...that is the question

TO BE
to blog post
to twitter
to update facebook status
to post a youtube video
to put up a picasa album
to yelp a bizznass
to review this seller
to review that product
to C-list missed connections (or casual encounters ;)
to send spam
to extend information tendrils into your environment

or NOT TO BE
to watch tv
to listen to radio
to read the paper
to sit on the sidewalk and watch the world go by

Raratan's projects (still does not include crack)

I just decided to link to Mediaman Raratan from my wedding blog, so perhaps I should post something new here. The Mediaman Raratan blog is vaguely focused on things that are directly or indirectly related to my research interests. Taking a step back, I'd like to list all of the many projects that are currently piled-high upon my plate:

Everquest 2 Projects: various projects (I'm involved in at least 3) that draw from a large dataset on EQ2 and examine relevant theories (e.g., Flow, Social Capital, Economics). This is why I've been playing EQ2. I'm at level 27 now!!

SIDE effects of Being a Gaymer: Surveys of gay and straight gamers about their gaming habits, feelings of community (online and offline) and self-reported willingness to stand up against homophobia while gaming - analysis based on SIDE theory.

Male Bodies in Video Games Project: a comparison of body dimensions between male video game characters and a military sample of men from 1988.

Communication and Psychophysiology - Class project: Putting together a brief survey of Communication research that has utilized psychophysiological methods.

Taxonomy of Media Use: Analysis of 10 years of Communication journals to create a taxonomy of media use. This paper is 100+ pages and I've been struggling with it for quite awhile now. Too long to be a paper, too short for a book.

VHIL Second Life study: The VHIL lab at Stanford is conducting a ground-breaking research project on Second Life (among others). I can't describe it in detail here, but I helped them construct a Self-Presence scale for the study and I will be contributing to some of the data analysis.

Self-Presence and Racial Discrimination in Wii Avatars (Miis): My friends and colleagues at the University of Bern (Switzerland) are designing a study on the topics described in the title. I am helping with SP scale and will hopefully replicate the study in California.

Book Chapter on Classifying Serious Games - just finished, expecting publication within the year.

The Effect of Voice Agent Choice on Users’ Experiences in Business and Entertainment VUI Contexts: Presenting this paper at the International Communication Association conference in Montreal in May, 2008.

Quals: I'm planning to take my qualifying exams either at the end of 2008 or early 2009. Next task: assemble a 100+ item reading list.

Dissertation: Currently, I'm planning to do something related to Self-Presence in virtual worlds and online games. I would also like to find some way of relating this project to social network analysis and psychophysiology. Any ideas?

Website development: Turning my advisor's webpage into a research portal that would be accessible and informative for academics as well as *normal* people.

UpCode USA: This company is doing very cool things with 2D barcode technology. I'm helping out with a bit with their research and marketing. They're calling me their "Media Psychology and Research Specialist", or something like that.

Last and certainly not least (stressful): Wedding Planning!!

I told you my plate was piled high. ...I feel like a greedy (and probably rotund) kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Perhaps one day when I'm more accustomed to eating at nicer restaurants with large plates and small, artistically-arranged portions, I'll look back at this time and chuckle. Or perhaps I'll be twice as busy - squeezing two plates onto my little tray and piling them up like twin towers. Either way, if you have any ideas on how I can increase the rate at which I shove copious forkfuls into my face - or you would like me to slide a bit from my to your plate - please don't hesitate to holla.

Good thing I'm not studying crack

My most recent research project is focused on the MMORPG Everquest 2, hence I have begun playing the game. If I'm going analyze data from the game, I should know the game well. This seems to be a fairly standard practice for most scientific endeavors. However, I realized yesterday that if I really want to understand the players of the game, I need to experience it as real players do. Unfortunately, according to some research and popular press, many of these real players are addicted to playing. So, I have made a conscious decision become addicted to Everquest 2.

I told my fiancee about this decision and she understood my motivation, but seemed a little concerned about my ability to cut myself off at the end of the research project. She is certainly justified in her concern. As an undergrad, I would often come home from a night of partying and play Counterstrike until the sunrise. Scratch that. Sometimes I would skip a night of partying to stay home and play Counterstrike until the sunrise. Luckily, as an undergrad I could afford to sleep through half of my classes. I have a feeling that my professors these days would not be so forgiving. But perhaps they will understand that I am just very dedicated to my research. Fat chance.

