Zack Final Essay

There are many different things to be said about video games. There are certainly people that write off video games as having multiple negative comments about video games, but to be fair most of these people are coming up with these ideas right off the street. Not actually devoting time and effort into gaming and what it can actually do in a positive way for people. Final essay. 

Zack Tokosh

Jeremy Justus

Digital Humanities

15 December 2016

Video games, what do they really do?

            When you think of games, what exactly comes to mind? Is it scrabble when you used to play with grandma, is it Candyland or Yahtzee. Is it playing a sport, Clue or just Cornhole in the backyard. There are games everywhere in life and that is something that I am extremely interested in. I, along with every other college student looked at the syllabus to see what is going on in the class for the year.  You we are always looking to see if we think a class will be difficult or easy and the syllabus gives us a basic understanding to the basics of the class. As  I walked into your class I went through and saw that we would be talking about Pokemon Go, which I really got into during the summer, and video games.  I myself have been a gamer since day 1. I can remember sitting in my grandmas basement playing the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for hours on hours. This you could say started my love for video games. So begin, I will be going through a little history about Nintendo but also the effects of the gaming industry on people, positive and negative.

            So from the very begin, Nintendo was founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi in 1889 where he began the company with simple playing cards. Not many people know that the company is that old or even that they started as a playing card game called Hanafuda.  It brings you back to what was stated earlier about what exactly do you think of when you hear game. So next in the timeline for Nintendo is the Osaka Stock exchange. This is something that I found extremely interesting when doing my research. The stock for Nintendo hit an all time high in the 45 years of being around. The reason for this is that Nintendo decided to try and expand to get more of a following to their company.  So what they did was explored their options and worked with Disney and used some of their characters from Disney and put them on the Hanafuda playing cards. This is when the stock rose at an incredible rate and ended the day at 37,450 yen ($312.62).  So this went on in the early 1960s and was a very big success for a few years. Right around 1970 the company needed something to revamp their audience. This now was the time where toys were becoming more and more popular. So a simple repairman in one of the factories was messing around and created something in his spare time and named it the Ultra Hand. It was very simple, it was a device that extended out and it came with items that it could grab. So something that was as simple as that actually hit the market in a very positive way and was Nintendo’s most successful product up until that time. So Nintendo lived off of their success of the Ultra hand for a while before dipping into the video game market with its enormous hit Donkey Kong. Donkey kong was an arcade game that came out in 1981 that a very popular idea for Nintendo. The game was simple, you played as Mario and trying to avoid different objects  that were being thrown down at you by Doney himself. Your goal was to rescue the girlfriend Pauline.  It was pretty interesting to find out that the name of the game originated from the movie King Kong and Donkey was meant as “stupid”. In it makes sense, stupid kong. This game was extremely successful which only lead up to multiple editions of Donkey Kong. So next on the list was what I stated earlier, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) which hit the market in japan in 1983. It was not released into the United States until 1985. This was the first take home console available to the market. It was originally called the “family computer” and eventually changed its name to what it is called today, Nintendo Entertainment System. This was the gaming system for the ages. Everyone that did not have a NES wanted one! It was the system of the decade until they were able to top themselves with the Game Boy. This was the ticket to the winners circle for the company Nintendo. This Gameboy was portable gaming system, it was size of your hand and you could take it anywhere with you. It was a 4 colored gray device that was an extreme amount of fun. It was originally combined with the well known game Tetris.

The next biggest thing in the Nintendo timeline is the biggest success the company has ever endured, the Nintendo 64. This was an instant classic that to this day I still play regularly. It was the first system that introduced the infamous analog stick to be able to move your player in all directions. This controller compared to the controllers today are unbelievable but it still in a nutshell started it all. So from there the company took a turn into cards again with the pokemon playing cards which almost seemed like a fall back play for the company. The company really started its revamp. They came out with the Nintendo DS a newer portable game system. This was a few years after the Gameboy color. Nintendo did not wait to produce their next big hit, just 2 years after the Nintendo ds they opened the market to the Nintendo Wii. This was one of their latest greatest hits for the company excluding the partnering with Netflix.

