Do Computers Have Politics?

by Karen Hamilton - Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 03:43 PM

Are computers a "mechanism for centralized control and surveillance "or a "marvelous experiment in radically democratic social innovation?"

Do pencils have politics?

If you have been seduced by Langdon Winner’s argument in his 1986 article “Do Artifacts Have Politics,” then the answer to the question do pencils have politics, should be yes. A pencil or any writing instrument has the power to convey information that has political implications, and a computer too, which is more encompassing and complex could certainly be seen as a political instrument. But do they themselves have politics or is it their process that is guided by human hands? If we assume that objects have politics are we not giving them human characteristics, anthropomorphizing them?


I’ll be the first to admit that I am one of those wacky Mac lovers who have an unnatural fondness for my machines, but I’m not so sure I’ll give them full fledged humanity and assign them political values even though I’m sure mine would be lefties. In one of the college courses I teach, Psychology of Consumer Behaviour, I talk about the different versions of self identity that marketers are interested in. There is our real self, our imagined self, our looking glass self and our extended self. Marketers see us as a fragmented lot, open to persuasion if they can only know us. One place they would like their product to be is in the extended self. The extended self is made up of those things that become a part of you. They are often the objects we would run into our houses to get if there were a fire- the photos and mementos that help define who we are. I’ll admit, for me, my Macs have become a part of my extended self, and for sure I won’t be leaving the house without at least one. I’ll allow that my computer is close to my “me.” but it is not quite a person so how can it have politics?

If we allow computers to be seen as the determinants of our future we have the potential to see technology as the big bad Frankenstein-like bogeyman out to get us. In a June 6, 2010 New York Times article, “Your Brain on Computers: Hooked on Gadgets and Paying a Mental Price,” author Richtel gives evidence on both sides of the argument about the effect of computers on the brain. He notes studies that show the detrimental effects of multitasking and studies that show Internet users who become more efficient at finding information and video game users who develop better visual acuity. Yet, in spite of these two sides, he tells the story of a family who is facing the effects of technology- mom is burning the cookies, dad is always on the computer and the son is getting C’s. Woe is us! In articles like these, we see the demon technology sucking the lives out of its innocent victims. The blame here is squarely on the technology, and all would be well if they just turned it off. And of course any person can turn it off or turn it down, so who exactly is to blame? -The technology or the people, or both? For me, categorizing technology or computers as semi human political beings makes them the easy scapegoat, and removes responsibility from we the people and I’m not so sure that is a good thing at all.

Both argument one where computers and the Internet are a “mechanism for centralized control and surveillance” and argument two where computers are a “marvelous experiment in radically democratic social innovation” lead to political ends, and for me both are true. Humans acknowledge the dual nature of man- good and evil; emotional and reasonable; enlightened and animalistic. So, then, it is completely consistent that we see objects in our world in the same way. A pencil can be a writing instrument or a deadly weapon. It depends on what we do with it.

In argument one we see the fight for control of the individual. For marketers the information tracked through cookies and other techniques on computers allows behavioural targeting and addressable ads where we are no longer just the mass receiver of an ad, but rather the recipient of one message specifically directed to us. Marketers know us in ways they had never before dreamed of. Massive amounts of information are being collected on social networking sites like facebook. And the so-called freemium movement where internet applications are free is no different than the “free lunch” we were warned about. We pay the cost with our information. Politicians like former presidents create laws like the Patriot Act that allow intrusions into the privacy of its citizens. Actions like this have caused institutions to require that no information be stored on American servers to protect students or staff. Countries ban parts of the internet, and some K-12 schools have restricted access. There are several big brothers watching us.


In argument two we have the democratic social innovation that allows us easy access to information and people and networks. It has allowed everyday users to not just be the recipients of information but to also be the creators of media. Media is no longer just pushed at us, but is pulled by us, and pushed back in. Everybody can contribute and create. (At least everyone with access and tools) Of course when everyone is a creator and using and reusing and reshaping the artefacts of our culture, the issue of copyright will be raised and those in positions of power will try to impose old laws on all that is new. We have seen the open source movement rise and the creation of sites like Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons for people to share creations on their own terms and for others to use those creations in a legal way. And at least one country Brazil is leading the way to allow more open use of materials. Their Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil fights against what he calls the “fundamentalists of absolute property control” who are in the way of the “digital world's promises of cultural democracy and even economic growth.” He believes that "A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property…No country, not the US, not Europe, can stand in the way of it. It's a global trend. It's part of the very process of civilization. It's the semantic abundance of the modern world, of the postmodern world - and there's no use resisting it." (Dibbell, 1994)

Having accepted that both arguments are true and that both of these have political consequences, can I still say that computers do not have politics?

