Computer Games

The main title immediately caught my eye: “The Hyperaddictive, Time-Sucking,
Relationship-Busting, Mind-Crushing Power and Allure of Silly Digital Games”
but the alternate title, “Just One More Game ...Angry Birds, Farmville and Other
Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games’ clinched the deal. I had to read the article in
the April 4, 2012 edition of the New York Times Magazine by Sam Anderson.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmville-and-other-
hyperaddictive-stupid-games.html?ref=magazine)

I was hooked because I’ve always had this love/fear relationship with games and
especially computer games. The attraction came from the addiction and so did the fear.
In 1982 I presented a paper at the National Education Computer Conference in Kansas
City entitled, “A Call for the Study of Computer Games” in which I attempted to make a
positive case for them (they improve eye-hand coordination thus improving the chances
of your son growing up to be a fighter pilot) and to try to categorize them according to
their structure (learning games for teaching reading or math, board games like chess and
checkers, adventure games like Dungeons and Dragons, etc.) Nowadays, there are games
and simulations that are smarter, faster and prettier.

Back then, the most interesting and exciting computer games existed in video arcades
in malls. I fed many a quarter into single-purpose computing machines that allowed
me to play Space Invaders and Asteroids (Pac Man never grabbed me). As computer
technology improved and become less costly, these and newer games migrated to
personal computers made by IBM, Radio Shack, Apple and Microsoft Corporations. By
this time I was wary of seductive power of computer games. As a graduate student in the
mid seventies at the University of Massachusetts, I designed and developed a Computer
Managed Instruction system pretentiously named “ACCOLADE” --- an acronym for: An
Alternative Curriculum for Computer Literacy Development. Definitions of “computer
literacy” can range from: “the ability to tell a computer from a horse” to “highly
developed skills in the art of programming plus broad and deep knowledge in the areas of
history, applications, social issues, hardware and software”. I chose the latter.

After a hard day of building and testing ACCOLADE, I relaxed by using my state-of-the-
art Plato computer (it had a pixel resolution of 512 by 512 ) to play one of the very first
games on a very early version of the Internet --- only about a dozen nodes. “Empire”
was a graphical multi-user game with a simple premise: Conquer the Universe. You
joined a team of geographically distributed users (aptly named Terrans, Klingons, etc)
and with combined recourses (spaceships loaded with armies and various weapons)
attempted to accomplish the goal of Universal Domination. When this was achieved by
one of the teams, the game was reset and another 24 hours of play began. As a newbie, as
soon as I entered the game I was quickly dispatched by a seasoned player so it was not
much fun. In desperation, I sent out a message to all players, “New player needs help,
please be gentle”. Almost immediately I got a response, “I can help” and they proceeded

to put me in “tractor orbit” and tow me around under their protection while I was taught
basic survival strategies ( like reallocating some of my energy from defensive shields to
photon torpedoes instead of the laser canons). After a bit, I messaged back to
mentor, “Ok I think I’m ready to fly on my own – thanks very much for the help”. I got
the reply, “No problems, by the way how old are you?”. Surprised, I answered “I’m 36”.
“YIIIIKES!!!”, was the reply. “What’s the problem?” says I. “I’m 12” says my instructor.
It was my turn to say “YIIIIKES”.

I learned that while there are many ways computers waste our time and even act as
dehumanizing agents, they still have the power to promote egalitarian values. By masking
cues such as sex, age (and smell), they allow us to interact as equals. In fact from that
point on, our conversation changed as my teacher realized I was an adult and I that he
was a child --- it shouldn’t have but it did. Just another instance of technology acting like
a double-edged sword.

Education and Technology

How technology has changed our educational system is a topic that’s sometimes hot, sometimes not. It was a very hot topic about fifteen years ago and seems to be making a comeback recently despite tough economic times and  despite the truth in the old joke that it took 25 years for the overhead projector to migrate from the bowling alley to the classroom. It may, however, surprise you that money spent on education in the US exceeds our defense budget if you take into account state and local as well as federal expenditure. (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2012USbc_13bc1n#usgs302)

My interest in this topic was rekindled by a recent “On Point” NPR radio podcast, “The Digital Future of Textbooks” hosted by Tom Ashbrook (http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/330/510053/145842681/WBUR_145842681.mp3)

The show has an interesting structure: Ashbrook invites several experts in the field who ,by answering his questions, lay out the issues which are supplemented by questions and ccomments from phone callers and internet comments. An enlightening and  entertaining discussion usually ensues. This podcast discussed the pros and cons of using digital textbooks running on  portable computers within an educational setting.

