Final Essay: Dominic Marini

Games For The Mind, Body, & Soul is an essay focusing on the positive impacts of video games on a person's social, emotional, and physical aspects of life.

Essay Exhibit Discussion

During our final week of classes in Digital Humanities, the class was able to put there final essays on exhibit for everyone to view. I particularly enjoyed the Google Maps Essay exhibit that one of my classmates did. She included "Mr. Plimpton's Revenge" and that was one of the coolest things we looked at this semester. Google Maps essays allow people to tell location based stories by showing certain places on an actual map to the reader. They also allow the creator of the essay to input text and pictures to the maps to give the reader a fuller experience while reading the narrative.
I also really liked the exhibit on convergence, it was a really fascinating topic that caught my attention. Convergence is an interesting thing that says eventually all media will flow through one outlet - this is the black box fallacy. Henry Jenkins argued the theory, saying that media will eventually be everywhere, and will not flow through one "black box". Overall, all of the exhibits were really interesting and I thought that everyone did a great job in the class. Digital Humanities was definitely a thought provoking course that I'm glad that I took!

Final Essay by Jon Dicey

To conclude the excellent semester, my essay titled "Video Games: Growing Trend and New Form of Human Expression" touches on how video games have affected modern society and how it relates to Digital Humanities.

-Jon Dicey-University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown-Spring of 2017

Essay Exhibit Discussion

This past week in Digital Humanities we've been having an essay exhibit for everyone's final essay topics.  I decided to choose the affects of video games in modern society as my topic for the exhibit and final essay. I've also gathered quite a bit of information from other students from their exhibit pieces. Even though there was a lot of variety as far as topics go, but the majority of the topics were based off video games. Digital Humanities display many different forms of human expression in relation to the advancement of modern technology. But, after the essay exhibit, video games have had more of an impact on our generation based on research I have gathered and from what I have seen in other students exhibit pieces.
The piece that other students have created that will help me with my essay is Hunter Graham's piece on video games and religion. Another piece that I found interesting that I will definitely incorporate into my essay is video games and the military. When I first looked at both of these pieces I was shocked that video games have had such an affect on religion and military. Religion really opened my eyes because I thought video games had nothing to do with religion. The military, however, made a lot of sense to me due to the amount of war games that are growing in popularity today.

My essay will cover all the affects video games have had on modern society and how the trend will continue to grow in future generations. Religion and the military will also be referenced in my essay. I hope to continue to see more innovative and exciting breakthroughs in the gaming industry.

Final Essay

To wrap up our Digital Humanities course we were asked to write a final research essay. I was initially inspired to write my essay on the self generating text poem "Camel Tail" by Sonny Rae Tempest. Obviously, I needed to expand my subject to be able write a 5 page essay, so I chose the issue of authorship and who really owns "Camel Tail" as a whole. In my essay, I take a look at the analog age and digital age. I also look at how society has come to accept remix culture as a norm. You can find my essay "The Question of Authorship in the Digital Age" here.
-Chelsea Furnari ~ The University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Digital Humanities Spring 2017

Essay Exhibit Discussion

     There is a big array of different topics seen in our class of Digital Humanities. However most of the essay exhibits that I have looked at, have to do with video games. Video games are a very popular subject. There can be many things to say when i

t comes to video games, and I figured that out today. Members of my class talked about all different aspects of them from religion to violence to virtual reality.
    One of my classmates talked about religion in video games. It is a very interesting topic. He focused on the two religions, Christianity and Hinduism. He first started out with talking about the different misconceptions about video games. He talked about how some people think that video games are only catered to the youth. This is not true. There are some video games that are better catered to an older audience. He also talked about how some people think that video games have an "unreal" environment. There are many games that have a real environment. One of those games is Grand Theft Auto. It is set in a city, which is very real. Some of the video games that he talked about were Zelda and Journey. In Zelda, there is a cross that is used to see ghosts. There is also three goddesses in the game. These goddesses are representations of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Another video game that he talked about was Journey. This video game represents the "journey" that one takes after they die, on their way to heaven. I really like this project. It was interesting to think about a video game from a religious stand point.
   Another classmate talked about violence in video games. There is a lot of misconception when it comes to violence in video games. Some claim that playing an excess amount of violent video games can have an effect on the gamer. My classmate provided an example of a research study that proved this to be false. An excess amount of violent video games do not make a person violent. It is a myth. He also talked about social media and empathy. My classmate claimed that an excess of time on

social media can cause a person to loss empathy. I believe that this is true. When hiding behind a screen, it is easy to forget that there are people behind each social media account. I like this project very much. It brings light to the misconceptions about violence and video games.