I’ve already complained that I didn’t want to have technology framed as an evil entity that gets blamed for our failings, and said that a pencil could be a weapon it just depends how it is used. But is that all there is to it? Not really.

The things we create can have political consequences. While I was at first seduced by Winner’s story of Moses’ racist bridges, it wasn’t long before I questioned how he came upon his evidence. Before I read the next article, I was off on an internet journey where I found much that questioned his analysis. (Oh that is the democratic web!) Then I read Joerges’ Do Politics Have Artefacts where I found a more moderate view of things. After Joerges’ I read Woolgar & Coopers, “Do Artefacts have Ambivalance” and then Joerges response, “Scams Cannot Be Busted: Reply to Woolgar and Cooper.” All of these, lead me off in many directions in search of what I could believe.

So here it is: I’m not buying Moses bridges as racist or intentionally political. I’m not buying that artefacts in themselves can be political. I would allow that sometimes technology may be created for a political end; for me, political ends may more often be unintentional. Id’ think that the creators are many times self serving and their creations reflect their own needs which are not necessarily the needs of everyone else. Joerges talks about alternatives to control and contingency theory and speaks about thinking of artefacts as “expressive values” that induce nothing but indicate something and he suggests treating artefacts as boundary objects. To me this middle ground makes sense. But I also feel that the technology we choose has an effect on us. (423-424)


Neil Postman says, 'to a man with a pencil, everything looks like a list. To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image. To a man with a computer, everything looks like data” (Postman, 1993) To a certain extent, I agree with Postman here. We tend to see things through our own lens and our choice of media may influence the way we see things but I’m not about to go as far as to say that technology is the driver. We humans are in the driver’s seat and responsible for the political consequences of the technologies we develop.

What’s important for me in the arguments is to fight the entities who would seek to use our information and fight to ensure that what we have remains open and democratic.

The computer is neither good nor bad nor neutral; and it is certainly not the big bad bogeyman. The only bogeyman is the one we see in the mirror.


References/Resources

Chandler, D. (1995). Technological or media determinism, Retrieved from Prifysgol Aberystwyth University, The Media and Communications Studies Site. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tecdet.html

Dibbel, J. (Nov, 2004). We pledge allegiance to the penguin. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/linux.html

Ensmenger, N. (July-Sept 2007). Computers as Ethical Artifacts, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing University of Pennsylvania (p 85-87). Retrieved from http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/ensmenger-29-3.pdf

Joerges, B. (June 1999). Do politics have artefacts? Social Studies of Science, London: Sage publications 411-31

Joerges, B. (1999) Scams cannot be busted: Reply to Woolgar & Cooper), Social Studies of Science, JSTOR, 29 (3) 450-457. Retrieved from http://www.gouvrit.org/textos/Scams%20Cannot%20be%20Busted_Joerges.pdf

Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage

Reed, L. (Dec,1958). I, pencil: My family tree as told to Leonard E. Read. The Freeman. Reprinted 1999 -Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

Richtel, M. (June 6, 2010). Your brain on computers: Hooked on gadgets and paying a mental price, New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html

Social Determinism, Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_determinism

Winner, L. (1986) The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. “Do Artefacts have Politics?” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19-39.

Woolgar, S. & Cooper, G. Bridges and other Urban Legends in S&TS
Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence: Moses' Bridges, Winner's,Social Studies of Science 1999; 29; 433. Retrieved from https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rfouche/www/readings/woolgar.pdf

Free Culture!

Free Culture and Education

Karen Hamilton - Friday, 31 July 2009, 12:43 pm

(1) From the perspective of student work. How do Lessig's ideas about remixing and remaking existing artifacts (textual, video, musical, graphical, or otherwise) impact traditional notions of copyright and plagiarism? How might the types of assignments we give to students be changed by an emphasis on Free Culture, not only as a legal issue, but as a kind of literacy?

Before I begin I should disclose that I’m the person who last class disclosed that I have a big fat crush on Lawrence Lessig. First of all Lawrence Lessig is against piracy, does believe in the concept of copyright and does believe that plagiarism is not a good thing. The problem is with the copyright laws that have evolved or more devolved over time. He believes that culture should be free. That doesn’t mean a free-for-all place where everybody steals everything. What it means is a copyright law that allows people to use digital media with credit in ways that are similar to the ways that we might use textual information. It also means keeping certain basics of culture free and useable. In the article he goes through some of this background, but more can be found in his many writings, books, articles and video taped lectures on the internet. From his view digital media is being unfairly restricted in ways that restrict creativity.

