Google Earth + Virtual World = ?

In my mind, Google Earth is one of the greatest programs ever created. It fulfills the vision of a metaverse in the sense that you can actually travel to any place on the globe and look at comprehensive two dimensional snapshots or pictures (taken from satellites). Furthermore, there are also features in Google Earth that are 3D, such as various, usually famous, buildings and the terrain of the earth. Google Earth also allows users to interact through many features, including "Gallery," which combines things like Google News and the NY Times with the actual globe the user is looking at. In addition, I believe that it is also possible for users to tag places around the world, which become visible to all other users.
If Google Earth were combined with a virtual world program, it would become the ultimate metaverse in the sense that users would be interacting in a virtual place that actually resembled real places in the world. The possibilities of this type of combination are endless and may be the future of virtual worlds. It seems that if this were done, the virtual world would be, in many ways, more relevant (to everyday people). Further, because of this, the visions of many people, including Walden (who talks about advertising), could be fulfilled.

The Week's Readings and Julian Lombardi's Lecture

I really enjoyed Julian Lombardi's lecture because he discussed the history and the future of GUIs, something that I was not at all familiar with. I thought it was interesting that for hte past 20 years, the interface of personal computers has remained relatively unchanged. The desktop as it is now, is virtually the same thing as it was back in the late 80's, with documents, folders, etc. Though I thought that Lombardi and his Duke team's project was interesting (I even tried to download the pre-alpha version -- without success), I don't think that companies or people will adapt to the new interface in the long run. For one, it gets rid of anonymity, which has always been a major asset during the current era. In any case, I hope the project succeeds so that we won't be constrained to a single interface anymore, which according to Lombardi, prohibits many new innovative technologies.
The "Who's on Third in Second Life" article describes, with great depth, the idea of libraries (storage and access to information) in second life. As I was reading the article (that is...before I played SL), it seemed very interesting and promising. However, after actually playing SL and visiting a "library," I found that it was difficult to access any type of information or communicate intelligently with any other avatar (but, this might be becuase I have only played SL once and am still not use to it).
In the "Opinion: Second Life and the next wave in customer experience" article, Steven Walden portrays virtual worlds, including SL, where companies actively and successfully engage in advertising. However, after playing SL, even though you can find a few company ads in various places, it seems to me that this type of advertising isn't promising in terms of revolutionizing a customer's experience. For one, it seems virtual worlds aren't technologically advanced enough yet that a customer can have an actual virtual experience with a product or a company. The examples Walden states don't seem to be viable.

Second Life Exploration

After creating a Second Life account, I encountered a classmate (Joe Levy - "Jodoglevy Xenobuilder") in the Duke ISIS oasis. I friended him and together we explored the Duke ISIS oasis and learned specific features of the game, including how to make the avatar perform gestures, how to fly, and how to communicate. The oasis itself is a strange place with many random objects...nonetheless, i found it to be an interesting place, especially the Coach K court that was almost an exact replica (however, I couldn't actually get on the court - no access).
After parting ways with Jodoglevy Xenobuilder, I decided to search New York City under the location search. I teleported my avatar to the Statue of Liberty. I was extremely impressed by the level of detail gone into making the Statue and even some parts of Manhattan...(thinking back to the Shirky speech...there seems to be a huge surplus of time..imagine if it went towards something more useful..). Anyway, while exploring the city, I discovered that I could hop into a random person's car without their permission. The person who was driving the car seemed annoyed after a while and tried to avoid me. However, he started talking to me and ended up giving me a car for no reason!..Though, I have yet to figure out how to actually pull out the car. I decided to keep following this guy and eventually his avatar took out a machine gun and started shooting - nothing happened to my avatar though. The SLURL for this place is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Statue%20of%20Liberty/106/149/40.
I also ended up going to some racetrack. It seemed like an interesting, well-designed place, even though no one else was there at the same time I was. I right clicked on a car and selected "LETS RACE!" This option let me in the driver's seat of the car but I could not figure out how to actually move it. I assume you need another person racing against you in order to be able to drive the car. The SLURL of this racetrack is http://slurl.com/secondlife/2raw/130/204/22.
Overall, Second Life seemed like an interesting virtual world, even though I could not figure out how to do much while I was there.

Wikipedia Entry

After searching for Duke Basketball on Wikipedia, I noticed that the entry was missing information that I thought was important and relevant. The entry did not have a section showing the current roster of the team, so I added a table of the roster to the entry. Though I had edited a few Wikipedia articles in the past (change a few words or a sentence, at most), this was the most substantial edit I have done. Truthfully, it is kind of cool knowing that you contributed to something that millions of people use. Here's the specific link to my edit.

