and uses his fingers (and feet) in order to create music. Concert pianists practice hours and hours a day for years on end, most started playing when they were very young. Now, gamers obviously don’t “give back” as much to the community, but there are cultures where gamers are becoming as popular as Sports players. Ironically the NPR segment below is followed by a story about an umpire who’s been calling baseball for 37 years. Another example of a generation completely out of touch with the 21st century, and more evidence that there needs to be more scholars researching virtual environments so they don’t get labeled and pigeon holed by some hack who writes the DSMIV.

Addiction is most often associated with alcohol, drugs and cigarettes — but what about compulsive eating, gambling, or video gaming? According to the American Psychiatric Association, compulsive gambling meets the criteria for addiction, but compulsive video gaming does not.
Link (Via NPR)

Michael D. Lemonick’s is a guest during this segment and has recently written “How We Get Addicted” for Time magazine.
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Here’s a link to an mp3 of an interview with Drew Curtis of FARK.com about his new book, it’s not news, it’s FARK.

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Well it seems that some major corporations are beginning to latch onto the idea of Creative Commons content. They also have a wiki, and one can actually participate in the project to change the direction of the storyline. Expect to see more intelligent corporations engaging in this sort of marketing in the near future.
From the site
“This is an interactive comedy which you can participate in. Watch the video and see how you can influence the story line.”
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The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer

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By JULIAN DIBBELL
Published: June 17, 2007

It was an hour before midnight, three hours into the night shift with nine more to go. At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him. The screen showed a lightly wooded mountain terrain, studded with castle ruins and grazing deer, in which warrior monks milled about. Li, or rather his staff-wielding wizard character, had been slaying the enemy monks since 8 p.m., mouse-clicking on one corpse after another, each time gathering a few dozen virtual coins — and maybe a magic weapon or two — into an increasingly laden backpack.
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Julian Dibbell has written a book entitled Play Money which explores the implications of Chinese Gold Farming in World of Warcraft.

A short story called Anda’s Game which also involves Chinese gold farmers can also be found in Cory Doctrow’s new collection of shortstories Overclocked.