            So will all this being said, is this company good for the world, there are many different ideas out there for the gaming community. In recent years people have been saying video games is nothing but a negative, it is making kids lazy, fat, worsening their vision. These “video games being bad” for you has information like stated before about the negatives the gaming community can be bad for you. Is it true? There is really no right or wrong answer to this discussion, especially with different ideas being thrown out into the wild of people today. There are certainly negatives to everything in life. There are many different ideas about video games being such a negative influence on people being more interactive, or even with the most recent violence ideas.  This is something that people do not take lightly, this if true would influence more and more people against video games. We live in a world where violence is an extremely big thing. We have riots for everything from sports teams losing in championships, from black lives matter supporters, to presidential elections. We are beginning to live in such a violent world that things like this just adds to the negativity around us. We see something like video games being known as “bad for you” and it just adds to all the social problems else where in the world we live in. So is this a truthful thing that video games are bad for you, maybe it is, maybe it is not. Like I stated before there are just too many people with different opinions in the world that are so self-centered around their own ideas. The thing is that just because some people believe in something does not mean that they are always right. There is always another view, what the other side has to say.

            Are the video games that are out and about in our world good for us? This is the other side of the puzzle. Like I stated earlier that there are many different arguments about how video games can be a negative thing for people that play them. Such as the laziness, violent, or even bad vision. There can always be another side to make that argument. Video games are also a positive thing in many different peoples life. For example mine, I have played sports all of my life, including hockey, soccer, baseball and basketball. These are not simple things to do as you can see by the amount of the players that actually play their sports professionally. Sports require an insane amount of dedication, practice and hand eye coordination. This is something that if you truly think about is very vital when you are playing video games.  You need to practice what you are playing and have a serious amount of dedication to the game to be able to play it as well as you need to be. There is serious hours of gaming that is involved which I can vouch for personally.

            So if we want to debate if video games are good or bad maybe we should throw sports into the same equation.  This is just another possibility that can be thrown into the mix with people debating on different ideas with video games.  There are certainly positives in videos games if people want to say there are positives in sports. This is just some of the thoughts that I have with the video gaming community in a whole.

            In conclusion there are many different things to be said about video games. There are certainly people that write off video games as having multiple negative comments about video games, but to be fair most of these people are coming up with these ideas right off the street. Not actually devoting time and effort into gaming and what it can actually do in a positive way for people.

Social Media and Politics: the Digital Generation's Combination

My final essay, titled "Social Media and Politics: the Digital Generation's Combination" analyzes the millennial generation's connection and communication abilities via social media, as well as how social media influences American politics. It explores the platforms of Facebook and Twitter, how politicians can communicate with voters through those platforms, as well as how political campaigns are able to manipulate those sites to increase their candidates' popularity.

Low-Tech Digital Poetry and Digital Fringe Art

My final essay, titled "Low-Tech Digital Poetry and Digital Fringe Art," defends the idea that a prospective artist need not have a lot of technical training nor a lot of resources to produce digital art of value.  Digital poems and special artworks resting on the fringes can be made through low-tech means for high-quality returns.  In this essay I write about professional low-tech digital poetry, works on the fringe, and student works from UPJ's Digital Poetry course this semester.

Final Essay

In my final essay for Digital Humanities, I write about what is causing the Increase in Social Media. I focus on three main reasons for this increase that include the need to stay connected, reputation, and the want of expanding their knowledge.

Essay Exhibit

The final essay exhibit is new to the class of Digital Humanities and I believe we can all say it was a hit. It gave everyone some time to make an outline and get some thoughts down for their final essay in a more creative way. Most individuals made a powerpoint or prezi and others were more elaborated. This also gave options for opinions for the writer from multiple different people. The ones I found most interesting were Bailyn and Zack's.

Bailyn was one of many of us that made a prezi presentation. She is writing her final paper on hyperlinks, however, her presentation goes beyond that. She recapped the whole semester of Digital Humanities into one presentation and the work and thought that had to go into that is astonishing. It was cool to look back and realize how much we have learned and cool to see how hyperlinks have played such a big part of it. She picked a topic that accurately describes the field of Digital Humanities.

