Week 2: Sep 13 2005—

Experiences with CSS

I enjoy the theory of CSS a lot: separating the content from its markup makes a lot of sense, and really plays to the strengths of computing and the web. I had a little bit of difficulty making sure everything worked and aligned the way I wanted/expected it to, but I was able to do it in the end.

One frustration I have run into while working on my CSS is that it is sometimes confusing to know which selector is controlling the property that I want to change. For instance, if I want the width of the navigation panel at the top of this page to be wider, should I change the div that encloses it or should I change the individual list elements, etc.? I find myself unsure of how many divs need to be enclosing a chunk of text/content on the screen, and, if there are multiple tags around the object I'm trying to modify, do they all need to be changed, or will just one do? Through trial and error (by commenting lines of CSS code), I've already found that a fair amount of the styles I have defined are superfluous.

For the assignment I decided I would try to explore how much the styles can be used to change the display of a page (a la the CSS zen garden). This gives a pretty good visual argument for the power (and importance) of stylesheets.

To see the same page with a different stylesheet, click. The only HTML that is different is that link right there.

Reading Reaction

Chapters 1,8 and 9 of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media

This reading took the discussion and consideration of media's effects several levels deeper than I've ever thought possible. There is a lot of use of what seems to be a specialized media studies vernacular that I was unprepared for, and navigating the ideas on the author's terms was difficult. I spent a lot of time resisting my initial feeling that the emperor has no clothes (words?). Nevertheless, I'll do my best to summarize, react (when possible), and explain.

In the first chapter, The Medium is the Message, the author expounds on the time-worn cliche that I had never really considered in depth. One statement that I liked was the example of the light bulb: a light bulb is not considered to have any content until it is being used to spell out an advertiser's name on a sign. I had a hard time with the author's statement that GE is in the business of moving information. When lights are used to display a message, yes, I can see how that would be true. But can't a light just be a light? The lights in my apartment certainly don't spell out any messages.

The author also states that a light can be used to enable a surgeon to perform surgery and to enable baseball players to play in the night. I fail to see how this is relevant. Aren't there a multitude of other media that enable the actions to occur? Gravity, air, the blood in the veins of the surgeon (the patient), the baseball players, are all enabling media.

The author did do a good job of dispelling the myth that technology is only either good or bad depending on how it is used. That is certainly a well-accepted fallacy.

Chapter 8 is titled, "The Spoken Word: Flower of Evil?" In this chapter we explore a little bit how different the spoken and printed words are. What came to my mind is email and IM conversations gone awry; when the non-verbal, non-printable gestures aren't effectively communicated, a lot of conversational cues go missing, which can lead to misunderstandings.

An interesting point made in that chapter, the significance of which is still not quite clear to me, is that electric technology does not need words, and may indeed lead us to a collective consciousness much like that of preverbal humans.

In chapter 9, "The Written Word: An Eye for an Ear," the author explains the fixing power of written language. He makes clear the limits of written language in the way that signifiers with adequate external referents (like the words, "American Flag"), while they do completely describe their external objects, are poor substitutions for them.

New Experience

Discovering an NYC Concert
—or—
Part I in my discovery that it's all happening in New York

While on the subway reading the Onion, I noticed first that an obscure band from my college, We Are Scientists, was playing that night in the village. I then noticed that another obscure band, comprised of the high school friends of two of my college friends and called the Spinto Band, was also playing the same night.

Probably not that remarkable considering the volume of bands that rock through NYC everyday except that I had just been in LA visiting one of said friends who played a bunch of songs off the Spinto's latest release for me. He was also going to burn me the CD but forgot to, and then later when he offered to send it to me I demurred, saying I'd just support his friends' band and buy it myself here in New York. So ever since school started I've been looking for the Spinto Band's latest CD.

And then I find that they are playing, right in my area, that night, for only $10. It seemed like a remarkable coincidence, and I count myself very lucky to have been browsing the A.V. section of the Onion at that moment.

The Spintos played as part of the CMJ Music Marathon at the Pianos Bar in the East Village, and I was able to both name-drop our mutual acquaintances' names and purchase a CD directly from the band. Mission accomplished.

The show itself was quite good. Reviews for their latest CD on Amazon are splattered with commendations of the bandmembers' lackadaisical, none-too-serious stage presence. I agree—they seemed both humble and talented and unpretentious, which is rare. And sometimes they even seemed to be mocking themselves, which I'm not sure I like, but it's better than most of the alternatives.

The backup singer/guitarist had the most stage presence, although in his case it should probably be called strange presence: As he played, he would rock up and down, his guitar's head rising and falling like the prow of a ship in heavy seas, with a goofy, gape-mouthed grin and his eyes bug-eyed toward the sky, like someone in the throes of the rapture. I found it pretty disorienting, and he teetered from being annoying to just silly enough to be amusing.

On the CD that I purchased, there was a sticker comparing the Spinto Band to Pavement, the Flaming Lips and Yo La Tengo. I can hear it, yeah, but the lead singer so reminded me of Rivers Cuomo that I kept envisioning them as a fledgling Weezer.

I found out in talking to the band after their set that they're playing again this weekend at the Mercury Lounge. I'm going to go, and this time I'll figure out what's up with that backup singer.

Week 1: Sep 6 2005—

Response to Article

This is a response to an article entitled, "No strong link seen between violent video games and aggression"

The debate over the effect of simulated violence in video games on their human players is part of the larger debate over whether violent imagery in any media (books, movies, music) tends to incite aggressive behaviors. This larger debate is really a long-standing feud between free-speech proponents and pro-censorship pundits that has been going on probably nearly as long as mass media entertainment has existed. The general formula has been something like: concerned high-profile congressperson wrings hands, cites study linking media violence to real-world aggression, urges enactment of law restricting violent imagery; rest of world does not notice, continues to buy violent video games in record quantities. At least, that's been my understanding.

