Digital Humanities Final Essay: Poetry

My final essay for Digital Humanities is about definition. Specifically, I wanted to reflect on what we started to discuss as a class; the definition of digital humanities. I, personally, enjoyed a lot of the digital poetry we looked at over the course of the course, but in some cases, I found difficulty determining what was poetry and what was electronic literature. Using example and person contemplation, I wanted to try to find the definition of digital poetry, exploring meaning, rhythm, communication, and "born digital" as a concept.

Essay Exhibits

I really enjoyed the essay exhibit last week. I thought this concept of going around and viewing other classmates’ work as they viewed mine was very interesting and unique because most of the time classes have their students present in front of the whole class. But this time, through the essay exhibit, I was able to see almost everyone’s presentations, learning about what they are going to present and also how they went about their studies.

After looking at my classmates’ exhibits, there were two that I found most interest. The first exhibit that I genuinely liked was Sam Schmader’s. In his exhibit, he focused on the topic of electronic sports, which I found out was is a competition of sports through electronic systems. The one thing I really enjoyed about Sam’s presentation was its interactivity. Before I has no idea what esports was, but Sam included a video of the competition, ESL ONE that was in Cologne, Germany. Through this video, along with his findings, Sam’s presentation showed me that these competitions gain thousands of people and unlike regular game, where people play on their own time, those who play on esports teams act just like a regular sports team- having coaches, teammates, and team practices.

The other exhibit I enjoyed looking at was Montana Mang’s. In her exhibit, Montana looked at Anonymous, a Hacktivist group that is known for supporting people’s rights to free speech and right of information. Not knowing much about the group Anonymous, I really liked that Montana focused on some of the hacking jobs they have done in the past, such as Project Chanology, which Montana told was a “cyber attack on the Church of Scientology because the church showed interests of censoring the internet,” I also like how Montana went into different aspects behind the group, such as how they developed their group, the meaning behind their masks, and who they can hack.

Overall, I really enjoyed the essay exhibits from last week, especially Sam and Montana’s. I think that Sam and Montana both did an exceptional job presenting their topic and some of their findings to the class. I think that through these presentations, their final projects are both going to be stellar. The only thing is, I hope they include more interactivity in their final projects. Sam did a good job including pictures and the video, however I think it would be interesting if he could find a player’s perspective on the game, since esports is so different from a regular game. I also thought Montana could have input a video into her presentation, I would have liked to watch a video of Anonymous works if she could find one. But overall, I thought both classmates did a great job presenting their exhibits and I learned a lot about esports, Anonymous, and Digital humanities, that I didn’t know before.

Digital Humanities Final Essay

Final DH Essay: ESports Game Studies
For my Final Essay I will look into the question "what is eSports?" This includes a brief history and an explanation of what eSports is all about. This essay will also argue the legitimacy of eSports as a sport and how it is similar to more traditional sports.

Essay Exhibit Response

The essay exhibit, in my opinion, was a fantastic way for students to both share their ideas with their peers and use what we had learned to create a multimedia essay that really encapsulates what Digital Humanities is. Being able to walk around the room and look at the different methods of presenting an essay was unique, and I was genuinely impressed with some of the multimedia components that my peers had constructed. Two of the essays that stood out the most to me were Chase's and Patrick's.

Chase's essay presentation wasn't outwardly impressive. The exhibit itself was a simple word document with a few links and descriptions. The content itself was interesting, but there wasn't much to look at or interact with. What was interesting is that Chase's essay was about re-purposing music and sampling. In his showcase, he had actually created an audio track exemplifying the content he was talking about and sort of showcased the tech he used to do it. As far as multimedia goes, it was incredibly impressive. For a showcase, the essay part was less than stellar, but I'm sure his eventual final product would be fantastic.

Patrick's essay was interesting in a different way. He looked at low tech digital poetry, which can be best described as simple digital poetry that can be produced by anyone with minor understanding of technology. Things like Jing, a screen recording software, are all a person needs to create a digital poem. Patrick created a blog wherein he gathered a bunch of examples of low tech poetry and art and allowed the reader to interact with the poems themselves. However, content-wise, the blog consisted a lot of description of what low-tech poetry was, rather than maybe instructing on how to use some of these simple technologies. As with Chase's exhibit, I'm sure his final product will be more thorough. For the exhibit itself, it was great.

