Dongwon Kim

From Hst250
Jump to: navigation, search

Wiki Article #1: Micropolis, or SimCity

Simulating Detroit – A City with Cars and Crime but No Races By Mark Sample[1]

Micropolis, or SimCity

Micropolis, or more popularly known as SimCity, was designed by game designer Will Wright. The first version of SimCity was developed for the Commodore 64 in 1985; it was inspired by the game ‘Raid on Bungeling Bay’ which contained an interesting feature that users can create their own maps. Micropolis pursued and operated slightly different than normal computer games developed in that era. There were no winners or losers, but whole purpose of the game was creating its own cities and surrounding environments (residential, commercial, industry, transportation etc) based on given map with some extra scenarios that users had to overcome (SimCity).

Initially, game publishers did not expect much from this game because of unattractive contents of the program. However, after four years of consecutive developments, Maxis, program distributor, signed a contract with developers that caused major release throughout two operating platforms Amiga, and Macintosh and led huge success in 1989 (SimCity).

Author’s Main Argument

An article, ‘Simulating Detroit - A city with Cars and Crime but No Races’ by Mark Sample, made a critical point that effectively connected with a game Micropolis, or SimCity. He focused his critical points to Detroit, where most popularly recognized as a motor-city, and an industry engine of the United States, an automobile capital of the world at once. Detroit was depicted as a city that never stops running its engines and always kept alive with full of energy. However, massive influx of foreign-made cars quickly turned Detroit down-side curves with huge recessions, unemployment followed by social uprisings and crimes. Mark effectively made connecting point with a game Micropolis, or SimCity, that contains one of the featured scenarios that users had to manage and overcome given natural disasters, accidents, crimes and social uprisings in selected cities around the world (Sample).

A mission of Detroit that was given to users in the game was to reduce crime and rebuild automobile industry base of the city. According to the Detroit mission, Mark presented his major argument that SimCity critically missed one of the most important aspects of Detroit down-turn in 1970’s, racial issue. He noted that “all simulations reduce complexity, stripping away factors and variables to reveal a core system that is constrained by computational, historical, and ideological limitations. That’s what simulations do.” Even though it is solely entertained based program for users’ interests, Mark profoundly portrayed his argument at the end of his article that it is important to distinguish simulated environment with lack of information and a real-life with historical facts that we keep in mind (Sample).

Importance

Mark pointed out in his article that SimCity critically lost to present one of the most important key factors of Detroit recession during the period of foreign-investments, automobiles influx in the United States in the 1970s. The YouTube link in his article, which was Chrysler’s Superbowl commercial about rebuilding America and Detroit introduced by Clint Eastwood, gave huge impacts to viewers. Clint Eastwood, who recognized him as a reliable, respected, and highly-careered individual in the movie industry, effectively presented Detroit’s hardships and historical facts that made even worse situation. He eventually gives strengths and boosts to Detroit, automotive industry and America that we can do it again and regenerate the power of America. Personally, even though I am not an American citizen, I was touched and impressed by the intention of commercial and influences delivered to me.

Comments and Personal Opinion

Mark’s article made intriguing comments generated by few critical readers. Comments were mostly supporting Mark’s argument about race in the simulation game and the importance of adding historical, political facts into the game plots. Comments were focused on how author or game program is going to implement the topic of race and how program developers are attract potential users to play the games with historical facts that somehow perceived sensitive and provocative. I also agree with Mark’s argument of omitting racial topics in Micropolis, or SimCity. Although I only played later version of SimCity that was released in the early 2000s, I also could not find detailed characteristics of featured scenarios that was simply described as social riots or demonstrations. I understand that it could be complex and controversial to put race issues in the contents of game, however, it is crucial to understand that historical facts and educate users while they are entertaining. Perhaps, as Mark noted, we must remember, just because the game appears to be colorblind doesn’t mean we have to be.

Works Cited

Sample, Mark. " Simulating Detroit, A City with Cars and Crime but No Races | Play The Past." Play The Past | . http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2474 (accessed June 2, 2013).

"SimCity." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_(1989_video_game) (accessed June 2, 2013).


Wiki Article #2: ALPHABET SOUP: SOPA, PIPA, CISPA

A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP[2]

2011: The Year Anonymous Took on Cops, Dictators and Existential Dread[3]

Reddit Cofounder Calls on Google’s Larry Page to Oppose CISPA[4]

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act: CISPA explained[5]

Public Welfare or Public Watch?

As digital technology astonishingly develops and closely positions into our daily lives, there are growing number of concerns about a proliferation of on-line piracy act, violation of intellectual property, or even a disclosure of personal information exist or threat in current society. General public, social media, corporate and government organizations seek to generate tangible solutions against illegal and morally wrong actions in order to make safe, transparent, and enjoyable cyber environment. Despite gradual disagreement, recent policies and passed bills suggested, there are controversial and debatable arguments that created public discomfort mostly caused by the laws and regulations from the U.S. government officials and legislatures.