The researchers in this article, much to their own amazement, have fired an unexpected salvo on behalf of the free-speechers by reporting the results of a long-term study that shows no link between violent video-game play and violent behavior. This would be a watershed indeed in the history of the video-game violence (VGV) debate if the authors appeared to have any confidence in their results. Instead, they almost apologetically report their findings before completely undermining them by saying, "I'm not saying some games don't lead to aggression. ... I don't think we should make strong predictions ... given this finding." Luckily the point is moot because their research is pretty clearly flawed.

In order for VGV to really have a chance of arousing violent tendencies in its players, it would seem that there are three aspects it would have to have:

1. The game-play should be really, really graphically violent (e.g., 3-d blood droplets and grisly limbs flying).
2. The game-play should be lifelike (i.e., it should be easily imitable and easy to identify with).
3. The game should glorify that violence (i.e., the character, and by extension the player, should seem all the cooler for having slaughtered an enemy).

A couple of games (Carmageddon or Grand Theft Auto in any of its incarnations) come readily to mind as meeting all three requirements above. Asheron's Call 2, the game that the researchers chose to study, could only be said to fulfill the first requirement above, and that seems like a stretch. Granted, I've never played it, but any game in which the following two screenshots are deemed representative (via Asheron's Call 2 Vault) clearly doesn't qualify, does it?

I can't tell what the second picture is, either. A cat-lizard cross riding a cucumber-worm-two-toed-sloth? Even if it could kick serious ass, I'd can't imagine anyone being terribly inclined (or able) to imitate it.

This may be missing the point. The conductors of this study most likely decided to choose an RPG to study because of the immersive quality of the game-play. It's undoubtedly true that RPG, especially MMRPGS, are very conducive to one's losing one's real-world identity in favor of the game's avatar, but what's lacking here is an appreciation for what it is about a game that would incite violence (see the list above). It could even be argued that, in a perhaps counterintuitive way, MMRPGs, due to their social component, might actually encourage moral responsibility. Normal individuals tend to be more influenced by social mores the more a part of their society they feel, and because of the unique social atmosphere in an MMRPG, individuals who are solitary in the flesh world but nonetheless heavily involved in their game may feel themselves to be an integral part of that society. When one is more attuned to how his actions influence the rest of the community, one is less likely to cause harm to that community. These lessons, learned in the online world, might cross over to the player's "real" world.

Even though this research wasn't conducted particularly well, the mere fact that VGV is now considered a valid arena for study may well represent a positive turning point in this debate. Future research should focus on games that are most likely to cause aggressive actions in their players due to their (the games) being most similar to real-life situations of violence. Choosing Asheron's Call 2 to study is like researching the question of whether violent movies cause violent behavior by disregarding Pulp Fiction and instead focusing on Star Wars: Episode I. The day that a light saber-wielding Jar Jar Binks incites violent behavior in viewers is the day that this debate can be considered over.

My new experience

A walk around Hall's Pond

Over the weekend I visited my girlfriend in Boston, and on Sunday morning her grandmother took us to a nearby nature preserve, Hall's Pond. Three and a half acres of pond, marshland and woods are hidden there, in the middle of residential Brookline, MA, just behind the stately brownstones of Beacon Street and about 6 or 7 blocks from Boston University and Commonwealth Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares of the city. When we first approached the pond, a blue heron was at the water's edge, staring at us.

I used to live in Brookline, a little over a year ago, not far from Hall's Pond, and so I was surprised that I had never known of it before, especially because I used to take long walks all around my neighborhood. The twin realizations that raw nature can still exist in a busy city and that it can be so well-hidden got me to thinking about the balance that humans are continually striking not only with the environment but, in a larger sense, with each others' needs for space.

Even though my family moved numerous times (within the same city) when I was young, I don't think I ever had more than an inchoate sense of the way that there are options to consider and compromises that are made regarding the proximity to others, to nature, to the rest of a city, when choosing a dwelling. It wasn't until the fall after my graduation, when I moved to Boston, that I had any real experience of the conscious choosing of a place to live. (I lived on campus all four years of school and, for all their idiosyncrasies, the dorms at Pomona were all similar enough and close enough together to make the choosing of a room not that important of a decision. Certainly choosing a room was far less important than choosing a roommate, say.)

So it was after I first lived in an apartment in a city that I learned peripatetically how a housing decision can affect the structure of one's life; where one walks to buy food and other staples, to catch the T, to send a letter, to get money from an ATM, even the people one meets on a daily basis are dictated in large part by the location of that ultimate destination, the home. I am still occasionally fascinated when I see homes or apartment buildings to think about the lives of the inhabitants and why they chose to live where they do. I am especially curious on long car trips about those who live in America's smallest towns, dotted around the country. What do they do for fun? What is it that keeps them in their little villages? What do they do for a living?

I came to realize that, while the choice of a home is largely a private choice, as a society we—through our elected officials—also choose the makeup and layout of cities. Zoning plans, public transportation systems and routes, availability of green space, and so on all affect the quality of life for the residents of a community. In our urban centers land becomes increasingly precious the more community members there are that must share it, and so the questions of how best to use the land also become increasingly difficult.

Most of the time, in situations where space is in such short supply and high demand, its preservation in natural form seems to some short-sighted city leaders the least effective use of it. I was glad, then, to find that Hall's Pond had been preserved by the thoughtful council-people of Brookline. I found it an apposite complement to the city life and an excellent place to contemplate nature and one's place in it. Or, for that matter, nature's place in the city.