Response to Essay Exhibit

              I thought the Essay Exhibit was a interesting idea.  Allowing everyone to go around the classroom and survey each other's work allowed for constructive criticism as well as allowing the class to view the many creative ideas everyone else had. I had a great experience going around the room looking at the different presentations my classmates had. Two in particular peaked my interest, Morgan Shumaker's and Luke Whiteman's. 

             Morgan's exhibit looked into online identities constructed through social media as well as the importance and why so many people use social media. Her Prezi utilized a variety of different media types ranging from videos to pictures. It was very interesting to hear about some of her findings as to the reasons why people use social media. The first reason is surveillance, she goes on to say one of the reasons people obsess over social media is a need to keep track of our daily physical and human environment.  Another reason is personal identity. Personal identity helps us to discover who we are, what we stand for, what will make us feel satisfied with ourselves, and how we are living our lives. I find this to be fascinating as I personally do not use social media too much. To have a look into why social media means so much to people is refreshing and it gives me a new perspective on social media that I previously didn't have
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               Luke Whiteman's Exhibit showcased video games as being more than just games but an art form. His essay of video games as an art form looks at the immersive narratives video games tell as well as the stunning graphics in games. He looks at many different video games as examples, such as The Last of Us. The Last of Us has an amazing story line with incredible graphics which is why it had good reviews. In these examples he tells us about the beautiful graphics in the games immersing the player and really entering the realm of true art. The stories that these games tell are very surreal. Some of the games displayed invoke real emotion in is players and fan base, showing the depth of video games as not only being beautiful to look at but also emotional to play. 

             Both Exhibits looked really promising and I can only imagine how good their essays will be. I liked that each took different approaches to  displaying their information, Luke used a slideshow and Morgan used a Prezi. Luke's presentation was more broad with his information but that is not necessarily a bad thing as it made things simpler and easy to look at. Morgan's went into a lot of depth showing she did a lot of research and is very knowledgeable about her topic. Both did a fantastic job and I couldn't find anything they need to improve on.

Digital Humanities Exhibit

Social Media Identities

This semester, after discovering and learning more about the field of Digital Humanites, I really enjoyed learning about social media and how users formed online identities. Because of my enjoyment for this topic, I decided to focus my final exhibit on social media identities. In my exhibit, I used Google Docs to look at how social media allows users to create online an presence that reflects their true selves and I also look at how social media can cause users to create identities that deviate from who they true are. 

Exhibit Review

Exhibit Review

“The effects of artificial intelligence on our society” by Nick Roberts

Project Background: Nicks project was one of the projects I found interesting because it consisted of presenting an explanation of what artificial intelligence is and how it works. This is intriguing because AI is the direction our world is heading and knowledge is key to ensuring the transition to its implementation is smooth. From his PowerPoint presentation, I learned some negative affiliations of AI through the use of everyday aspects, such as robotic welding. In the near future computer systems will be able to perform a task that involves human intelligence. This is significant because it presents us with the opportunity to have these forms of intelligence replace employment by takeover of manual labor positions, similar to robot welders. If AI can take over forms of employment what happens to the people that once filled those positions? These machines will have the ability to work quicker, safer, cheaper, and smarter than any human can fathom. So do we become obsolete? Well, quoted in Nick’s work is a phrase from Stephen Hopkins saying  “AI could end humankind as we know it”. This is a relatively scary thought with frightening potential considering many AI devices are already in use today. Also, housed within Nick's work was some positive attributes to AI in our society. His researched yielding information stating that AI can take peoples lives out of danger by implementing an intelligence device in that person's place. In dangerous, high risk jobs, such as manufacturing environments, AI can ensure employees get home to their families safely after each shift. This is done because AI has the ability for machines to overcome human limitations that prevent people from reacting to, or noticing, a problem before it happens.

What I Liked: Nick's presentation was thorough and appealing. Nick also displayed interest and extensive knowledge of his topic. In the work, the images matched his descriptions well and complimented my individual learning of AI.