Essay Exhibit Discussion

During our final week of class, my classmates and I had the chance to present our final projects and view others projects. I found this activity very helpful and beneficial, it allowed me to get more ideas about my topic and to assist others in their topics. I viewed several different topics that I found eye opening.
One of the projects that I viewed was on the idea of technological convergence. I am familiar with this topic and find it rather interesting. My classmate brought up the theory that humans today thirst for technology and that it is almost a necessity to daily life. Convergence deals with transforming  old forms of media into new and more efficient forms.  She stated that technology has a massive effect on communication, which is true. Also she stated that there is less face to face communication, also that there is a bigger emphasis on texting, phone calling, and emailing. Although this is true in today's society I still believe humans are still very involved in each other and thrive in communication. There is a common belief amongst older generations that younger people do not communicate with others well, I highly disagree with this belief. The communication is enhanced with the powers of technology. Phones and tablets can allow for more communication then ever before. I am excited to see how my classmate expands on this topic in her final paper.
Another project that I viewed was the relationship between video games and religion. I have played video games for many years now, but never really thought about this overlap. For the purposes of his essay, he is focusing on Christianity and Buddhism in video games. This idea is prevalent in games that have endings which demands for reaching a higher place. For example, a game called "Journey" which entails its user to go through a series of events in order to reach the top of a mountain. The top of the mountain represents heaven. I think this idea is marvelous and can really shed a light on spiritual feelings inside video games. Video games have the potential to be more than just entertainment. They can be used as tools for many different aspects of humanity, such as religion.

Final Essay

My final essay takes a look at data mining and boy bands. It explores why the boy band, Backstreet Boys, is so popular. Its titles Data Mining Boy Bands.

Convergence

Convergence is defined as the process or state of converging. For the sake of our class Digital Humanities, it refers to the converging of all things digital. In Convergence Culture by Henry

Jenkins, he talks about the convergence of different technical devices. Jenkins talks about the “black box fallacy”. This idea believes that all media content will flow through a single black box. Jenkins says “Media Convergence is an ongoing process, occurring at various intersections of media technologies, industries, content, and audiences.” Jenkins believes that media will continue to grow in multiple ways through computing and communication. However his concept will probably never happen. Different companies like Sony and Apple will never let this happen. Companies like that want their customers to have different devices like dvd players and video game consoles. This will let those companies make more money off of their customers.

Some examples of convergence are modern models of cars. In today’s standard models of car there are many different things that you can do in cars. There is usually a navigation system in every car. There is also a radio where you can listen through FM, AM, and XM frequencies. There are also bluetooth capabilities in car which allows the speakers of the car to become a phone. Another example of convergence is a smart TV. A smart TV lets a person watch television shows and movies through different mediums on one device. Smart TV converge all of theses medium into one. Convergence is a thing of the future. Another example can be seen in today’s smart phones. Before the era of smart phones, the only capability of a cell phone was to make calls. With the cell phone evolving into a smart phone, they can now be used to play games, search the web, and numerous other activities. Smartphones can be seen as a swiss army knife when it comes to technology.

Beethoven Archive

Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the most influential musicians of all time. He was born in December 1770.  Beethoven gave his first public performance at the age of 7 in Cologne, Germany. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna and started to study composition. In 1800 he gave his first

symphony (arguably his most notable) in Vienna. By 1801 he confessed he was slowly becoming deaf. Beethoven was always seen as “the liberator of the people” during this time. He composed 10 symphonies during his lifespan which are still talked about today. He passed away in 1827 due to an illness. Beethoven, the musician, the entertainer, the liberator, and an interesting human being. His works of art have influenced many different artists to create musical works of their own. Making this archive would be beneficial to many different types of people. This will help younger people learn more about classical music. It will also make it easier to access all different types of Beethoven’s musical works. By making this archive, it would make his works accessible to everyone. Digital humanists can create works of musical history, like Beethoven’s, to be accessible to everyone.