This June 2005 article by Lessig is interesting because it presents the similarities between the open source software movement and the culture of remixing. It’s hard to sometimes think about a time before YouTube, but what’s interesting to me is that his article basically predates YouTube. YouTube posted their first video in April of 2005, but it didn’t officially launch until November of 2005. In the article Lessig says, “If technology permits the most extreme interpretation of existing copyright law, remixing will not become merely difficult. It will be effectively impossible.” (53) If we look at YouTube we can see that it wasn’t long before almost everything was there and being done, but as time has gone by more and more things are being pulled down and questioned. Some of it is justified, but not all of it.

Many would consider certain usage fair use. (See Lessig's blog here http://lessig.org/blog/2009/05/remix_culture_they_say_fair_us.html )The problem that this presents for us as educators is that students have complete access to all this information on YouTube, but if we strictly interpret the law we might not be able to use it in our classrooms. This generation of students not only accesses this information but also is taking it and remixing it. They are no longer just consumers of information but producers and creators of content.


The film by Brett Gaylor, Rip: A Remix Manifesto presents these ideas and features Lessig among others in the Open movement. It shows how this remixing is taking place, and the movie itself is an example of Remix. Gaylor posted the movie and asked others to remix as he was making the film. Interestingly enough the film’s history of distribution shows some of the issues around copyright restrictions. The film is a National Film Board production and Brett is a Canadian. The film is free to download in the US but not free to download in Canada. However, the film has been posted on YouTube, and any Canadian can view it there. Yet if I wanted to show the film in my class, legally I could be doing something wrong because now it is a public performance. If I bought a DVD from NFB, I’d have to buy a more expensive version that includes public performance for my classroom. In other words the educational system is being restricted and penalized. The playing field is not level here. Out there is everything, in here in education there are more limited resources and more costs. This makes no sense.

The article talks about DRM controls. Since the time of the article some companies have backed off DRM, specifically iTunes for music but not for their videos. We can see a case of DRM in the news just this past month when Amazon’s Kindle removed 1984 and Animal Farm from all users. One day they had their favorite book the next day it was “disappeared.” If this had been a book that a consumer had walked out of the store with, there would be no way to get if back, but because of DRM a company can just take what you might consider to be “your stuff.”

If Lessig and others manage to get some changes made to copyright law, we could have access to more of what is out there and our students could freely use what’s out there, but of course they would still have to abide by the same rules that they would if they used anyone’s work in textual form. They couldn’t steal and represent something as their own, they couldn’t use someone’s work without citation and documentation. What we would have is a more creative project where we don’t have to worry about getting sued. As a literacy remixing culture fits into the same areas as manga, fan fiction, and the other areas mentioned by Lankshear & Kobel. It is taking a part of culture and reformulating it. These forms engage students; these are things that many of them currently know about or take part in. Copyright law has to change. We need to be legally included.

I’m investigating this subject in my major project. I came across a great resource on Public Domain. If you go to this page and look on the right side under Short Videos click composer Anthony Kelley’s video “Great Composers Steal” http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/

(2) From the perspective of teacher work and curriculum. Much of modern curriculum is based on proprietary integrated systems that cost schools a great deal of money and offer teachers little freedom (e.g., "United Streaming"). How might the nature of teachers' work be changed if educational resources operated on Free Culture principles?

I think I’ve partially addressed this in my previous rant, but there’s more I can add. In a world that values education, I’ve never understood the excessive restriction or unfair expenses that education organizations have to endure. At my college we use Blackboard/WebCT. It’s actually a version of WebCT but it is now owned by Blackboard. Companies like this get a hold of a school and really hold them hostage. They charge large sums of money and provide flawed systems. For example, WebCT has this strange quirk that it likes an old version of java. So if you want your WebCT to work all nicey-nice you have to use this outdated java. To do that you have to remove your new java and put this clunker in. Now no self-respecting Mac user would have any part of this nonsense, so we are plagued by glitches. You tend to learn that you can do this thing with Safari but you need to use Firefox for this one.

