Gaming Adiction for the Lord of the Cave

Games are designed to be fun, otherwise no one would play them. For some people these games are a harmless diversion but for others it becomes their reality. Charles D. Knutson and Kyle K. Oswald discuss how easy it is to fall for this new virtual reality. The virtual world is fair; if you put in the time you can be the best and the strongest. Age doesn't matter. Race doesn't matter. Sex doesn't matter. All that matters is your ability to play the game. The shy reclusive nerd will get noticed and talk to him about something he enjoys. He has already found a community with common interests and his special knowledge of the game will make him a valued resource. While he is ignored at school, he is the sports star in the virtual world. This fake world be comes more enticing and more and more he escapes into this fantasy until it consumes his life. Without help, he often can't or doesn't want to leave this new world and fame.

Get out there and Live

Where is Everybody

Clay Shirky, in his book Here Comes Everybody, discusses the rise of the internet and new communication tools. He details how these advances in technology didn't directly cause people to do anything, but weakened or eliminated barriers. Some of these barriers were finding a group with similar interests, the cost to publish something, and even the difficulty in assembling a group of people. As these barriers came down, people took advantage of the new ease and started working together to make incredibly large and complex things (i.e. Wikipedia or Linux).

I have seen some of these changes growing up. When in elementary school I had to call someone or go to their house to try to do anything with them. In high school the use of e-mail was more prevalent, instant messaging was commonplace and people could now text each other to set up events, but their groups largely consisted of the people they interacted with from day to day (especially since MySpace was frowned upon by parents). As i started college I found more people using Facebook and liking pages where they now could meet people online with similar interests.

However I don't personally know anyone that met some "friends" on Facebook and then later got together for a party or an evening of fun. These cyber friends are largely non-existent. People still hang out with the people they interact with on a day to day basis, while they never meet the friend that likes all the same things they do, but lives across the country. The cost of travel still inhibits these people from meeting. While the people with similar interests in the same area generally meet from another individual or an organization sporting a club. The dropping of cost barriers in communication allow me to "meet" new people online, but its real help is in facilitating planning with my group of close friends, and things are likely to remain that way until the travel barriers also drop.

Copyrights: Who do they Protect?

Over the past 20 years a new term has come up in relation to music and movies: pirating. It is espoused that when people "pirate" a song or a movie by copying it and distributing it, they are stealing money from the author of the work. However, Orson Scott Card, in MP3s Are Not the Devil, states that most of the money goes to the distributor, much more than they need to make a profit, instead of the author. The author hardly makes anything form the sale of a CD. They couldn't care less if you actually bought the CD, in fact some encourage people to share their music with their friends. Its the big corporations that make money with sales and lose it when something is pirated. Copyrights and anti-pirating acts benefit the record company and not the author. This is wrong, if I were to invent something using a sheet of paper I borrow from my roommate the profit should not go to him. I should pay him for the paper and maybe a little more because of the added benefit I got from it, but not most of what i would make. In essence, that's what these record companies are doing. They rent our the use of their facilities and people, foot the bill to burn a CD and then demand most of the profit, amounts well above production costs, just because they can manipulate the copyright laws to their own advantage.

Lack of Women in Computing

As a Computer Science major I can often go semesters with out seeing a girl in my classes. In fact, I can think of only 3 girls ever being in any of my classes, and only 3 others in lower level classes seeking a degree in CS. The problem is how Computer Science courses are taught. My first interaction with Computer Science and programing was my freshman year, I took CS 142 and loved it. Programming made sense and came easily. My sister, who I must begrudgingly admit may be smarter than I am, was pursuing a degree in math or math teaching. One of her required classes was CS 142. I thought it would be an easy class for her, yet she had to withdraw from it. It didn't make sense to her, even with hours of help form the TA's. Men and Women learn things differently, our minds just work that way, as can be seen by the fact that no man knows what a woman is thinking. Computer Science was developed by men an taught in a way that we understand, but this isn't the way women think and understand and to most of them it is utter nonsense. This leads women to dislike the courses they are taking in programming and to pursue other degrees. Until these fundamental courses are taught in a way that women understand, and possibly until a programming language is developed by women, women will avoid these courses and degrees.

The Promise of the Lord

A craze has recently swept through the world: a desire to do family history. For some it is a hobby, for others it is a duty. Not much distinguishes these groups of people, as both stem from the same source. God has promised, in several books of scripture, to send the spirit of Elijah and turn the hearts of the children to their fathers (3 Nephi 25:5-6, Malachi 4:5-6, Doctrine and Covenants 2). The differences between the modern revelation (D&C 2) and the ancient ones reveal the reason for the sense of duty felt. D&C 2:3 says, "If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming." God's purpose in creating the earth is for us, to give us the chance to learn and progress and become like him (Moses 1:39). If we fail to do family history, billions of people will never have the opportunity to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ; they will never have the chance to become like God. As this chance was the purpose of the earth, without family history the earth would have been a waste. It wouldn't fulfill its purpose, like a car that never gets driven. But the Lord is faithful and has sent us the desire to do the work; the earth will not be wasted.