#com383spring2014

Upon finding this class way back last November or so, I was only interested because I had assumed that we would be looking at the fronts of social networks.  The actual use of it.  It sounded interesting because everyone nearly uses them and I myself heavily do.  Little did I know the vast knowledge I would learn about what social networks can tell us and how networks are so important in society.  I cannot help but to analyze my surroundings day to day and just think about how they attribute to a much larger network.  It was a great feeling to be able to tell some people close to me how networks such as Facebook and Twitter or just every day social situations broke down into more "technical" terms.  For some odd reason, my favorite part of the semester was when we first learned triads.  It was very interesting to me.  And then the game when we had to get as many points as possible over a few rounds through negotiation.  I felt like that really brought out certain qualities in some people whether it be ignorance or intelligence or even pure generosity.  It was fun all in all and I will never forget the things that I have learned this semester.  

It came to me after slipping into a day-dream mid class, the thought of what the future beholds.  This is in regards to the article "Good Health and The Bridging of Structural Holes".  My thoughts were all centered around social life come 50, 100 years in the future.  What will a typical social day be like for any given individual? I am scared at the thought that society will turn into a similar scene as seen in the movie Wall-E where everyone communicated through some type of technology rather than face to face.  This is all despite being right next to each other in most of the cases.  I am scared for just how strong of a social bridge will be rested upon technology rather than natural human interaction.  As the generation that relied much more heavily on human/personal interaction is aging, the generation filling their shoes are much too reliant on social media and technology.  One day, the world may stand still, and it will be because mankind will no longer have a purpose to move.  

After reading the article in regards to SWG, I was reminded of how big online gaming has become today.  For example, most people do not buy games for their campaign's anymore.  It is all about the quality of the online gaming.  Throughout high school and even now in college, I am astonished at the amount of people that spend hours upon hours playing these games and have the nerve to say it is their socializing time.  Being a slight gamer at a time in my life, I have participated in some of the online games.  People really do treat these online worlds as if it were their real world.  There were countless times where other gamer's would attempt full conversations as if they were their characters in the game.  This annoys me because despite these people are making connections and having social interactions, their social networks are all just fictitious.  People are not only playing these games, they are playing the life they only dream of having.   The data collected in the SWG studies show that people fully engage in the game and create alternate lives.  The games them self are practically alternate worlds that give the real world experience.  You need to rely on others to survive and you have a role that others depend on.  This mimics real life scenarios which for some far lost socially awkward people, is the life they wish they could have.  This is a serious problem since technology keeps improving which enables the anti-social gamer people to stay anti-social in the real world.  

 While reading the Stanford article, a thought regarding section 2.1 Related Work came to mind.  In a way, each individual person in existence is like  http://www.yahoo.com/.  Just how the article states that the web search engine will have endless back-links from which all of its knowledge is received, so do we as people. Every time someone learns a piece of knowledge from another and a connection is gained, another back-link is obtained.  Knowing that our back-links are what supports and provides us with everything we know, society becomes bias, just like web search engines.  We choose who we associate with day to day whether it be professionally or casually speaking.  For instance, associating ourselves with credible scholars will also create a credible outlook on ourselves.  This is because of something like the phrase "you are watch you eat" or in this case, you are who you surround yourself with.  If your "back-links" are great people who provide you with great support and help you learn, you are looked at as a better person.  My question to everyone is, is it possible for someone to have negative "back-links" yet still be looked at as a positive presence?  Or does who you associate yourself with affect your image that greatly? 

Although it seemed like most of my group was new to both games we all caught on how the game worked quite quickly. In the beginning with Ticket to Ride it was very slow pase. Most of the reason was because we were not used to game play just yet. After the game went on it got extremely competitive. Some of us finally got a complete track down and gained points. What was interesting, closer to the middle of the game there was strategy already building. One of them was blocking the other players moves. In all this game really does connect with what we have been learning and studying in class. Actually both games as well as Pandemic were very related to how nodes, edges, centrality, clustering, and bridges were created. Another interesting thing was Pandemic was a node focused board game where as Ticket to Ride was more edge focused. But both had a very similar ties with social networking and analysis.