Even when you factor in the costs of providing small computers to the students this still remains a viable economic option. Printed textbooks at the college level can cost students 500 to over 1000 dollars per year; a tablet computer can be acquired in the 200 to 400 dollar range.  In the grades K-12, textbooks degrade fast --- pages go missing as all students are not as fastidious as the teachers might wish. Yes, students will also drop tablet computers but insurance plans are available that amortize costs and lead to the student owning the computer by the time they graduate. Another possible negative effect is that the money spent on digital texts will be diverted from traditional subjects like art, music, sports and even woodshop. Who is to say that the loss of these subjects outweighs any of the benefits gained with more technology?  And how can we be sure these digital textbooks don’t devolve into digital comic books? And what about the Digital Divide ---will this advance in technology further exacerbate the divide between the haves and have-nots?

However, the pros do seem to be outweighing the cons. While big states like Florida and Texas can control some of the content in print texts, E-texts could be more localized allowing more educators to become author/ publishers. Teachers can insert, delete and resequence chapters which are very likely to contain interactive media. Students could not only watch a video as they read, they can interact with graphical models that allow them to ask their own “what-if “ questions.  Picture an Environmental Science  student running a climate change model and essentially asking, “What happens if cars are required to get 50 miles per gallon?”  And, in addition to lighter backpacks, a digital text allows the student to highlight, underline and otherwise take notes that are stored right with the lesson for easy review.

Of course all of this means that teachers must take on new roles and responsibilities. They should be allowed to move away from fixed mandated lesson plans and have more flexibility to design their own.  With the students interacting, perhaps in small groups, with their lessons, teachers would have more time to adopt the MBWA (Management By Walking Around) method of classroom administration. Teachers become more like coaches, spending more one-on-one time with their students and answering their questions instead of lecturing which can be, in a worst-case scenario, answering questions the student did not ask. Instead of being “the sage on the stage”, the teacher has the opportunity to become “the guide on the side”.

David Eagleman, in his essay, “Six Ways the Internet May Save Civilization” says, “The Internet opens the gates of education to anyone who can get her hands on a computer…A motivated teen anywhere on the planet can walk through the world’s knowledge, from Wikipedia to the curricula of MIT’s OpenCourseWare.” (Not to mention the wonderful free lessons on Kahn’s Academy; see http://www.khanacademy.org/about/getting-started)

If you’re old enough, you will probably remember similar predictions that television technology would revolutionize our educational system. Unfortunately TV has not lived up to its full promise.   Let’s hope digital technology does not suffer a similar outcome.

Private Lives

By the time you read this, the trial of Dharun Ravi may already be over and a verdict delivered.  He is a freshman at Rutgers University who has been accused of “invasion of privacy, bias intimidation and hindering apprehension” associated with the suicide death of his roommate, Tyler Clementi.  While the terms “invasion of privacy” and “hindering apprehension” are somewhat self-explanatory, “bias intimidation” needs some clarification. Briefly, it occurs when an act is committed “with a purpose to intimidate the victim because of  their race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, or ethnicity” (the full legal definition is at http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/criminal/charges/bias3.pdf) This is a particularly important charge because the criminal penalties for bias discrimination are much more severe than the other two charges (up to ten years in prison and/or possible deportation),

So, what happened that caused these accusations to be made against Ravi? That is a very long and complicated story that has been minutely described by Ian Parker in the Feb 6, 2012 New Yorker magazine, “The Story of a Suicide --- Two college roommates, a webcam, and a tragedy”.

Here is a short version which leaves out many of the details: Ravi set up a webcam on his computer to secretly view a liaison between his roommate, Clementi, and an unidentified male, known only as “M.B” in the court records. Along with Ravi’s friend, Molly Wei they viewed (but did not record) part of the rendezvous.  After the encounter,  Ravi tweeted, “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.” As Ravi’s Twitter account was public, Clementi found and read that tweet and although initially reticent to start a “drama”, he eventually filled out the online form for a room change, reporting that his roommate had spied on him with a webcam. Afterwards, he went to the George Washington Bridge and jumped, committing suicide. He left his last message on Facebook: “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”

Whether or not Ravi is guilty of all or any of the three charges will be determined by the judicial process. Even the apparently obvious  “invasion of privacy” indictment is being argued by the defense attorney who claims that Ravi used his webcam only for security purposes --- he was merely trying to protect his computer from possible theft. However, if the privacy violation is proved by the prosecution, this is certainly another case of technology making it easier to violate the privacy of an individual and, in this instance, one that has caused  dreadful consequences. 