In our archive, we will include all different types of Beethoven’s works. It will include all of Ludwig van Beethoven symphonies, all of his concerto’s and all of his sonatas. We will include both the scripts of the original works and recordings of each composition. We will also include the many different

portraits of Beethoven. Beethoven kept a diary of his day to day activities. This will be included in our archive. We will also include the conversation books that he kept after going deaf. There hundreds and hundreds of compositions created by Beethoven. It will take a long time to digitalize his works. All of his scripts were created in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Therefore, they are very delicate and need to be handled with care. As archivist, we need to be careful and respectful of his work. We will have use gloves when interacting with his different scripts. We will have to work fast because the light could cause them to deteriorate. This archive will help keep art and music alive!

Data Mining

           Data mining is the practice of examining large database in order to generate new information. Data mining can be conducted with many different programs and resources. Data mining can be used to analyze different works of literature. Data mining has become easier and easier to do with developing programs. Voyant is a tool that allows its user to plug in any form of text and will then "mine" information. It creates numerous pieces of information that can be seen below

  This is one of our group blog posts about video, are most used words were game, computer, and played. We then plugged those top words into Googles Ngram Viewer. As you can see the word "computer" spiked rapidly from the 1950's to 1990. We found it interesting that the word "computer" started to decrease slightly towards the early part of the 2000's. Most would assume that the word "computer" would continue to climb into the age of technology. However, Ngram shows that the word has hit a plateau.

Here is another blog post from our blog, Make Digital Humanities Great Again.


   
   
When looking at the words literature and reader, there is some what of a correlation.  In the 1800’s the word reader had a positive correlation while the word literature had a negative correlation. Around 1880, the two words were used just about the same. The two different lines come together. After the 1880’s, the two words continued on their track. “Reader” continues to be used less and less while the word “literature” continued to be used more and more. The world electronic was not noticeably used until the late 1920's and early 1930's.

Individual Work of Electronic Lit.

My work of electronic literature is called Lost In the Woods. It is a self immersive piece about a story lost in the woods.

Original Work of Electronic Literature

For my Original Work of Electronic Literature I decided to do a Google Maps Essay on where the fish in my saltwater aquarium come from. I named it "Where in the World are you from" to highlight my the journey that my fish have taken to get from their home in the ocean, to their new home in my aquarium. This is a hobby that I have had for over seven years and I love having my own little piece of the ocean in my bedroom.
-Chelsea Furnari

Original work of E-Lit

The title of my original work of E-Literature is "Road to Redemption: The Michael Conzatti Story", this is a fictional story.

Jon Dicey

My Original Work of E-Lit

My Rugby Journey

This is a Google Maps that I created which entails my journey of playing rugby. Rugby has taken me to several new places and allowed me to make endless memories.

Dominic Marini

Response to Ray Kurzweil

Have you ever thought about the future of technology? Well, Ray Kurzweil sure has. In fact, he has Ray Kurzweil is a man of many talents. He is incredibly intelligent and has used his intelligence to help people. Kurzweil is a well known author, computer scientist, and futurist. One of the thing that Ray Kurzweil believes in is Technological Singularity. "Technological Singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super-intellegence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization" Ray Kurzweil believes that one day a computer will be more intelligent than the smartest human being. He also believes that a computer will be the one to create it. Kurzweil also believes that first person to live to 200 is alive today. Ray Kurzweil has been right in the past, so maybe this prediction will come true as well.He has made many predictions about the future of technology and he hit the nail right on the head!

Some may argue that his predictions are insane or even delusional, but he has proven himself worthy to make predictions about technological advancements. Whether a person agrees with him or not, Kurzweil is constantly pushing his ideas and thoughts into the minds of others. By making these extreme predictions he is truly shinning a powerful light on the powers of technology and how it benefits us today.

