Tut 4 - Realities of Cyberspace

Task 1 - Cyperspace and "realities"

According to Bosnick (2010), Cyberspace as a term suggests an existence of an intangible world that we cannot fully grasp or see its limits. The movie eXistenZ, which we saw in the lecture, was an obvious example of how human beings can get caught up in a world that appears to be so real, that it makes them question what “reality” truly is. Cyberspace and these real life games provides us with a dual-identity that gives us an opportunity to escape whatever problems or issues we may have in our own world and pursue another reality where we can be who and what we’ve always dreamed about. Personally, I think too many people use Cyberspace as a defence mechanism that saves them from confronting with whatever problems and issues they may have in their real lives. Hey – no one told us life was going to be easy!  
 

The article by Bosnick “Perception of the real in video games: the fear of waking up” raises an interesting question whether or not we will be able to distinguish what is real from what is unreal. Do the game designers create virtual worlds that complement us as social beings, and fulfill our need for human company or do the games simply make human beings more isolated and alone among millions of other bodies? After all, you do have to turn off the screen at some point, don’t you???

Have a look at this article: "Perception of the real in video games: the fear of waking up"
http://www.ieeetclt.org/issues/january2010/lt_january2010.pdf

Task 2 - Social Media and Terms of Service 

In this task we had to read the Terms of use and Privacy Policy of any social media. In my case Facebook. You know how when you sign up you tick a box "I have read and understood the terms and conditions" without actually reading it. This tutorial task gives us a chance to actually read it. That is scary ...



Have a little think about this:

• "For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."

You know, that actually means that they get the rights to use / abuse what ever you put up, and even though you delete it, they can still use it if the content has been shared with others!

• "When you publish content or information using the everyone setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture)."

Think about it! If you choose to share with everyone, you actually do share with everyone, including people off of Facebook. Think about it, how "private" are your private settings??

• "You will not use Facebook if you are under 13".

Really? Just have a quick check, how many friends do you have under the age of 13? (Should we start reporting kids under 13 to Facebook so they'll delete their profile?)

• "You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent".

Do you have photos of people that do not have a profile on Facebook, but still appear on there?

• "We believe that we can help transform existing advertising into messages that are tailored to the individual user based on how their friends interact and affiliate with the brands, music artists, and businesses they care about."

Well, when they put it like that, it seems like they are providing us with a service, how nice of them :)