Anonymous, SOPA, and PIPA

Anonymous is a group of associated hacktivists, who aims and describes their collective hacking actions as loosely associated and decentralized command structure that operates the system without any hierarchical directions. It can be viewed as a virtual organization, which discourages cyber censorship and on-line protective bills generally conducted by the U.S. government. General perceptions of Anonymous vary. Some critiques evaluate the Anonymous as an on-line terrorist group who randomly attacks and make harmful damages to certain websites without any legitimate reasons. On the other hand, the Time, news magazine, selected Anonymous as the World’s 100 most influential people of the year, 2012. According to Quinn Norton’s post on Wired.com, Anonymous Foreign Policy campaign is assessed as one of the most critical actions in recent period. During the Arab Springs, Anonymous effectively and influentially performed its objectives to promote and encourage regime transitional movements against several Arab countries government. (Norton, 2012)

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a United States bill, introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith, it is designed to control or prevent illegal on-line piracy act and violation of all sources of intellectual property. Hence, if there are any forms of violation or illegal actions occurred towards on-line piracy or intellectual property, the U.S. government can effectively control, limit or block the usage of associated website. The most controversial part of this bill is legally authorized control or block of the website performed by government. Many social media groups and search engines, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, hugely condemned the content of bill and showed disagreements in terms of affectability of its bill. According to Jason Harvey’s post, ‘SOPA contain language that is highly ambiguous and extremely broad making them ripe for abuse, and introduce regulation and enforce censorship on what should be a free open internet.’ (Harvey, 2012)

PROTECT IP, PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) is a proposed law that would give strengths to US government and copyright holders to protect and maintain their own economic benefit and intellectual property against infringe groups, especially the groups based outside the United States. The bill was introduced in 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy and 11 other bipartisan co-sponsors. It is simply the Senate version of SOPA bill, introduced by the House of Representatives, have a lot of similarities in terms of regulations and its objectives. Like SOPA, PROTECT IP, PIPA also has been criticized by mass-social media and search engine groups for controlling the internet system and structures. In addition, this bill is also widely spread its influence to foreign nations and its legislative branch by justification and legitimization of sustaining the purpose of the bill. Because of the complexity and disagreements the bill is currently in hold position, announced by the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Anonymous and social movement

Public’s sense of intimacy towards virtual groups or social sharing communities clearly evidences the growing attention of social media. In the middle of the focus, there is a group of hacking professional group, who they refer themselves as a loosely associated network of hacktivists, vastly influence on-line and off-line communities all over the world. Anonymous acts under no certain leadership or hierarchical control. Since they oppose internet censorship and the usage limitation bills offered by the U.S. government, they mostly focus on encouraging social gathering and sharing opinions, which occasionally react as collective actions such as hacking and attacking target websites that promotes internet censorship and forceful controls. As mentioned above, Anonymous not only hacking with legitimate reasons, but also, they promote social transition or justified revolution within the virtual community that eventually lead to actual social movements as off-line outcomes; such as Arab Springs and the case of HBGary.

Edward Snowden and end-result lesson

Final reading posts are closely related to the current hot-topic. According to Wikipedia data, Edward Snowden, former National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, revealed the details of top-secret U.S-British government mass surveillance programs to the press. There are mutually shared ideas between the reading posts and the story of Edward Snowden. The reading posts critically analyzed the importance of preventing on-line piracy acts and violation of intellectual property inside or outside of the U.S. territories. The reading posts conclude its opinion that government internet control or censorship would eventually limit the rights of freedom of expression and speech. Similarly, Edward Snowden revealed the government’s top-secret surveillance programs with his rigid plans. Even though the U.S. government regards Snowden’s action as espionage charge and unconstitutional activity, Snowden did not change his mind of public’s rights to know privilege. According to the Guardian newspaper front page (excerpt from Wikipedia), he insisted “I can’t allow US government to destroy privacy and basic liberties.” (Wikipedia, 2013) In short, both of the government’s preventive policies and regulations and its counteractions by number of social groups and individuals pursue safe and reliable environment that we continuously have sustained. Perhaps, this final Wiki assignment was valuable time to recognize the group of social communities, such as Anonymous, and an individual like Edward Snowden, they showed significant efforts to encounter against government’s privacy and intellectual property policies.

Works Cited

"Anonymous (group)." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., 22 June 2013. Web. 26 June 2013. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)>.

"Edward Snowden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., 25 June 2013. Web. 26 June 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden>.

Harvey, Jason. "blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit: A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP." blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 June 2013. <http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html>.

Norton, Quinn. "2011: The Year Anonymous Took On Cops, Dictators and Existential Dread | Threat Level | Wired.com." wired.com . N.p., n.d. Web. 25 June 2013. <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/anonymous-dicators-existential-dread/all/1>.

Sottek, T.C. "The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act: CISPA explained | The Verge." The Verge. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 June 2013. <http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/27/2976718/cyber-intelligence-sharing-and-protection-act-cispa-hr-3523>.

Zetter, Kim. "Reddit Cofounder Calls on Google's Larry Page to Oppose CISPA | Threat Level | Wired.com." wired.com . N.p., 18 Apr. 2013. Web. 26 June 2013. <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/reddit-opposes-cispa/>.