Netlogo

I thought I’d try using Flickr to upload my photos. Boy was that fast and easy. However, I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how to get both photos in the same blog entry, so please look at the next two entries.

At first, the whole concept of recreating something that happens in nature within three minutes on the computer blew my mind. How cool is that – to replicate ants foraging for food and inadvertently leading others to substance by leaving a chemical as it moves. Wow! I was particularly interested in adjusting the population size and evaporation rate. My hypothesis was that a larger colony of ants with a slower rate of chemical evaporation would be more efficient than a smaller colony with a quicker rate of evaporation. Doesn’t sound like rocket science, does it? However, an interesting thing happened. When the rate of evaporation was set at a very low level, the ants were not able to achieve optimal efficiency because they were following a chemical to a food source that was no longer there. Ah ha! A Sherlock Holmes moment.

It was interesting to simulate birds flocking as well. The most interesting setup was with a small population (34) and great vision (6.5 patches) and a good opportunity to turn (7.75 degrees). I was amazed at how quickly the birds began flocking!

Birds -- Netlogo

Birds
Originally uploaded by NeonDeonne.

Ants -- Netlogo

Ants
Originally uploaded by NeonDeonne.

More Gaming

I definitely saw elements from the assigned readings appear in Lineage. It was amazing to see, as Kim points out, “the towns, forests, and dungeons…are more than just intricately rendered; details are meaningful.” For instance, there is Adena found on the ground. After picking up the Adena, your amount increases by the amount picked up. You can hear the wild boars grunts as they are attacking you. The spider hisses. Kim also states, “With practice, players become progressively more powerful and skillful – and it’s reflected in their outfits.” As I become more experienced with Lineage, I acquired more Adena and was able to purchase better armor.

I also found that it is better to barter than trade with Fraoun as pointed out in Dibbell’s article. Dibbell also raised the idea of rare and semi-rare pieces and I found myself nervous that perhaps I picked one up and didn’t realize the value of it. At one point I had joined forces with another fighter, Gadfly, who showed me the secret passageway to Hidden Valley. I made sure I had as many Healing Potions as possible and prepared to go into battle. Unfortunately, I died (no big surprise there) and left behind a Spell Book. Amazingly enough, I found Gadfly again, about 10 minutes later, and he offered to return my Spell Book to me that I had apparently “dropped” when I died. How nice! I let him keep it figuring it was more beneficial to him than my short two-week stint in Lineage.

I appreciated the article by Kurt Squire and Sasha Barab and found some great points to begin considering about ways gaming can improve learning. Squire and Barab look at Civilization III in an urban school for underserved students. Unfortunately, one of the big problems lies within their methodology section as the students refused to take a pre-test “making pre and post-test comparisons impossible.” Students began working with their own civilizations and then the teacher and researchers would facilitate conversations (based on historical events) as to the state of their civilization. The learning outcomes were quite different for the students and included the following:

• Playing out historical hypothesis
• Exploring geography (investigating the map, locating resources, identifying elements for successful civilizations)
• Nurturing the civilization
• Developing social relationships, i.e., playing with friends

This brings up an interesting point. If the teacher and/or researchers had not been there to facilitate application and integration of the students knowledge, would the resulting state be “pooled ignorance”? I think the game did a great job of activating students’ interest. However, the later stages of Merrill’s five components of effective instruction only took place with intervention by the teacher and researchers.

Lineage

Character: Alosh
Race: Lawful alignment - no blood pledge
Class: Knight
Weapons: Leather jacket, shield, dagger (others available to exchange)
Appearance: Female, dark hear, yellow and white attire
Favorite creature: HUGE spider
Die frequently? Yes
Most embarassing death: Death by spider.

Synthesis II

How does cooperation, incentives, reputations, trust, identity and accountability relate? Is it different in an online versus offline environment? Judith Donath, in Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community brings up some interesting points. In a physical environment, it is easy to base your initial opinion on someone’s appearance, mannerism, language, etc. All the physical cues contribute to your initial impression of the individual, and these assumptions are based on previous experiences with other people. In an online environment, one could say that many of these physical cues are missing, but are they?

Donath goes on to say that, “Identity cues are sparse” in the virtual world, but not non-existent. People become attuned to the nuances of email addresses and signature styles.” These brought to mind prior research I have done regarding gender differences in an online environment. Susan Herring has contributed significantly to this area of research. Some of her findings include the following:

• Online interaction is an extension of the real world conversations where men dominate.
• Men introduce more new topics and tend to ignore topics introduced by women.
• Men perceive women as talking more than men when women talk only 30% of the time.
• Males are typically adversarial, containing “put-downs, strong often contentious assertions, lengthy and/or frequent postings, self-promotion and sarcasm.
• Male communication often has an underlying purposing of establishing status, power, or domination.
• Females are typically supportive aned attenuable.
• Regarding flaming, Herring states, “the simple fact of the matter is that it is virtually only men who flame.”
• Females tend to place a great deal of emphasis on cooperation rather than competition and often use cooperation as a learning tool.
• Males tend to learn in a separate, autonomous manner.
• Males are direct and to the point.

So why have I spent such a great deal of time pointing out gender differences? A couple of reasons. These online behaviors may provide clues as to who you are talking to in the various online communication arenas. For instance, when I reflect back to my experience with USENET, I’m pretty sure I was interacting with other males. There wasn’t any hedging or a sense of cooperation. The interaction was direct and to the point. Understanding that “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” just helps put things into perspective a little bit. Gender is certainly a big part of one’s identity and often in an online environment there is a concern that people are not presenting their true identity. I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker about a month back who pretends to be a black kid from the hood at times and other times an aging housewife (and he is neither of these!) It is interesting to me that a single person can create multiple electronic identities and maintain all of them. Reminds me a bit of offline schizophrenia.