Games

What is a Video Game?
        A video game is a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television or other display screen. But what does that mean? In layman's terms it is any game that is played that was created by some type of computer. This could mean a lot of different things. One example of a video game is a PlayStation game. PlayStation games are made by a

massive team of computer programs. They are made by computers for computer like systems. You cannot play a PlayStation game without having an actual PlayStation gaming system. Another example of a video game would be computer games. These games were created by computers, for computers. These games cannot be played without a computer. Video games have grown with the advancement of technology, thus becoming a worldwide market for people of all ages. Video Games can be realistic or even unrealistic science fiction. Video games can serve many purposes such as entertainment, creativity, learning, and even stress relievers.
         One of the video games that we discussed in class was, "I Expect You To Die."In this game you are a spy trying to catch a cartoon evil villain. The first scene that comes up, you are stuck in a car and

need to figure out how to escape the car. It is a virtual reality game so it allows the user to feel as if they are actually inside the car. This feature expresses realistic qualities that made into a game setting for entertainment. The player is able to use either a keyboard or virtual reality controllers to interact with the game. The game can be played on a PlayStation 4 that has virtual reality compatibility. This is a video game because of many different reasons. "I Expect You To Die" is interactive with the players. Without interaction, nothing could be completed.  "I Expect You To Die" is also video game because it is played with some type of electronic device. The images on the screen are electronically manipulated so they seem real. This game is also played on either a television screen or a computer screen.

Uncreative Writing

     Our class examined something called "uncreative writing" this past week. Uncreative writing focuses on employing strategies of appropriation, replication, plagiarism, piracy, sampling,

plundering, as compositional methods. The concept was created by Kenneth Goldsmith while he was teaching his class called “Uncreative Writing” at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. He formed his class based on the notion that traditional forms of creativity were under attack, being eroded by file-sharing, media culture, widespread sampling, and digital replication. Because of his ideas about uncreative writing, we were able to create our own piece of uncreative writing called Cobain Texts His Mother About the History of Rap.

      This poem was created in a unique fashion, each member of the group listened to three randomly selected videos. The first video was an interview with Kirk Cobain, discussing his personal life. He spoke about his drug use, music, and health issues. The second Video was a hilarious clip from Jimmy Fallon's late night TV show, in which he had people on twitter send in funny, weird, or embarrassing text messages from their mothers. Fallon picked some of the best ones and displayed them to his audience. The third clip that our group viewed was also from Jimmy Fallon's television show, but this time Justin Timberlake was in it. They sang several songs that displayed the history of rap in a short period of time. As each member of the group listened to these different videos, they were then asked to transcribe every word that they heard into a group chat. Once the videos were finished, they were then asked to copy and paste what they had into one document and delete everything but the words they typed. By doing this, they created their own work of uncreative writing.

      What's fascinating about these videos, is that they are very unique in comparison to each other.  For example, Kurt Cobain's interview had a very monotone and sad tone, but the Justin Timberlake video was very upbeat and fun.  The poem we created changes tone based on the diction we pulled away from the videos.  As we can see, the diction used by Kurt Cobain isn't as humorous or upbeat as Jimmy Fallon or Justin Timberlake's diction.  Overall, Uncreative Writing has been an interesting concept introduced in class based on modern technology giving us complete accessibility to take one persons words and use it to create any form of literature.  

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Corrupted Images

Corrupted Images

La Maison de Monet a Giverny
The House of Monet at Giverny 

Original 

Corrupted 

Response to Bots and Self Generating Text

      A bot, short for robot, is a computer program designed to operate autonomously, performing scheduled, responsive, or real-time operations in a computer, through the internet, and/or social media networks.  Bots are a unique type of program because they can interact with humans, and often take on a human-like persona. Some may even argue that bots have the capability to interact with other bots or even humans.

     An excellent example of a bot that takes on human characteristics would be the Real Human Praise Twitter bot, that takes pieces of positive reviews from Rotten Tomatoes (a movie and television aggregator), changes the director or producers name to a Fox News anchor or personality, and tweets it every two minutes. This Twitter account and bot were produced by the TV show The Colbert Report as a response to the rumor that Fox News publicists had thousands of fake social media accounts to try to deflect any negative posts or comments made about their news channel. The constant positive praise comes across ridiculous and ironic, which is exactly what the producer of The Colbert Report (Rob Dubbin) was going for to put shame to Fox News.