Zack was ahead of the game and changed up the exhibit by giving us a Google Maps essay to look at. He is writing his paper on the history of Nintendo and it was so crazy to see all the consoles that lead up to all of Nintendo’s famous works, such as the Wii. It was also neat to learn about all the new items Nintendo has created that I had no clue about. Nintendo paved the way for the rest of video games and now video games are part of our everyday culture. I think Zack picked a good topic that relates to digital humanities by bringing in some of the history of video games and how is has come about.

As you can see, this essay exhibit gave all of us a chance to see how people are relating what we learned back to the field of Digital Humanities. It was also an opportunity for us to brainstorm, get ideas, and expand our thinking for our own final papers. My personal favorite part of the essay exhibit was recollecting on the semester and how much knowledge was actually thrown our way.

Friday's Essay Exhibit

Last Friday I went around to four of the essay exhibit pieces in our classroom.  Three of them had something to do with social media, and the fourth dealt with bots.  I gave most of my attention to my tribe members Molly and Morgan.

Morgan's essay exhibit was titled "Increase in Social Media Due to Virtual Identity."  Her exhibit piece was a Prezi consisting of four bubbles.  The first bubble dealt with the concept of F.O.M.O. (Fear of Missing Out).  F.O.M.O. is the anxiety, often fueled by social media, that you are missing out on cool happenings.  Some people use social media to stay in the loop for fun events, parties, etc.  Morgan's second bubble dealt with reputation.  She surmised that users of social media attempted to use those platforms to show off positive traits that they possess or that they hope others will think they possess.  The third bubble of the presentation regarded social media's usefulness.  For instance, beyond the obvious functions, social media can be used to learn new things, such as recipes.  A YouTube video occupied the final bubble of Morgan's presentation.  It pulled the exhibit together well.

Morgan on Facebook

Molly's exhibit also used Prezi to convey its message.  She self-described her presentation as "Dope AF" and "Pro-Millennial."  Molly's Prezi focused on the intersection of social media and politics.  She referenced how political candidates of today use Twitter bots to propagate artificial buzz.  Molly also looked at how generational differences related to social media and politics.  Millennials, for instance, are using social media well to stay informed on political topics of interest to them.  Molly uses several statistics to back up her claims.

Molly politicking on Twitter

It was interesting to see that 75% of the exhibits I looked at were about social media.  They each had a distinct focus, but they still dealt with similar topics.  I think social media is an interesting area for this type of study, and I think these projects could prove to be fruitful for critical inquiry.

Essay Exhibit

The Digital Humanities class recently completed an Essay Exhibit, in which students create multimedia works in order to creatively present their final paper topics. On Wednesday, half of the class presented their multimedia works to the classroom, and in turn, received feedback regarding their papers topics, as well as possible paper outlines.

 The first exhibit I decided to check out was Patrick Stahl’s. Patrick’s paper will focus on the subject of low-technological poetry and fringe art. Patrick’s piece was found in a hyperlink in a blog post, and to present his ideas, Patrick created a five minute video that showed multiple forms of electronic poetry that were created on basic computer applications, such as Microsoft Excel. He included multiple examples in this video; all of his examples were self-made, or came from a person in his digital poetry class. Patrick’s paper topic is interesting, and it is obvious that he has a clear and organized thesis. By using his own and his classmate’s digital poetry as examples, he is making it unique, as well as relatable.

The second exhibit I encountered was Morgan’s, who is completing a research paper on the internet group called Anonymous. Morgan is focusing on the history of Anonymous, some events and uproars the group created, and how the group’s formation and work is technically connected to the digital humanities. She plans on including pictures in her final essay. She used a Prezi to present her information. Morgan’s topic is extremely interesting, and relates to the digital humanities. It is also neat that she has decided to write on a topic that the class never got the chance to discuss.

 Patrick and Morgan have chosen great topics for their final papers; both tie directly to the realm of the “Digital Humanities”, and gives them chances to build upon what they have learned throughout the semester.