Paolo Mangiafico: The Social Life of Information

I really enjoyed Mangiafico's presentation and thought it was very interesting. I thought it was especially clever how he described "knowledge as an iceberg." Above the water is explicit knowledge, the kind that has been printed in books for centuries. Underneath however, there is this greater mass of knowledge, which lies within people and their practices. It is this information that we, as a society, need to make accessible to the public, as a wholes. This is related to Pierre Levy's definition of "collective intelligence" -- ("No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity").
I particularly enjoyed Mangiafico's examples, such as websites including delicious, citeulike, WorldCat, and LibraryThing. On these websites, instead of information being just published, as it was done in the old days, information is being shared. It is clear that these types of websites are extremely efficient. Mangiafico also introduced the concept of "collaborative filtering" that these various websites engage in. Through engaging individuals to participate, the websites are more effective in producing results that are favorable to the overall audience (ex. Digg or Slashdot).
Lastly, Mangiafico's presentation related to Shirky's speech. Shirky illustrated that people are wasting time (by watching tv, etc.) instead of actively participating to better technology. Mangiafico provided examples where individuals, who probably thought were wasting time, were actually benefiting society through participating in these online projects.

Reaction to Clay Shirky's Speech

I found Shirky's speech both interesting and insightful. He talked about how people these days have an immense amount of free time on their hands. This excess of time, in the mind of Shirky, is a social surplus that needs to be tapped into. I didn't realize until listening to Shirky that wasting time (on things like T.V.) was such a big issue in our society. As he put it, our country wastes two hundred billion hours watching T.V. per year...(if you cant visualize it, look at it as a number -- 200,000,000,000 hours). That's also equivalent to 2,000 wikipedia projects per year. Imagine if instead of wasting time on unproductive activities that people actually decided to undertake a project of substantial magnitude...the possibilities are endless. I think that our society is actually moving away from this and towards Shirky's ideal. New technological innovations are showcasing greater individual participation recently. In fact, Shirky relays a story of a 4-year old looking for a mouse for a T.V. This shows that participation in technology is so widespread that the young child automatically assumed participation was a characteristic of all technology (and in my mind, technology is evolving towards that).

Notes on: "Read the Blog: You're Fired" by Linton Weeks

This article talks about how many companies have moved towards rather impersonal and cruel ways to fire employees. Because of the convenience and dispassion associated with technological communication (though not all the "techniques" are through technology), companies are finding it easier to lay people off without having to directly fire the employees or give reasons for the layoff. The article cites some examples of this:

• Tesla Motors CEO essentially laid off workers through his blog
• Partner at Washington Law Firm found a note on his desk telling him he was being forced out
• Some RadioShack employees received an email
• Korean credit card company fired employees through instant message
• After coming back from lunch, one man realized that his security card was deactivated
• High-tech company during dot-com crash gathered employees into a conference room and read out a list of people it was letting go of
• It isn't uncommon to see people being laid off via email or BlackBerry

I think what these companies are doing is outrageous because though it may save employers much time and effort -- and maybe even the pain of laying off a colleague -- it makes the process much more "depersonalized." In a related article, a professor from the University of New Hampshire explains that these impersonal ways to layoff employees can "make a bad situation worse." According to this professor, the biggest problem managers make is they become "robotic" and "emotionless" when terminating workers. Furthermore, I agree with the author who claims that it is unfair to tell an employee that he/she is being let go without any due reason or claim. It is ridiculous that some managers can't show some decency and respect toward their employees. Especially in this day and age, when the once-booming-economy is staggering, it is clearly important for companies to show a little more compassion and understanding towards their employees so that it is "easier psychologically for both sides of the desk."

Some Quick Thoughts about: The Autumn of Multitaskers by Walter Kirn

While I found this particular article interesting, I disagreed with much of what was said. Though I agree that the concept of multitasking may be counter-productive at times - ("To do two things at once is to do neither" - Publilius Syrus), especially when you're trying to drive and look at pictures on your cell phone at the same time - in many cases multitasking is a great tool to utilize. Personally, I watch TV or listen to music while doing work because I feel that having something in the background helps me absorb information better, which goes against the claims from the UCLA experiment. Kirn claims that multitasking in the office setting is costing our economy $650 billion every year. However, he fails to note the benefits of multitasking, which, I would guess, sum to a total greater than the loss. Anyway, unlike Kirn, I believe that technological innovation that assists in multitasking is beneficial to the great majority of our country.

About Me

Hi, my name is Nitin Gupta and I am a freshman at Duke University. I was born and raised in New York. As of now, I plan to major in Economics and minor in Statistics. My interests are diverse, from playing basketball and tennis to reading to playing poker. I am aslo an avid sports fan (aka - a diehard NY Giants and Yankees fan). ISIS 100 seems to be a very relevant course, considering that we are surrounded by technology everywhere we go. Through this course, I intend to learn and understand in greater detail the complexities of technology.