WebCt/Blackboard then does things like create a new version which you have to then pay for because they no longer support your old system. They sue other companies to squelch competition. (They just lost a case to Desire2Learn http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/28/blackboard , but have already initiated another lawsuit) They realize that over time significant numbers of teachers have learned to live with their system and have devoted time to developing courses within, so there is a reluctance to change. The next system is always considered to be “The answer” Last year when I heard about the new Blackboard NG, I automatically dubbed it Blackboard –No Good! But we’ll probably stick with it. Obviously there is Moodle, but to make this big of a change with some of the faculty who were resistant to technology in the first place who now might be semi-happy in WebCT/Blackboard would be difficult. When you add in the communications problems within schools between management, IT and users it gets even more complicated.

The rules of use for materials for school are unfair. Why should a school have to pay so much for a copy of media for public use, when a private use video costs so little. Why would you not be allowed to transfer your out of date media to a new type of media? You’ve paid for it. We can copy our vhs tape to dvd at home.

Education is handcuffed by unfair costs and unfair regulation. A freer cultural environment would take off some of the current restrictions. If more people worked together to create open source tools that would be shared we would have better and more powerful tools; this would free teachers up to do what they do better rather than spending time struggling with resources. We would be free to use the same materials that are available in the wide world, and our students would legally be allowed to be as creative as they want to be. Maybe some might like school better.

Oh what a wonderful world it would be.

Culture should be free. Education really should be free.

As part of your response to #2, check out OER (Open Educational Resources) and post a link to a free curriculum resource you might use.

Here’s the link I found. It relates to my major project but also to this discussion

The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/media/files/copyrightandeducation.html

Here is their conclusion,
“Without question, digital technology provides new opportunities for rich reuses of content in many educational contexts, from the traditional classroom to the cutting-edge openness of Wikipedia. That progress will continue. But significant obstacles also confront educational uses of content. The law itself is often unclear or unfavorable. Pervasive use of DRM and the permissions maze created by the present licensing regime further impede such uses. And educators and intermediaries have too often responded to these problems with inertia or fear rather than action.
This white paper has identified this interlocking set of obstacles, and has begun the discussion about removing them. The very purpose of the exclusive rights conferred by copyright law is to make enriching content available to all of us. The great promise of the digital age is much the same. In order to realize the full potential of digital technology to transform education, however, our society must understand the need for change and support appropriate reform. We hope that this white paper has helped lay the foundation for such a future.”

What Literacies - Discussion

by Karen Hamilton - Thursday, 30 July 2009, 01:01 pm

Compare the Lankshear & Knoebel article and the Wesch video in terms of their themes, the technologies and activities they refer to, and their formats. Which did you find most convincing or compelling, and why?

The Wesch video and the Lankashear & Koebel New Literacies article share some similar themes especially in their investigation of new literacies that involve sharing of content, and production of content. Both talk about participatory culture and the remixing of content that lead to questions of copyright. Both also tend to approach their subjects from the inside out. Wesch includes video expressions of himself and his students and Lankashear & Kobel discuss how their approach is not the usual “functional applied orientation,” but inclusive of the “perspectives of the insiders.”




The Machine is Us/ing Us takes us through a visual overview of the web’s change from a linear text model using basic html to today’s Web 2.0 that provides a rich medium where form and content are separate and almost anyone can participate. His visual representation illustrates the interactivity in a deep and real way. The video shows how these changes allow us to become a part of the teaching machine through our participation in social activities such as tagging, sharing of images, and videos and the remixing and mashing of content that gets added to the database. This new literacy enables sharing, and collaboration and allows us to interact with the world in a very different way. His conclusion mentions that there are several things we will have to rethink. Among those are identity and copyright.

Similarly Lankashear and Kobel investigate new literacies and attempt to show how fan fiction, manga , synchronous online communication and Web 2.0 sites are examples of a different kind of literacy. Where Wesch focuses more on the technological change that has enabled a shift, Lankashear & Kobel acknowledge that technology has enabled a shift but they also see that Fan Fiction, Manga and Zines “have emerged independently of digital electronic media.” (Lankashear, 2)