Contemporary Media Convergence

As the world becomes ever smaller, the media has condensed itself and diversified too. "Franchises" have emerged, capturing large audiences and dollars by branching into different forms, such as t-shirts plus TV plus CD. Technologies for the transmission of media have been developed to access many different types of streams, like movies plus music plus telecommunication.

One of the larger "franchises" of contemporary culture is Pokémon. The franchise is so large, in fact, that I didn't have to type that accent mark. It autocorrected in straight from Blogger. Pokémon was already huge in the past, with video games, an animated television program, plushies, and trading cards, but now the franchise is even larger.

Pokémon Go is, of course, a video game, but really it's more than that. It's a Virtual Reality game of a kind that the world has yet to see a lot of. The Pokémon franchise seemed to be drying out a bit, even as the big 20th anniversary approached. Then Pokémon Go came around and blew open the flood-gates.

Another example of a successful "franchise" that uses convergence is NBC's The Voice. Not only is The Voice a television program, but it is also a huge money-maker on iTunes with .mp3 downloads.

Media convergence is making our world smaller, perhaps, as the world becomes smaller on its own in different ways. It has tightened some economic standards, but, while it may need to be watched, seems to be making for some very interesting developments.

Morgan is Obsessed With Grey's Anatomy

My original work of electronic literature is a Grey's Anatomy Self-Generating Poem. This poem takes lines from the television show "Grey's Anatomy," including the life advise the characters give each other, mixed in with medical terminology used. People who have seen the show will understand this, but the poem randomly breaking up the quotes and throwing in medical terms is similar to the show. In this series, the characters are all very close friends that work together in a hospital. One will be going through a crisis and a friend will be giving them deep, heart-felt advise, when all of a sudden a patient is dying or the emergency room is fulling up with patients. So their advise is quickly interrupted so they can move on to the importance of the medical attention a patient needs. Mixing literature with my favorite Netflix series made college a lot more fun.
~Morgan Gleixner

"The Inexhaustible Gatsby"

F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his poetic prose, and for this reason, I am in love with his writing style. I have read The Great Gatsby a total of five times, and fall in love with it a little bit more every time I read it. The Great Gatsby specifically impacted my love for literature, and indirectly directed me when it came time for me to decide on my college major; analyzing it in my high school literature class made me realize that I possess a passion and talent for analyzing literature. For this reason, The Great Gatsby holds a special place within my heart.

Due to my love for this novel, I dedicated my first-ever electronic literature creation in tribute to Fitzgerald and his novel, and created "The Inexhaustible Gatsby." (Warning: It takes a minute or so to load)

"The Inexhaustible Gatsby" is a self-generating poem that (sort-of) randomly spews words from a list provided within the poem's coding. Every word within the poem can be found within Fitzgerald's novel, and manages to capture a vital theme of the novel in the process.

This "major theme" involves reality versus illusion. The parties, colors, money, and rich people within the novel act as illusions, masking the reality of the unhappiness and corruption occurring within the novel. These materialistic people and things end up hurting Nick and Gatsby, and the novel ends with Nick's (the narrator) illusions being broken, and a new understanding of reality.

After playing with the code for a while, I figured out the code's pattern to generating text. Once I figured the code out, I realized that if I put certain words in certain places, I can make it match a vital theme within Fitzgerald's novel.

The first noun in each line of the poem (not including the lines that only involve one noun, or the lines starting with a verb) starts with a noun the novel used in reference to, or quoted from, a corrupted character within the novel (like Tom or Daisy Buchanan). All but one verb within the poem has a negative connotation attached to it (hurt, harm, etc.), and is used within The Great Gatsby as well. The last noun within the each line is used in reference to Nick or Gatsby, who are being fooled by the corruption within the novel. That makes every stanza within the poem a match to the idea of "reality" of Fitzgerald's novel; all of these grotesque things are happening in reality., and the illusions are being broken.  However, The Great Gatsby wouldn't be The Great Gatsby without all the things that cloud the novel's reality.