A less sensational concern is Google’s recent change in its  privacy policy. Google claims that all it wants to do is replace with a single policy the multiple policies associated with its many applications --- ranging from  maps to music to email and even Youtube (see: http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/index.html for a complete list) .  Google will now be able to store all of its customer data in a single database making it easier and more feasible for Google to target its ads to individuals who have subscribed to their services. Proponents point out that you have the choice to opt in to this policy and you gain all of the services Google provides for free. No one is forcing you to join and if you are comfortable trading some of your personal data for free use of these services, it’s a very good bargain.

Critics have an different viewpoint. They claim that Google is, first and foremost, a company that makes its money on advertisements that accompany their services. And, although, Google does not directly share your data with its advertisers, it uses them to select their ads. This raises the question of the security and integrity of your data. What if a hacker gets hold of it? What if a government agency requests access? Do your really want your search history to be this accessible?

My best guess is that this is an issue divided by age. If you are under 30, this new policy doesn’t bother you at all. If you are not, you are probably troubled by Google’s new privacy policy.

Post Script: In addition to the jail term, the judge sentenced Ravi to three years of probation and 300 hours of community service. He must also must pay court fines and contribute $10,000 to a state-licensed, community-based organization dedicated to assisting victims of bias crimes.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/dharun_ravi_sentenced_to_30_da.html

Technology going to the Dogs

In this day of information acceleration and subsequent overload it’s comforting to learn that the latest technology for sniffing out drugs is, well, a dog’s nose. So, how did it come to be that the canine olfactory system is the latest and greatest technology for locating drugs?  In the Jan 4 PR was an article, “Supreme Court ponders drug dog’s sniff” which, if you missed or cannot recall the details, let me summarize:

On an anonymous tip and without a search warrant, the Miami-Dade police department had their chocolate lab, Franky, sniff just outside the house of Joelis Jardines to detect an illegal marijuana operation. After Franky had signalled that he sensed the drugs inside the house, the police used that evidence to get a search warrant from a judge and, in fact they confiscated 179 plants from the house with and estimated street value of over $700,000. Jardines pleaded not guilty and his attorney challenged the search, claiming Franky's sniff outside the front door was an unconstitutional law enforcement intrusion into his home which is protected by the Constitution.
 

The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the arrest of Jardines violated the Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable search and seizures” and has been challenged by the State Attorney General of Florida. The US Supreme Court will decide this issue this year. (Source:http://www.telegram.com/article/20120104/NEWS/101049967/1052/news01)

This new twist tests the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution once again. Is it a violation of our constitutional rights for a police dog to sniff outside our house for the prescence of drugs inside? Before you answer that question, let’s review some of the history of some prominent  Fourth Amendment Supreme Court cases involving technology.  In a previous column celebrating Constitution Day, I described two cases that dealt with this issue:  Olmstead vs US in  1928 where a bootlegger’s phone was tapped and the court ruled for the US government although Judge Brandeis, in a dissenting opinion, argued that the Fourth Amendment’s protection should extend to electronic communications. He pointed out that when a phone is tapped, the control of personal information at both ends of the connection are compromised --- not just the suspect’s privacy. In this fashion, “the tapping of one man’s telephone  line involves the tapping of the telephone of every other person whom he may call, or who may call him.”

Brandeis’ view was upheld and Olmstead overturned in 1967 (Katz V. US)  where a bookie was apprehended placing illegal bets in a bugged phone booth. Katz won and  Judge Potter Stewart summarized the court’s decision when he wrote, “The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.”

It appears that the Jardines/dog sniffing case will be settled in Jardine’s favor also, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on 1/23/2012 (US vs Jones) where the court ruled that police violated the constitutional rights of Jones when, as part of drug operation,  they secretly attached a GPS device to his SUV without a warrant.. The majority of the Justices  ruled that placing the GPS device on Jones’ vehicle for the purpose of tracking his movements constituted a search of his property and therefore required a warrant. Thus the ruling was about protecting citizens’ property rights and not their privacy. The Court purposely deferred ruling on whether technology like surveillance cameras or cell phones which can track users is a protected right of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. However, the worrisome issue seems to be how technology manages to worm its way into our private lives.  In fact, Chief Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. faulted the majority for trying to apply 18th-century legal concepts to 21st-century technologies. What should matter, he said, is the “contemporary reasonable expectation of privacy”.

If you’re curious about the fate of  Mr. Jardines, lower courts can reprosecute but cannot use the evidence gathered from the illegal intrusion into his home.  It would have been more thoughtful for the cops to have secured a search warrant before they utilized the services of their drug-sniffing dog, Franky. What Franky thinks about all this has not been disclosed.