Where Wesch’s video takes us through a visual of the technological change, Lankashear & Kobel introduce the concept of Fan Fiction which they say generally dates to the 60s television show Star Trek. Both again touch on or investigate the subculture of the fan, an area that is both interesting and creepy. In one of my courses I talk about subcultures and define different levels of commitment that fans have. When we discuss the true insiders, the students always mention Trekkers (or is it Trekkies? I never remember which is PC.) Invariably laughter breaks out. I have a writer friend who was such a Star Trek fan that she actually had a record that not only had the original Star Trek song but a version with words. Interesting enough, she became a teacher and professional writer but also a writer of fanfic. Her version however is from the Slash Fiction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction genre which to some of us is even weirder. As an insider she has written about the group from both inside and outside. To be honest it creeped me out! However, reading the Lankshear & Koebel article I’ve been able to see the genre from another perspective, the one that Wesch also mentions the social participatory one where a piece of culture is taken and remade. Lankashear & Kobel suggest that fanfic, “is a contrived communal practice of reading and writing.” (4) and they talk about researcher Jenkins who sees the group as “ skilful manipulators of content from commercial programs; nomadic poachers and bricoleurs constructing their own culture from borrowed materials.” (4) Wesch’s investigation in the Machine is Us/ing Us as well as in this recent presentation The Machine is (Changing) us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity also talks to the communal nature of sites such as YouTube. The difference here is where the material is shared; one is text, the other video. A specific example of this communal practice would be the Juan Mann Free Hugs Campaign seen by 45 million youtube viewers. Somehow this positive message is a lot less creepy than the insider subculture of slash fiction!

Lankashear & Koebel also give a historical overview of Manga and explain how a sub culture of amateur manga has emerged. Again we see a genre that borrows from another to recreate new content. Here as well as with fanfic the authors note the importance of technology in facilitating the sharing and growth of the culture. They also mention the “blurred boundaries between physical and cyberspace.” They discuss synchronous communication like chat that keeps people in touch. The article predates things like facebook and twitter but it does mention short fragmented communications that relate, “what I’m doing now.” They see this texting as one part of a multimedia mix. In light of the growth of both facebook and twitter, the authors seem to have hit on a cultural key, a simple shared expression of what a person is doing.

Both the video and article relate interesting concepts that are applicable to education. From the constructivist point of view, both illustrate how students could take charge of their own learning, engage with material and construct not just new learning but creative products. From a text perspective, a teacher could engage a student in reformulating something from popular culture. This might provide a hook to motivate a student to write. The Wesch video shows a number of the social tools that encourage engagement on the web. Using tools that are familiar to the Millennial generation would engage them in more meaningful ways.

Which did you find most convincing or compelling, and why?

I’ve seen all of Michael Wesch’s videos and been lucky to have seen him speak as a keynote at the League for Innovations CIT 2008 conference, so it’s hard not to be more convinced by his work. Being a visually oriented tech lover, I find a good video that makes a complex subject visual and simple will engage me more that a long text. Lankashear & Koebel presented interesting content that did make me appreciate something that I found quite creepy- fanfic in a new way. Their article also tended to lay a foundation for the concepts of mashing and remixing which I found interesting. The simplicity of the Wesch video and the way it presented its topic within the form had a more transformative effect. This video and the revision have over 10 million views on YouTube. His video has become part of the culture of sharing. Others have set it to dance and copied its style. It’s hard for an academic article to compete with that!

Read the Berkeley article, then check out the examples we've provided. Comment in the forum on these resources from a new literacies perspective. What is machinima? Is it film-making? Is it script-writing? Is it literacy? Is it possible we don't have the terminology or frameworks currently to classify this type of activity?

According to Berkeley there are a few different forms of machinima. He considers it to be “filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, it is the convergence of filmmaking, animation and game development” (Berkeley,1) Berkeley’s definition focuses on the interaction of the machinima creator and the uncertainty of the game. “the user/filmmaker can interact with a programmed game environment that is sufficiently complex to have substantial elements of uncertainty and randomness structured into the gameplay experience.” (2) He considers this to fit into the documentary film or improvised drams process. Others have called it a filmmaking approach. From my point of view, I’d say it is a form of filmmaking. It contains the basic elements of film. According to wikipedia, “Filmmaking is the process of making a film from an initial story idea or commission, through scriptwriting, shooting, editing and, distribution to an audience.”

The links provided on Machinima were interesting. I could see some of the basic elements of film to varying degrees. I did a search for Berkeley’s machinima “Ending with Andre.” After viewing it, I definitely saw it as fitting into filmmaking. Ending with Andre has a very developed script that has all of the elements of film. The fuzzy part comes in with the borrowed assets. It made me wonder how different this borrowing was compared to Disney’s borrowing from many including Brother’s Grimm. (See Chapter 1 of Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture. http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-4.html )
According to the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization’s definition, "'Literacy' is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning to enable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his or her knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in the wider society.” For me machinima fits this definition of literacy.
To me machinima fits into the same genre as fanfic, manga, remixing and mashing. Do we have a terminology that fits this? I’ve got mixed emotions about this. In one way it does seem new, in another not especially if you really look at the history of creative works. I’m reading and thinking a lot about this for my project. Today I found this resource http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/ on Public Domain.

