The first recommendation I have for a reading is an article “WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY: Part of the paradigm shift—or part of the problem? (Part II)” by Paul Brunick, (http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/so10/onlinecriticism2.htm) who, among other assertions, makes the claim that the movement of popular movie criticism and reviews is shifting sources, and no moving from that of renowned critics who are published in newspapers or magazines to a “collective intelligence,” where hundreds of individuals will create a “macro level” review through each offering their different, succinct insights into the film. While he makes an argument for both sides, defending the gargantuan, professional critical reviews (“a thousand points of light just isn’t the same as one roaring blaze”) and also advocating the new, amateur reviews over these mammoth pieces of critcism (“We need another essay on the Death of Film Criticism about as much as we need another 800-word review of Shrek 4. I’m sure the Sixties and Seventies were great. But frankly, if you’re longing for a transformative decade, then look around.”). In regards to an activity for this, my suggestion is to go to http://movies.yahoo.com/, then click on any one of the movies in the “Top Box Office” to the left. Then, in the box that says “The Critics” along with whatever letter grade they gave it, under the letter should be something that says something like “13 reviews.” Click on it, and read one of the official critics reviews. Then, go back to the box that says “Yahoo! Users” and click on the thing that says how many ratings there are of the movie, and glance over several of the user reviews. Then we can initiate a discussion where we compare and contrast the two styles of criticism, and about whether we believe the future of “film criticism” lies with the “collective intelligence” of the online community or the “roaring blaze” of the old-school critics.
My second recommendation is more intensive in the way that the activity would have to be spread out over quite a time (not to mention the “homework” would be playing the video game in order to level the characters up) but here we go. The attached pdf file (this site doesn't let me attach pdf files, I'll link the website I pulled it from at the bottome of the page) contains an article about “Social Roles of Players in MMORPG Guilds.” After we read it, I suggest we conduct our own social experiment, if we feel up to it, all of us download the game Ragnarok Online (RO for short), design characters, and form a guild. Then, we form a guild in a sort of government manner. I asked a friend over an instant message conversation about how her guild was set up when she played a while back, and she responded to me in this way:
“There is a guild leader. Sometimes there are sub-leaders. However, there are some guilds that stick someone as the official "leader" for strategic purposes, but the guild is actually run from behind the scenes by the more experienced players.
I guess you can say it's kinda like a government. Sometimes it's like a democracy where there are multiple people leading in cooperation (like president, house and senate) and sometimes it's like a dictatorship.”
OR, if that felt like way too much effort, we could simply read the synopsis on the file and then go to the following website (http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/game_design/are-guilds-too-important-in-mmos.html) and read and analyze people’s response’s to how to deal with the problem of the clash two types of people within a guild: those who join for the whole brotherhood/friendship concepts and just playing leisurely, and those who take the role-playing aspect extremely seriously.
Finally, the last reading I will propose is “Online Communication and Adolescent Relationships.” (http://www.jstor.org/stable/20053122?seq=9&Search=yes&term=friendships&term=internet&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dinternet%2Bfriendships%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Dinternet%2Bfreindships%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&item=10&ttl=517&returnArticleService=showFullText&resultsServiceName=null) Among other things, this reading mentions the “redefining of friends” through online social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, where people will have hundreds of friends. The activity I propose is for people to log on to their Facebook and MySpace pages and see how many “friends” they have listed, and then how many of them they are able to name. This demonstrate the redefinition of “friend” through these networks, as we consider acquaintances, ex-girlfriends/ex-boyfriends (who we never hang out with any more), and friends of friends all under the single category of “friend.”
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a922956035&fulltext=713240928
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