Jan 8, 2012 Pros and Cons of Social Media: Part Two

 “A recent study by the online security firm AVG found that 92 percent of children under 2 in the United States have some kind of online presence, whether a tagged photo, sonogram image or Facebook page. Life, it seems, begins not at birth but with online conception. And a child’s name is the link to that permanent record.” --- Allen Salkin, New York Times, Nov 27, 2011

"One particular advantage of social media is that they help a reporter see the intellectual and social network of a source. For example, in Twitter I can see whom you are following and who is following you. I can see what you have re-tweeted and what links you have selected. Therefore, I can understand more fully your social context." -- Jerry Zurek, professor of English and communication department chair at Cabrini College

Are the above quotes arguments for or against social media?  Here is some more information to help you make up your mind:

“Twitter was so important to the Iranian protests after the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 that the US State Department asked Twitter to delay a scheduled network upgrade that would have taken the website offline at a busy time of day in Iran. Twitter complied and rescheduled the downtime to 1:30 am Tehran time.

Proponents of social networking sites argue that these online communities promote increased communication with friends and family, familiarize people with valuable computer skills, and allow contact with people from around the world.


Opponents argue that social networking sites expose children to predators, increase vulnerability to computer viruses, lower worker productivity, and promote narcissism and short attention spans.” (source: http://socialnetworking.procon.org/)

If you follow the above link to the procon website, you will find over 1300 more words devoted to the pros and cons of social networking websites --- much too many to reproduce here. But, if you were to ask me, I would say the strongest and most general arguments pro and con are:

Pro: Social Media contribute the happiness of both the individual and society.

Con: Social Media contribute to the unhappiness of both the individual and society.

Of course, our next problem would be to define more precisely what we mean by “happiness”. I am happy when I am afforded the pleasure of being able to turn over and get a couple more hours of sleep --- but that’s just me. Someone else may be happy in knocking over little kids blocks or tormenting their cat. And even if we could all agree on a common definition of “happiness” --- how would we go about measuring it?

 Sociolgists have bravely taken on a huge problem when thay attempt to make statements about human beings, especially regarding measurement of our satisfaction or happiness. There are so many variables that can quantitatively describe a person that it is currently not possible to run truly controlled studies by keeping all the variables except one constant and measuring the effects of varying the one of interest. Granted there are some powerful statistical techniques which allow polls or samples of an appropriate size to ascertain how a certain variable (like intelligence or happiness) is expressed when a social network is applied. But most statistically-based studies are run under the assumption that there is a one in twenty chance the outcomes are a result of random chance and not the result of application of a social network. The math can be improved to one in one hundred and so on,  but never achieve full certainty, and to be fair, this is true of all experimental science.

We just need to be mindful that the mathematical theory that underlies inferential statistics is based upon the study of uncertainty.

Addendum: My editor, Lois Clermont, commented that my previous column had implied “ that print has only one-way communication, when actually the Press-Republican, for example, has robust two-way communication through our online story comments and Facebook.” She is cerainly correct in pointing out that we've already moved on to a sort of hybrid print-internet model.

December 15, 2011 Social Media: Part One

http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekandpoke/2544805902/

Last month I attempted to rebut the view that texting was morally objectionable. This time I want to present a more balanced analysis and discuss the issue more broadly. The broader issue subsumes texting and is generally referred to as Social Networks or Social Media. There is much to say about the effects of social media on society and vice-versa. In fact, so much that it will not fit into one column. So, rather than omit every other word, I’ve decided to deliver this column in two installments.

What exactly is meant by the term “social media”? We might already know that media is the plural of medium and that we are probably talking about media like print (e.g. books, magazines and newspapers), tv , radio and the Internet. Further, the media must somehow facilitate social interaction.

I find that classifying social media into the two categories: “One-Way” vs “Two-Way” communication is a useful way to understand social media. For example, print, tv and radio are One-Way communication media because their content is broadcast to us from a single source and we usually cannot interact with it (except very slowly as for Speakout and the Letters to the Editor).

On the other hand, Two-Way communication allows us to respond via the medium to its content which may be represented by text, sound, or images. Examples include telephone and the Internet and within the medium of the Internet we have email, blogs and chat. Two-Way allows many-to-many connections while One-Way allows only one-to-many connections and is perceived as less useful in the world of social media.

“What about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ ?” --- you may well ask. All of these are quintessential social networking sites that are a mashup of email, blogs, and chat(not to mention video games and advertisements) that allow many-to-many communication. However, as my granddaughter has pointed out to me, “Twitter is like Facebook except you update your status every few minutes rather than every few days…” She uses Facebook regularly and Twitter not at all. She is also thirteen going on twenty-five so if she is representative of the upcoming generation it would be wise to see the future through her eyes.