Berkeley reserves the term machinima for works that are performed in real time, where the characters are under the direct control of human actors. Others would stretch the definition to include productions in which some (or all) of the characters perform according to a computer program written by the filmmaker. What do you think? Is this an important difference? Why? (hint: think about how a stage play is different from a movie)

A stage play is strictly constructed, all elements are predetermined. Randomness is not something a director wants. A movie on the other hand no matter how well scripted will have elements of randomness. For example on occasion an actor may ad lib or make a mistake in dialogue. That could lead to an alternate concept making it to the film. In documentary film there is a wider chance for randomness to occur. Bekeley’s definition of machinima has elements of both film and theatre. He sees the characters as completely under control of a human, but also acknowledges the randomness of the game. Others definition of machinima that include the possibility of the some of the characters or all performing according to a program might be even more like theatre or more closely related to animation. To me there does seem to be a distinction

Berkeley seems disappointed that many machinima films adhere to existing conventions about story, camera work, etc. Why do you think that's the case? Is that necessarily a bad thing?
I think it’s natural that most machinima films would adhere to existing conventions. They seem to fit into a derivative form where usually people follow the basic elements. A lot of the people who produce work in this form would be considered fans of these games and machinima, so it’s natural that they might imitate what is out there. From a learning perspective, this might not be a bad thing. If we consider the story of Tony the second language student mentioned in the Lankashear article, he wrote a narrative that included elements of games. Doing that he was learning about language and narrative. It engaged him. In this way machinima could engage a student similar to the ways we saw that Scratch engaged students in after school programs.

He discusses the copyright issues at some length. In this and other classes, we will examine the burgeoning world of free content. Is there any reason to suppose this won't happen in the machinima world as well? How would that affect Berkeley's arguments?

In the article Berkeley talks about the complicated relationship between the corporate game owners and the creators of Machinima. The corporations both encourage and restrain them. While the machinima creators promote the games, they do not want them to use any of their games to make money. Berkeley sees this obstacle limiting machinima to a “fringe role.” (70) However, the open access movement could possibly change some of the rules and make it so that some of this use could be allowed. If that happens, it’s possible that more forms of machinima would develop. From my point of view something has to change in the copyright world. It’s difficult for me to understand how quoting and documenting written text is allowed and yet the use of equivalent material properly documented that happens to be in another form such as video is different or more restricted.
Discuss the educational machinima from Tony's 590 VE students, keeping in mind that these were beginning efforts from students who (in most cases) had no prior experience with filmmaking. Are they effective? What could make them better? Note also that several of these teachers got their own students involved as voice actors.
I found the student productions to be effective to varying degrees in different ways. The best from an outside viewer perspective was Virtual Worlds in Art & Design. This one really gave a viewer a good view of how a virtual world could bring a subject to life, and also act as a learning environment. I didn’t like the part II of this because of the loud music and the views of tiny text. The 3 point lighting showed the techniques of lighting very effectively. From a viewers point of view the Julius Cesar act wasn’t too successful for me; however, I could see that if this were a group of students who were trying to learn about the play who act in the virtual world this could be a very effective learning experience. One thing for sure is that students would quickly learn that acting isn’t easy. To improve this one- better costumes, acting coaching. La vaca was simple and cute and might be an effective teaching tool to bring a written text to life. To improve this one, I’d recommend having the speakers practice their roles and accents. From a learning point of view, I’d say that all were effective in that they gave the teacher-learners an opportunity to represent concepts in an alternate way one that might be appealing to their students.

What applications do you see for this technology in your content area? If you don't see any applications, explain in detail why you think that's the case. What possibilities do you see for cross-disciplinary projects, which might involve students from several different content areas (visual arts, language arts, math, computer science, social studies...others?).

I could see some application to my subject areas. One example would be visual communications. This might be an area that I could suggest that my students investigate. It might also be a topic I could add to the group projects. I could have students in a group investigate the topic and perhaps create a machinima. My courses are electives that are made up of students from all different areas, so I can see the subject have some broad appeal. Obvious links would be visual groups, but also those interested in narrative, computers, and history. It actually would fit anywhere there’s a story, so that’s pretty much every subject.