After a stanza of self-generated poetry, the poem generates a line starting with a verb, and continuing with one or many adjectives. After working with the code, I made sure the verb always starts with "believe in" (because Gatsby "believed in the green light"), and used all beautiful adjectives with positive connotations attached to them. Every line that starts with the words "believe in" represents the illusions clouding reality with the novel.

This poem is actually the coolest thing I have ever created. Authorship goes to myself, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the code, and Nick Monfort (who created the code).

21st Birthday google maps essay

My Original Work of e-lit

My original work of e-lit is a google maps essay from my 21st birthday trip to Key West, Florida. 

"21st Birthday Trip"

Trope on a Rope

Here is my original work: "Trope on a Rope."  "Trope on a Rope" is a second-person, present-tense hypertext narrative that allows viewers to adventure through a string of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror tropes.  Each knot on the string is a vignette of around 100 to 200 words.  Please enjoy.

Sixteenth-Century Setta Sandals

Our tribe has decided to preserve a very specific type of artifact in our proposed archive: sixteenth-century setta sandals.

Setta sandals (also spelled "seta") were, according to tradition, invented by Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyu for wear during tea ceremonies on snowy days.  At the time, the two dominant shoe types were called "zori" and "geta."  Because zori were traditionally made of straw, they would soak up the water one would pour in one's garden to start a tea ceremony.  However, they were once the fashion trend, before the geta sandals came along, and many future grooms gave these to his bride as an engagement gift.

Geta Sandals

Zori Sandals

Geta, made of wood, were unfit for wear on snowy days, for they left large footprints in snow. This shoe had a reputation that one could hear them before they could see them. Since they were made of wood, they tended to clack against the ground in a loud manor. This sound has been reported as heavily missed because they are no longer worn as much, so the clacking is scarce.

A modern pair of setta sandals

This form of sandal resembles a common flip-flop, though the two have much different compositions.  Setta sandals have a hanao (strap), a ten (insole), a nakaita (middle board), a kasane (heel), and a sole.  There are also some metal pieces and glue that bind the shoe together.  The nakaita is made of wood, and the sole is made of leather.  When one walks in setta sandals properly, one makes a clicking noise, which is considered fashionable.

Though setta sandals are still worn today, they have fallen in and out of fashion over the course of time. As of today,they are mostly worn by Buddhist monk's. For this archive, Just Us Hugh Manatees would like to try to preserve examples of this curious shoe from the century in which they were first conceived.  It may be very difficult to find surviving pairs, but any we find would be valued as historical artifacts.  How many objects manufactured today have been around for as long as these sandals and possess such a singular reason for their existence?  Not too many, we would wager.

Data Mining: Cool Tool of the Digital World

The internet has provided people the ability to access research around the world. This research can lead to future research, and further research after that. Nowadays, technology offers tools that allows its users to conduct their own research in simple ways. Our Digital Humanities class recently used tools that allowed us to conduct interesting research within a short period of time; these tools were data mining technologies.

Data mining is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information. Our Digital Humanities class spent some time working with websites that allowed us to perform the process of data mining: Voyant and Ngram. In the process of working with these websites, our tribe made interesting observations and were able to form hypotheses regarding the data-mined information.

...No, not quite.

Voyant is a technological tool that can take in a large amount of text and find the most commonly used words within the text. The tool then takes those commonly-used words and creates a collage of sorts for the user to analyze. While it may seem as though the site has just made a collage of random words, those commonly-used words can say a lot about the text as well as its meaning.

When using the tool, our tribe used some of our blog posts to see what kind of words we used the most:

The first chart presented from Voyant is tribe member Patrick's usage of words from all of his individual blog posts for the class, as well as the tribe posts he wrote. The second chart is tribe member Morgan's word usage of the posts she wrote as well. It may be unsurprising to notice that students tend to use the words "digital", "media", and "humanities" when observing the charts.When comparing the charts to each other, one may notice that both members have used the exact same words, such as "digital", "like", "human", "humanities", and "just". This can portray the ideas and themes that students are getting out of the Digital Humanities class.

Ngram is another data mining tool that takes the usage of words into consideration. A user will type in words, separated by commas, and produce a graph that portrays the usage of words in print texts from 1500 to 2008. 