IRCs

I connect to a couple of different networks using Ircle 3.1 and hung out in quite a few channels (#music-videos, #chicago, #hardrock.ro, #funchat, #mp3jukebox, #Harley-Davidson, and #TheRing). At first I was a little frustrated because I didn’t feel I was getting quick enough responses from people. I’m not sure if it was the time of day or the channels I was surfing. However, I was able to get responses this morning. My first "real" conversation made me a bit nervous, see transcript below:

---

*** Topic for #hardrock.ro: (BU) www.hardrock.ro
*** Topic for #hardrock.ro set by menes on Friday, November 5, 2004 5:00:58 AM
#hardrock.ro: PrimeTime @BU @hacktech @Fakedz @WoWz @PiKy @IonutS @Pavich @micro200 @`002 @micro14 @`008 @`003 @`001 @fnal @`0007 @C_O_S @Frana @AnDy @burana @TheIO @Remake @axl_io @axlio @breakthru @C-R-I-S-T-l @C-R-l-S-T-I @HocusPocus @menes @C-R-I-S-T-I
*** End of /NAMES list.
*** Channel Mode is +tnl 34
*** Channel created at Friday, November 5, 2004 4:56:50 AM
PrimeTime: hey - whats happening
BU: ?
PrimeTime: just wondered what's going on this morning in your world
BU: bored
BU: where are u from?
PrimeTime: Utah
PrimeTime: How 'bout you?
BU: romania
BU: :)
PrimeTime: Wow! That's pretty cool
BU: what sistem u have in comp?
BU: sunos?
BU: :)
PrimeTime: How's the weather there today?
BU: nice
PrimeTime: We're looking to get some snow soon - I don't know that I'm quite ready for that
BU: .dns 129.41.34.230
HocusPocus: Unable to resolve 129.41.34.230 .
BU: hehe i crack not so long ago one ip like yours
BU: but he had sistem sunos
BU: :)

---

So yikes! I quickly signed off. Not exactly sure what this guy was trying to do, but I didn’t want my system hacked. Then I spent some time in #chicago (I’m heading there on business next week) and thought I’d try to get some leads on places to eat and sights to see. Someone in this channel addressed me by screen name and sent me a url with restaurant information.
HUSH: here you go primetime
HUSH: http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/
PrimeTime: hey, thanks Hush!

---

What are the differences between people's interactactions in IRC verses LambdaMOO? I found some people to be helpful and friendly in both environments. I appreciated the use of nonverbal communication in LambdaMOO (people would smile, nod, wink, wave) and this allowed people to interact without the formality of talking with one another. This gives people the option of acknowledging their presence without putting themselves on the spot. In LambdaMOO, I never felt that my sense of security was being compromised (which is a little bit interesting because I remember hearing about a rape in cyberspace during Wiley’s 7150 class last fall – so obviously people experience this environment differently). So is one environment trustworthier than another or does it just depend upon the user and the other people one encounters? Similar to an offline environment, you can meet great people in a variety of settings. You can also meet snakes in life. You just have to be careful about who you talk to and where you are going.

As Reid points out in her article, people may use their true identity or create / adopt a new one. I definitely felt that BU was not being truthful during my IRC hacker conversation. I just didn’t have that immediate feeling of trust. However, when talking to Hush about Chicago, I felt a feeling of cooperation and trustworthiness. This question of portraying your authentic self or impersonating someone else is a very interesting question. Sounds like a great segue for next week…..

MUDs and MOOs

First let me start off by letting you know I’ll try to keep this a little shorter than last week’s posting. Sometimes my fingers just get to typing and my brain goes on dump mode. I’ll try to keep it under wraps this week.

It was interesting to spend some time looking at Zork and LamdaMOO. I greatly appreciated the Zork handout; it saved me a lot of time, but more importantly, laid the groundwork that gave me confidence to explore on my own. I took the advice and began mapping my movements and locations which helped me figure out the general idea and layout of the game.

Looking at social interaction in a MOO environment verses others environments that we have studied to date, I observed some big differences. The MOO environment has an extra layer of realism to it that the others environments don’t. Part of this can be explained by the ability to create and interact with artifacts and part can be explained by sensing the presence of others. Being able to manipulate objects and see the consequences from those manipulations adds a completely new dimension to the online experience. How do new users (such as myself) know what to manipulate or how to manipulate the various objects? Doing some research beforehand prepares one to enter LamdaMOO, but certainly questions arise as one is in the environment. I found the other participants to be quite helpful and supportive. As Bruckman states, “MUDs place special emphasis on collaboration, encouraging construction within a social setting.” I certainly found this to be the case. The different level of cooperation between the online environments is huge! If I were to graph my experiences with cooperation in the different environments, it would look something like this….

<-U-------------------------------------------B------F-M-------->

where U is USENET, B is blogs, F is fan fiction, and M is MUDs/MOOs.

Sensing the presence of others also added a great dimension to this experience. Knowing that there was somebody else, right next to me in the same room, was very comforting. If I had a question, I knew all I needed to do was ask. Hopefully I would encounter someone with the same playing style and speech modality as mine. Bartle classified players into four different groups: Achievers, Explorers, Socialisers, and Killers. I am definitely in the Socialiser group. Examples of the four groups and their speech modalities were presented in Bartle’s article. For example:

• Achievers say things like: “I’m busy.” Or “Sure I’ll help you, what do I get?”
• Explorers say things like: “Hmmm….” “I haven’t tried that one, what’s it do?”
• Socialisers say things like: “Hi!” “What happened? I missed it, I was talking.”
• Killers say things like: “Coward!” “Die! Die! Die!”

Bartle also discussed the important of keeping the four groups in balance and provides suggestions and strategies to maintain equilibrium.