#microassignment

When the elevator arrives sometimes it takes a while to open its door and let me in. Sometimes, before that can even occur, the elevator won't arrive, or worse, the button doesn't call it to my floor. I only live on the fifth floor of an apartment building, with my car on the first and the street on the second. It doesn't take much more time for me to descend the stairs as the elevator that sometimes doesn't come takes its sweet time moving between floors. Yet I still find myself staring at the unpolished and filthy metal door for it to finally let me inside the twice as dirty elevator interior.

It's so slow that I do take the stairs after waiting half a minute, but on days it opens itself to me, I step inside and can press the number of the floor I wish to go to. From here the elevator does one of two things. It either shuts its door and takes me to where I want to go, or it shuts its doors with an uneasy slowness as if taking its time only after staying open entirely too long, unbothered. Immediately after it shuts, it opens with such swiftness and I leave with the same energy, now too afraid the elevator will trap me inside.

When the elevator does agree with me and begins its vertical movement, I sometimes find myself in the predicament of waiting for the doors to release me. The longer I stand there in the silent box and staring at the shoe buffed door, the more unrest builds inside me so I'm running out of the elevator the moment it opens. The uncertainty of the elevator, its behavior, reliability, cleanliness, and time management and effectiveness, continues to have a wide range from okay to abysmal.

I still ride it.

I find Facebook to be, by far, the most useful tool for social networking and collaboration. It allows you to interact with a huge number of people in a natural and customizable way. For instance: you can share hundreds of photos of your recent class trip to the lake with your old friends from high school, your parents, etc… Your friends then can comment on these photos, “like” them, or share them with others. All of these are simple and easy to do. As for customization, you can create lists/categories within your friends, and limit what these groups can or cannot see. For instance: you can make sure your parents can’t see all the pictures you just uploaded from the wild party last weekend, but all your friends can. Or maybe you want to keep your relationship status hidden from just your ex; you can do that too. All the social behaviors and boundaries you would normally see in the real world have a Facebook equivalent.

I dislike Myspace the most, primarily because it is outdated, feels too simple and immature (as a website), and is limited in the interactions/customization it allows. Most importantly, however, is the fact that it is socially deserted. Everyone has moved over to Facebook. No one is left on Myspace. No one uses it. Therefore, trying to use it as a social networking tool is ineffective and foolhardy.

I have not had any particularly meaningful or useful electronic interactions with other members of the class. I am discounting social interactions I have with friends who happen to be in the class as well, as these were not inspired by or relevant to the class in any way. However, if the class had made a Facebook group, I feel that this could have been a useful tool. Everyone is already using Facebook all the time anyway, and so putting the class into that already-thriving social atmosphere could create a more collaborative, interactive experience.

There’s nothing quite as disappointing and isolating as being the only person commenting on a given forum on the Internet. Therefore, I made a point of trying to comment on posts that already had comments on them. This way, it felt more like an active conversation between myself, the blogger, and the other commenter, as opposed to a single awkward attempt at interaction, most likely lost in the void. Unfortunately, other commenters were few and far between. For the most part, the class blogs I perused were barren of activity, both on the author’s part and on the part of their readers. Therefore, (to more directly answer the question): 2 out of the 3 comments I made were the only comments on that particular post.

I commented on 3 different blogs: Alex Geyster’s blog, Rose Ellen’s blog, and Isaac Zarsky’s blog.

Yes; Alex and Isaac I knew well already, and I had met Rose a few times outside of class (mostly in conjunction with Isaac). As would be expected, I purposefully commented on these people’s blogs for several reasons: a) I knew them, and I felt more comfortable commenting on their blogs as opposed to the blogs of complete strangers, and b) all of their blogs were Wordpress blogs. Commenting on Wordpress was simple and easy. Tumblr blogs have no commenting system, which made it impossible to use many of the class blogs for this assignment.