The downward spiral has already begun. Last night after working on a paper I had planned to play EQ2 before I went to sleep. Unfortunately, after finishing my work I realized that EQ2 had 2 hours of updates to download. So, I hit the hay, woke up at 3am and played until 5am. Is that normal?

I proposed in a rap

This doesn't have much to do with media, besides that it was video-taped, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Watch my proposal here.

Playing on Virgin America

I recently had the pleasure of flying Virgin America between LA and SF. WOW!




Not only were the seats leather, the lights pink/purple, and the staff fashionably clad, but the media experience was AWESOME!!







I don't have much time to describe all the fun I had in detail, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

One interesting thing I'd like to point out is that they offered a game called "Mad Bomber".






My question: if I had started a chat room and asked the other passengers if they knew that I was the best Mad Bomber on the plane, would I be in jail right now?

Back to reality

I recently spent a couple great months in the virtual world called summer vacation. It was an amazingly realistic environment - the people, the places, the parties - all of it seemed to happen to me as if I was really there. Furthermore, the world was rendered in a way that kept me from feeling any stress or anxiety. Visit some friends here, go sight-seeing and museum hopping there, relax and watch movies anywhere - it was as if I was free of all worldly responsibilities.

BOOM!! I was transported out of that virtual world, dropped into the cold bathtub of reality, still wearing my tennis shorts and a goofy this-can't-be-happening smile.

Anyway, I haven't posted in awhile because, as you can guess, there were few opportunities in my blissful virtual world to enter the lesser, responsibility-ridden digital virtual worlds. The simple purpose of this post is to bring back a souvenir from the former - an artifact I came across during one of my leisurely moments, enjoying a science fiction podcast (on Escapepod - my favorite SciFi source) - my newest near-favorite quote:

"We love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist." Barbara Ehrenreich

We, of course, is our society, not me. I don't need TV to live in a world without TV *I profess unabashedly*. TV is a virtual world that I do not find to be so enriching, for various reasons. In my lovely summer world there was no TV. Actually, even in my reality there is no TV. That's not the point, though. The irony is that, according to Ehrenreich, all of us - the TV haters and lovers - in a way feel the same about TV.

I do, however, love SciFi podcasts. I feel like the short-story form complements the genre very well. There is enough space to get the new sciency idea out, but not too much room that it becomes muddled in a complicated plot. Further, consuming SciFi is kind of like research for me. It gives me ideas about technology and psychological approaches to media. And most of all, listening to podcasts is a great way to pass the time on a long drive. So, thanks EscapePod! You were a wonderful complement to my virtual summer world and you've given me something to keep me smiling through reality.

If anyone is interested in the particular story I was listening to, it was called Eight Episodes and it's a very well written tale about the power of virtual worlds. Stephen Eley, the podcast's daddy, reads the Ehrenreich quote at the end.

but she means nothing to me ...she's just an avatar

An interesting article from MSNBC, Is a virtual affair real-world infidelity?, takes up the issue of whether virtual infidelity is RL cheating. The story describes an affair between two female avatars who were most likely married men in RL. Is this cheating? If so, does it matter that it's a 3d virtual world (with sex animations) or would such an affair be similarly wrong if facilitated by another medium?

According to the MSNBC.com/iVillage Lust, Love and Loyalty survey, 53 percent of men and 73 percent of women think it's cheating to send a sexually flirtatious e-mail to a co-worker. Further, 57 percent of men and 77 percent of women think online talk or “Webcamming” is cheating. Unfortunately, the survey did not ask about SL sex.

The other day I was in SL asking random people their opinions on this matter. The majority said that such a relationship would be cheating, though some did say it would be okay as long as your RL partner knew about it and approved. Well, of course! Some people have "open" relationships in RL, don't they? The only difference is level physical engagement, right? One way to test this would be to compare people's opinions about RL infidelity and virtual infidelity. I would hypothesize that more people are down with the latter than the former and if you're down with the former you're more likely to be down with the latter. In this world of STDs and psychopaths, it's probably safer to spread your virtual seed anyway.

And on a completely different note, if the two married men weilding female avatars knew that the other was actually a man in RL, does that make them lesbians in SL and gay in RL?