     Another great example of a self generating text that is created by the powers of bots, is the NRA Tally. This self generating text uses some factual evidence and some sarcasm to create a political stance against the NRA(National Rifle Association). It creates a headline about a mass shooting,
followed by a statement about the NRA, which creates a satirical moment for the reader. The efforts by this bot and many other bots can be seen and heard all around the world. 

     As one looks deeper into these bots a lot of interesting thoughts and perspectives can arise. Should a person really listen to the bot? Who is actually writing these texts?
     When thinking about bots, it is hard to establish who the author of the text is. There are many different contributors when it comes to making bots. Because of the different aspects that are involved in making the bots, there could be several different authors. The person that wrote the computer code that is actually generating the bot could be considered an author. The computer that is generating the text could also be considered an author. In some cases, bots use previously written pieces of art to create different works of art. The pervious authors could also be considered an author to the new piece of art. The considered author is dependent on what the reader thinks of a contributor. Some might think since the computer cannot truly think for itself, it should not be considered an author. Authorship is dependent on personal opinion.

Individual Response to "High Muck a Muck"

           
The Electronic Poem “High Muck a Muck” gives the readers an experience to see the historical side of Chinese immigration to British Columbia, Canada.  I thoroughly enjoyed this piece not only because of the deep poet meanings in the literature aspect, but also the interaction it gave me as a reader to explore the historical background of the earlier Chinese immigration process.  E-poetry was a new experience to me and after reading this particular piece, I am really looking forward to viewing more types of E-poetry.  As technology continues to manipulate society, electronic poetry will always be relevant and will continue to grow in popularity. 

E-Poetry is determined as any type of poem that is distributed for anyone to view electronically.  It can be viewed on blogs, social media, websites, etc.  E-Poetry is helping progress of literature because of the amount of access it gives anyone, which allows inspiration for other writers.  I've personally have benefitted from viewing this particular form of Electronic Literature because I am now able to see how other writers shape their works in a grammatical and structural way.  I believe everyone should take advantage of the opportunity to view such magnificent pieces of literature.

 In the Electronic Poem, "High Muck a Muck", I was enlightened by especially one particular section of the source.  If you click Victoria, you will see my favorite sayings of the entire reading.  The saying was "To know yourself you must become yourself."  The truth behind this is astounding because to me this means that we not only have to be true to others, we have to be true to ourselves.  I see it very often that people put on an act in order to impress others.  What's the purpose of that?  Who are you?  If there is ever a time where you think you need to change in order to fit in then the crowd you're trying to impress isn't worthy of your time.  Always be true to yourself.
 

Response To Scare Mail

Response to Scare Mail:

            After looking at this piece, I was somewhat bothered that such a thing existed, but after looking deeper into it my mindset changed slightly. Scare mail is a website generates emails that tamper with The National Security Agency (NSA). This website creates emails that would be recognized as terrorist threats, which are then picked up by the NSA’s security programs. Once the NSA retrieves the email, they would find out that it is harmless, but it still messes with their computer software.

 As I said earlier, when I first opened this page I thought to myself “Why would anyone want to interfere with the NSA?” The NSA is here to protect and defend the US from threats. I said to myself “This website is ridiculous; I cannot believe people would actual do things like this.” I still somewhat believe that, due to my background and personal beliefs. I am a strong advocate for taking action when it comes to preventing crime before it occurs.

When I started to look deeper into this website, I was able to discover what it stands for. It represents individual freedom and privacy. Ultimately, this forced me to reshape my thought process and take a new perspective. This website was not created to simply bully and poke fun at the NSA, but rather to shine light on the fact that government agencies sometimes violate constitutional rights. Even though the constitution says nothing about privacy, it is understood to the majority that we all have an expectation of our individual privacy. Therefore, this website does stand for a powerful and positive message.

With all of this in mind, I still do not think it is the best idea to interfere with those who are responsible for protecting and serving our country. Agencies like the NSA have to deal with people who take extremely dangerous measures to hurt and kill the innocent. The NSA uses Prisim and Xkeyscore to monitor and flag potentially dangerous messages in order to prevent violent terroristic attacks on the United States. Even though their agenda is to protect, this does not give them the right to look inside public files and personal data. Our nation was built on that very principle. We the people have rights that must be held to a standard, or else everything the Constitution stands for is a lie.