“Esports” by Sam Schmader

Project Background: Sam’s work consisted of a Prezi presentation of "esports". In his Prezi, a description of esports is provided along with some important aspects of how it works, its popularity, and the games that are involved. Sam states that esports are a form of video game style sporting events that involve filling stadiums with fans to watch 

opponents compete against each other on a large screen. The process can also work by having viewers outside the stadium streaming the event on their smart devices. The games are ran by a broadcast team to present different perspectives of game play in a way that is pleasing to audiences. Although this type of event is not officially recognized as a sport in the United States, other countries have already adopting this activity as a sporting event and a popular one at that. Recent figures presented in Sam’s Prezi, show up to 104,000 people attending these gaming sessions in countries like Germany, France, and Spain, with worldwide views reaching as high as 30 million people.  Some of the games these esporting enthusiasts can be found playing include Counter Strike, League of Legends, and Starcraft II, to name a few.

What I Liked: Sam was very knowledgeable and passionate about his research on this topic. He seemed to be able to answer any question that was asked regarding esporting, further supporting my claim. Additionally, his presentation was heavily video and image based, creating an attention grabbing piece that was hard to overlook when exploring classroom exhibits.

Recommendations for Nick and Sam : Both showed advanced knowledge through research and were both deeply interested in their projects. I feel as if both classmates filled the assignment requirements and do not require any alteration to their works.

Final Essay Submission

Data Mining 

For my final essay, I chose to research and talk about the concepts of data mining using Google Docs. The essay steps through multiple aspects related to important ideas within the study. Some of these ideas include what is data mining, how data mining information is collected, how businesses use it, how consumers use it, how television/internet data mining works, and data mining privacy. These topics cover both basic and advanced topics of the study and provide insight into its shear impact on todays society.

Tech Convergence

Henry Jenkins

As new technology is made cheaper, smaller, and more accessible, the developers of digital tools try to optimize their product. Simply put, stronger computers are being made so small and at such a low cost that new tech is able to do more than it could before. The combination of various kinds of technology into one more singular product is known as convergence. Cell phones, for example, are a prime example of convergence in progress. Their initial intent was to be able to make phone calls on the go, but modern cellphones have advanced far beyond that being their primary function. Instant messaging, texting, streaming videos, surfing the internet, playing games, taking photos or video, and a plethora of other functionalities are commonplace in the pocket of modern society. In fact, making phone calls, the intended function of a cell phone, isn't nearly as popular as the phone's other functions in today's society. Phone calls have been made obsolete by things like Skype applications or FaceTime.
In class, we read over and discussed a piece Henry Jenkins had written about convergence culture. Jenkins talks about the tech phenomenon that is various functionalities being combined together and eventually leading to one singular black box that is capable of performing all of the functions we would need from a piece of technology. This is known simply as the "Black Box Fallacy." During discussion, we touched upon how companies would actively market against such a thing in order to continue making money. The theoretical black box would likely be monopolized by one production company, but multiple products are easier to sell based on their lack of functionality. Apple, for example, sells iPhones, iMac computers, iPads, specialized iPods, and various accessories for each. In each products own right, they are capable of doing most of the functions of the other products, but are marketed as specializations to gather more attention and earn more revenue. The fallacy lies within our advancing technology leading toward one singular product, but our marketing system is actively avoiding such a monopoly for the sake of continuing with their steady/increasing income.
          Convergence doesn't just apply to technology, though the importance of tech still holds to more cultural convergence. In the interest of transition, we could take a look at media. Jenkins cites Warner Brothers and their reach over multiple media platforms, such as film, television, toys, and other forms of entertainment. A popular movie, for example, would eventually garner so much love and support that fans would demand more, perhaps in a separate medium. The movie might be made into a video game, which the company that owns the rights to the movie would oversee. That company might already own the rights to a book that the movie may have been based upon. Naturally, there might be toys made of characters in the movie. The expanding media forms centered on the initial idea would be overseen by the owners of that intellectual property. At some point, it would be easiest to own and control the companies that produce these other forms of media and converge into one singular being, like Warner Brothers that has complete control over all associated forms of media.
         There are, obviously, more forms of cultural convergence. For instance, Jenkins opens his piece commenting on the convergence of a children's show character being intermingled with a radical terrorist and how the resulting image gained traction. Overall, convergence applies to cultural phenomenon as well, and our class has opened a discussion amongst ourselves about forms of convergence and how we, as a society, react to it happening.