In this Ngram, I typed in the words happy, sad, angry, annoyed, and scared. The results of this were, in my opinion, quite fascinating. As one can see when looking at this graph, the usage of the word "happiness" in texts has significantly decreased from the year 1800 to the year 1980, and slightly increase again from 1980 to 2000. Could the decreased use of this word in texts symbolize a decrease in societal happiness itself? The term "angry" is pretty static, and then spikes a bit at around 1990. After contemplating this, my professor urged me to add in the terms "war" and "peace":

The tribe found these results to be especially interesting. It is not at all surprising to see an increase of usage in the words "war" and "peace" in about 1918 and 1942; these are around the times where World War I and World War II occured. We also noticed that during the times that the term "war" spiked in usage, "happiness" was decreasing, and the usage of the term "angry" slightly increased. The tribe feels as though this could say a lot about society's reaction to wartime.  

The tribe also used Ngram to compare Morgan and Patrick's commonly used words to research how often those words have been used within a 200-year span. We entered each of their number one mos-used words into Ngram: "digital" and "media". The results show a prominent increase in the usage of both words beginning in the 1960s, yet the usage of the word "media" skyrockets. Media studies have been popular for quite some time, but digital studies (such as the Digital Humanities) and quite new. The word usage shows the difference in popularity.

Voyant and Ngram are tools that have allowed us to conduct research through the popularity and usage of words within texts and specific time frames. These data mining sites have allowed our tribe to observe interesting results, as well as form hypothesis that could be further researched. Tools like these can easily pose interesting questions, as well as lead to research that can further continue our attempt to understand society.

Collaborative Effort: Molly, Patrick, Morgan, Zack

Virtual Zack

Social media is just one of those things in the world… I hate that I love it. The world is in constant transition, especially with social media. Who thought that 10 years ago we would be post something on the internet that could go directly to someone anywhere around the world. It is said that 78% of Americans have some social media profile and almost 2 billion people worldwide. This is just an unbelievable number to really put in your head and think about it.

I personally have many different social media platforms including Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit. Out of all of these platforms I use to use Facebook the most when there were no parents on it trying to get the hang of it and talk to you all the time. I use Instagram, twitter and snapchat the most.

Instagram, I have had an Instagram for 5 years now, starting with a picture of me and my best friend at our soccer camp over the summer.

This was back when only a few people had Instagram so I only received around 5 likes on the picture. Instagram is a platform where most people go and post a picture or video that others will like or enjoy. Typically from a vacation, party, concert or some significant event that they went to. The other things on Instagram are direct messages where you can send pictures to individual people, also there are Instagram stories. This is something that is pretty much stolen from snapchat which I will be discussing next. Lastly is my most recent picture that I posted to my Instagram.

The social network account that I use just as much as Instagram is Snapchat. Like I was saying earlier, stories on Instagram were kind of stolen from Snapchat because they have what is called snap stories. You can post this just like an Instagram picture or video but on snapchat it is only there for 24 hours. You can also send pictures or videos to 1 or people at a time without putting it on your story for everyone to see. Now the biggest thing on snapchat is filters, there are different filters you can scroll through and put animations on things or your face. The most popular is the “puppy face”. One of the latest things is “featured and subscriptions”, which includes daily mail, NFL, Buzz feed, ESPN, Cosmopolitan, CNN, Comedy Central, MTV, etc. These are pretty much like stores that snapchat puts out about these topics. I usually do not post much to my stories but do send individual snaps quite frequently.

The last big social media platform that I use constantly is twitter. I actually am in a social media class now and poster for a local company Media Xchange. I post on that account 2 times a day every day. For my account, I do not post much, I usually am retweeting my friends tweets or sharing certain tweets with friends. There is also a DM feature in twitter where you can send individual people tweets. One of the most iconic things about twitter is the #hashtag. This was started on twitter and is still used extremely frequent. This is usually used at the end of the tweet usually a word that is associated with the tweet being sent out. One of newest things on twitter is “moments”, this is pretty much the biggest news events for the day or a few days.