Blogs I would rate as 1.5-Way and Letters to the Editor as 1.25-Way because the factors which determine a medium’s place between 1 and 2-way communication are the quantity and the speed of information.

None of the aforementioned media exist to make a society neither flourish or even to entertain. These may be the side effects but the main goal is simply to make money for their owners or stockholders. If they cannot do that one thing, they perish.

To make matters even more complicated, “media” has a different, more specific meaning in the world of computers where it refers to memory hardware for data storage and retrieval. Thus, computer media examples would be hard drives, memory sticks, CDs and DVDs.”

On a much deeper and philosophical level, Marshall McLuhan back in the sixties proclaimed that “The Medium is the Message” and although today we tend to call the “message” the “content”, the gist of what he meant was that the medium has a greater effect on society than the message itself. Again, from Wikipedia:


“McLuhan understood "medium" in a broad sense. He identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of “the medium is the message”. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."

And, from another source: (http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm)

“McLuhan defines medium for us as well. Right at the beginning of Understanding Media, he tells us that a medium is "any extension of ourselves." Classically, he suggests that a hammer extends our arm and that the wheel extends our legs and feet. Each enables us to do more than our bodies could do on their own. Similarly, the medium of language extends our thoughts from within our mind out to others. “

In the next column we’ll take a look at the pros and cons of social media.

November 13, 2011 Is Texting Evil?

In the Parade magazine that came within your Oct 9 Press Republican was an interesting article “Generation Wired” by Emily Listfield in which she examines how children are being affected by wired (and wireless) technology such as smartphones, music players, video games, the Internet and the various permutations and combinations of all of them.

To quote the cover, “Being connected 24/7 is changing how our kids live.  And it may even be altering their brains.”  This raises the  important question: is it altering our brains in a positive or negative way or both? In his article, “The Waking Dream” by Kevin Kelley,  Editor-at –Large of Wired magazine, he writes, “We already know that our use of technology changes how our brains work. Reading and writing are cognitive tools that change the way in which the brain processes information. When psychologists use neuroimaging technology such as MRI  to compare the brains of literates and illiterates working on a task, they find many differences --- and not just when the subjects are reading. … If alphabetic literacy can change how we think, imagine how Internet literacy and ten hours a day in front of one kind of screen or another is changing our brains.” Kelley goes on to make the case that, overall the Internet is a good thing --- in some cases it may be a terrible waste of time, but like dreams, perhaps it might be a “productive waste of time.”!

Regarding texting, Listfield quotes Dr Sherry Turkle, director of  MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self and author of “Alone Together”  as writing, “Kids have told me that they almost don’t know what they are feeling until they put in a text”.  Listfield uses this example as a negative  cost of technology but I can envision it as a plus, as a benefit and not necessarily a cost. Let me explain:

When I was working as a Professor of  Computer Science, much of my research was on developing teaching  strategies to facilitate development of problem-solving skills in students, particularly in freshman as that would have the maximum benefit for the student over his and her college stay. I decided to use  a combination of computer programming (in a simplified language called Logo) and writing exercises as my pedagogy.  The main idea was to combine the discipline of writing with the discipline of computer programming which uses both a priori  and  a posteriori reasoning to solve problems. As explained by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori)

'”’a priori knowledge’ is known independently of experience (conceptual knowledge), and 'a posteriori knowledge' is proven through experience .”

In a nutshell, a priori reasoning is “armchair reasoning” (you don’t have to get up and go door-to-door  to ascertain  the number of  married bachelors in the greater metropolitan Plattsburgh area)  while a posteriori is experimental reasoning, the basis of all science so you can’t just solve the problem in your head.

But just as important as logical, scientific thinking for problem solvers is writing.  Writing is arguably the best method  for clarifying our thoughts. When I have a hard problem that I am struggling with I find that I can begin to make progress by sitting down and “writing myself a letter” describing first how I feel (usually frustrated) and then what the problem seems to be and finally offering myself suggestions for its solution. It’s a wonderful pump priming process. By first slowing down enough to really pay attention and examine the problem, I gain clarity. And as I gain clarity, I also gain confidence, perhaps the single most important behavior of good problem solvers. When I look down the hill on my skis and say to myself, “Oh No, I’m going to fall” I most certainly will. But if  I say, “This should be fun” I have a good chance to make it the bottom in an upright position.

This is why I think that texting can be a  positive outcome of  technology. So long as the kids are texting (and not while they’re driving), they are writing and writing clarifies thinking. And (in addition to “Love, sweet Love”) clear thinking is what the world needs right now.