I do not believe that blogs and commenting are an effective way to communicate in a class setting. As I’ve already pointed out, many blogs do not have a way to comment, which poses a pretty substantial problem. Secondly, and more importantly, discussions on forums/blogs/commenting systems will inevitably fail due to their nature. Several crucial elements of a good, hearty discussion simply cannot take place online, in text form. Discussions online are staggered, which is to say, you have to wait for someone to type out their response before you can read it; you don’t receive it real-time. In person, discussions involve quick thinking, quick responses, and the ability to interject or add in at any point. If you’re just exchanging huge chucks of text back and forth, it feels artificial and stunted. Sitting and waiting, alone, staring at a computer screen, waiting for the next essay of a reply to appear is boring and doesn’t inspire academic or intellectual interaction. Even more frustrating is the “invisible timer” when typing out a response on a forum. Let’s assume you’re participating in a discussion online, and let’s assume you have a really great point to make. You sit there, taking the time to articulately type out your response, correct typos, look it over for mistakes, etc… Then, once you’re ready to post it, you see that several other people have commented in the meantime, and your point is no longer relevant, or someone else has made it, or the conversation has moved past the topic you were responding to. There was a window of opportunity for your comment, but that window had an invisible timer, and (sadly, as it often does in these situations) it ran out before you had your chance. In the real world, this problem doesn’t happen. Maybe the conversation will change, or move on, or render your point irrelevant, but it won’t be a surprise. You will be involved, real-time, in the conversation’s progression.

The application I used to build/create was Minecraft. Unfortunately for this class, Minecraft is a world one must pay to enter. Purchasing a Minecraft account (in other words: purchasing the game) costs around $27 now. Back in my day, when it was still in beta, it cost less. This does mean class members cannot experience my project first-hand. However, through the magic of screenshots, I can upload some pictures and give you all a general idea.

What you see in the pictures below is the result of several solid hours of “work”, and a decent amount of trial-and-error, revision, and planning. Beyond the actual building of the structures, there was (of course) the gathering of the raw building materials. This added an additional several hours of searching and mining. Of course, this “effort” was not particularly strenuous for me. As Minecraft is a game, and a game I thoroughly enjoy, the time I spent on this project was not boring or tedious by any means.

The “event” I attended was a Minecraft Building Party, hosted by a friend on a private online server. A small group of friends and I agreed to all “meet up” online at a specific time and build up a new Minecraft server together. For ease of communication and coordination, we all joined a Skype conference call beforehand. This way, we could instantly communicate with each other, hands free, without disrupting our Minecraft play. Once the Skype call was set up, we all logged into the server at the same time. For the duration of the build party, we worked on various tasks together, such as constructing a shared base, acquiring necessary resources, exploring the environment, scouting for enemies or dangers, and just goofing around.

By the end of the designated time, we had jointly constructed a sizeable fortress, hollowed out many rich mines, and even discovered a pet wolf. All in all, it was a successful beginning to our new server. However… several problems did crop up along the way. There were both technical problems and human problems. The technical problems were, for the most part, expected. We encountered issues such as occasional server lag, unstable Internet connection (for some of us), and overheated computers, which led to individual player lag (for some of us). Despite these problems being irritating, they were par for the course, and we overcame them quickly and with ease. The human problems, on the other hand, were trickier because they were unexpected, and there were no “standard procedures” for fixing them. The first problem we ran into was that Max (the friend who was to host the server itself) had overslept, and wasn’t ready by the designated time. We had to call him several times to wake him up, and then (none too gently) coerce him into getting the server running as quickly as possible. We ended up getting started nearly 45 minutes late. Another human problem we had to face was lack of universal cooperation. On a multiplayer Minecraft server, it’s difficult to gather the necessary resources and complete certain tasks in time if everyone doesn’t help out a bit. Some players decided to go off on their own, gather their own resources for themselves, and build their own separate bases away from the main group. Though this isn’t exactly a “problem”, per say, it is an interesting dynamic that we had to adjust for.