“Against Our Will”

Just so everyone knows, I am in a very good mood right now because I got accepted into the elementary education major! So writing arts is now my coordinate major, and I am so excited because I have wanted to be a teacher ever since I was little. And now I can graduate on time! I’m sure no one really cares but I needed to say it.
So anyway, reading Lisa’s blog, it made me very interested in Second Life. It is interesting that you can create your own identity by making up your own person. It is also good that no one can judge what you are saying because I am always afraid to say what I think, in fear of what others might think. A lot of times when people voice their opinion about something, other people always disagree, and it is very discouraging. This website seems that people can just be theirself without being judged which is very good for kids, teens, and adults in today’s society.
Last week in class, we used online chatting to discuss topics in our groups. This was a good way to have a discussion because you were unsure of the people you were talking to. This made it easier to stay focused on the topic we had to discuss. Although most of us put our first names down, it would be interesting to have a fake name, so the others would not know who they are talking to. I think this method of class disucssion was very helpful, and we should use it in the future. If this module was not ending I would we definitely should do it on Fridays! =]

Howdy folks.  Today will be looking at a chat room log some of my classmates did for an in class discussion on authorship and identity.  It was a lively discussion, but it also fell prey to the one weakness of chat rooms.  This weakness is that many people jump from idea to idea rapidly during the conversation, thus it makes it hard to follow any one train of thought for more then a few lines.  On the other hand, I was able to study these several trains of thought, to gain a greater understanding of each aspect of the conversation.  Mixed in with the revelations of the group are my own comments and thoughts.

The reoccuring idea in the chat is what is authorship and what qualifies someone to authorship of something.  The word itself is defined (according to Websters) as “the state or act of creating or causing.”  Authorships on the Internet is often fuzzy.  Many times, people post information that is not their’s, without citing the proper sources.  Other times, someone posts an idea as their own, but it has been thought of by someone else some time before them.  In either of these cases, the offender is usually accused of plagiarism.  If such a thing is true, one chatter stated she would have to cite everything she wrote or said.  This brings up the question of whether or not plagiarism is automatic or most be commited with full knowledge of taking someone else’s ideas for their own.  Older schools of thought would answer that plagiarism is the former, but in such rapidly evolving times, this meaning is being challenged increasingly.  Many people now espouse information sharing, which is the free use of ideas without a restrictive system of citation.  Under this system, the spread of ideas is more important then the authorship of an idea. 

The grouop then touches in the Napster article, which brings the topic of sharing information.  Napster and other file sharing programs are considered illegal because their users are trading music and video for free.  Publishing companies are cut out when people share files online and do not get the profits they would from people purchasing that music.  The group discusses how the only people truly losing out with file sharing programs are the people at the publishing company.  If artists want, they could release their works online for a small amount of money.  Surely, some people would still download them for free, but I think such a thing would motivate fans to buy their artists’ music because doing such would support them more directly.  This practice to me, seems like it would be closer to the spirit of authorship then what the publishing companies espouse it to be.

All in all, the subject of authorship and information sharing is an interesting one, but a topic that must be given more than a single blog post or 40 minutes of in game chat time.  I would suggest taking this basic information and discussing the topic of authorship with your own friends.  The importance of this topic (like the Internet itself) is growing daily and its good to be prepared for the future of information and technology. 

 PS:  The hot water is fixed!

Greetings readers.  Seeing how its Sunday night and I want to have my nightly cup of tea and burrow into a role playing game book, I figured I’d give you something light to digest this evening.  I am a resident of Mansion Park Apartments this year.  This quaint complex is nestled on the western end of the campus, far away from the .  I enjoy its quiet, lack of authority figures, and excess of storage space in the form of multiple closets (each apartment has 5) .  Unlike my time in Evergreen Hall, I don’t have to sign friends in or get approval from roommates to have them over.  Despite the relaxed lifestyle, I have couple of qualms with these apartments.

First off, the walls are coated in lead paint.  Mind you, its not dangerous unless I decide to have paint chips for dinner, but its still unsettling to know that potential blindness and death are six inches from where I sleep.  Couldn’t Rowan University at least try to make me feel safe in my own apartment, what with the muggings and the rape trail.  I think for $20,000 a year, I should be entitled to a lead free environment.  On the upside, my housing fee does garner me the same luxurious carpet as most other residence halls on campus. 

Second, for the third time this semester, the hot water within the apartment is out.  It started off in such a state, and maintenance has  “fixed it” twice.  Both times, the hot water has retreated like the French Army in the face of a German offensive.  My roommate intends to go to the Maintenance and speak to them face to face to inform them of the situation.  Hopefully, they do a little more than fiddle with the heater for all of two minutes.  But if it does break down again this time, I’m gonna call a spade a spade and blame it on gremlins.  Otherwise, we just have an underwhelming hot water heater.  I mean, with the fall approaching, the prospect of a cold shower does little to excite me. 

Well that’s enough ranting for tonight.  I’ll leave you with these amusing facts on a caffeine:

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/09/24/caffeine-facts/

I’ve seen people talk about Lonelygirl on t.v. a few times, and I think it is pretty smart that she was acting in these YouTube videos. She is so funny and unusual in these videos, and people did not realize that she was just acting when they first came out, and for a while. This girl obviously had a lot of time on her hands to make this series, but it is interesting to see that so many people watched her videos everyday. I have to give her credit because it is very creative to think of something that will give you a lot of publicity.
Not to change the subject, but my dad works with these two women in New York that had an idea for a t.v. show and they put it on the internet to try to get publicity. It is actually on YouTube, and they do get viewers for it. Personally, I do not see why people are attracted to it because I think they could have done a better job, but I’m very happy that it has so far been successful. The show is called Beautiful Stranger, and during it, they interview all sorts of different people from around the city and ask them their favorite stores, clothes, books, etc. Then, they put the website for each of the places that the person talks about on the screen so that people can go to it if they like the look of the person being interviewed. It was a very creative idea and my dad thought that it might be successful so he is doing the graphics for the women that thought of it. This is the main website for the show that they produced, .and this is the website for one of the YouTube videos of it . Maybe someone in this class would like it, and make my dad happy…

Each year in school, for as long as I can remember, we were always told not to plagiarize. We know that is not right to copy exactly what someone else wrote for our own benefit, but many people do it anyway. When I was in high school people would be caught plagiarizing all of the time and wound up getting a zero for the assignment. In college, it a much more serious issue, so most students know that they should not do it. In Rebecca Howard’s article, “Understanding Internet Plagiarism,” she discusses how more people are plagiarizing from the internet, and there is software that can be used to find out the source of where the person got the information from. “In today’s revolution, the Internet is described as the cause of a perceived increase in plagiarism, and plagiarism-detecting services are described as the best solution” (Rebecca Howard). I do agree with Howard when she says that these services are the best solution, but I do not think it’s necessary for every professor to check for plagiarism after every assigment. If grammar or vocabulary looks suspicious in a student’s assignment, then it’s understandable that they teacher should check.
One of my teachers in high school would use this service, and every single thing we wrote, no matter what it was, he would check to see if we were plagiarizing. Even if it was just an in class assignment where no sources were even possible to use. We just thought it was funny but pretty rediculous.
Howard also talks about internet sites where you can pay to have an essay written for you. These websites are so stupid because you do not know where they are getting their information from. Odds are, they are getting it from somwhere and could be plagiarizing. Students need to be able to write a paper and create their own ideas and arguments. The internet has not helped with plagiarism, and I can definitely agree with that. It is nice, however, to have a source right in front of us that has all the information we could ever need about any one topic. Just don’t copy it!