Moms against MMORPGs

MMORPGs are a challenge to families with teenagers. When I was a teenager, Quest was just becoming popular. However, what I have found in my family was that my mom always rallied the family together for scripture study, and this helped us avoid MMORPGs. Weekly family home evenings prevented the kids from straying down those strange paths. It was the upright example of a father that was a model for the teenagers in the house to follow. All the boys served missions, too. I'm thinking my parents may have got lucky also (bad children happen to good parents).

My Imaginary Roommates

My roommates need to read "Tangled in the Web." In my kitchen, Pablo battles for his Castle Age guild; in the living room, Norman watches The Shawshank Redemption on his laptop; and in my room, Bryan enjoys his new Netflix membership alone. It's almost as if they do not exist half of the time. I cannot help but think that they might be going down the same road as the anonymous author did. When people spend more time on their computer than with others face-to-face, their social priorities get flipped backward. Even worse, their social skills may suffer. Although the anonymous author's social skills did not suffer, in the case of my roommates, it is quite likely.

My Response to Here Comes Everybody

Dead code fills the ditches of the black-diamond trail called social tools. In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky uses his knowledge of social situations to unfold how social tools function, when they work and when they do not, and what their consequences are. I was surprised to find that social tools often fail; they only work under incredibly tight constraints. Three constraints stick in my mind.

Constraint number one: social tools must support a sustained promise to the individual. For instance, when Linus Torvalds invented Linux, his promise was just right: the creation of a new and interesting operating system as a side project and a learning experience. Torvalds was not promising world cooperation, or a world changing operating system; if he did, his project would never have taken off.

Constraint number two: social tools must overcome the group paradox: there cannot be members without a group first forming, however, a group cannot form without members preexisting. Usually this means that a community must preexist for a social tool to become of any use. For instance, Wikipedia had a huge community precede it: anyone with internet access. On the other hand, the predecessor, Nupedia, did not; experts were few in number and unwilling to volunteer their time to make Nupedia a success. Unless a community exists, a new social tool is not going to create the needed infrastructure.

Constraint number three: there are practical limits to the connectivity of graphs of social interactions. Since the connections in a network grow by the square with the number of people, it becomes impossible to communicate with everybody. For instance, getting a group together to decide on a movie becomes exponentially harder to schedule with every person added the group because it is unlikely that a large number of people will have the same movie preference. The usual solution is to have someone step up and pick a movie. If there some people disagree, they can form a subgroup and watch their movie choice. The same physics constrain social networks. The graphs of large social networks end up looking densely connected at the small-group level, with fewer connections between groups. As a result, an entire social network can stay connected because of friend-of-a-friend networking.

From a practical point of view, Shirky's examples and abstractions make Here Comes Everybody a smart choice for anyone wanting to develop the next Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

Vlog on Music Copyrights

GNU Public License Music

What a novel idea: applying the openness of the Linux project to music (article). The knee-jerk reaction for musicians is to want strict copyrights over their music; however, copying music is not entirely hurtful because it creates word of mouth. When someone hears an artist's music, he or she is more likely to attend a live performance and buy a CD. Maybe one day, no one will purchase CDs at all, and musicians will earn money in new, inconceivable ways. Who knows? Maybe we will be listening to GPL music; it will be open source, freely available for all to alter and redistribute. It could happen.

Women in Computer Science

Having more women in computer science would be ideal. For one reason, there are tremendous opportunities for women in computer science. Technology is constantly changing and this provides for new business and research opportunities. It’s a respectable direction as well; not many women graduate with a degree in computer science, so having one gives a woman a unique advantage in the workplace. I am jealous of women with CS degrees. Women have told to appreciate being a man because I have it so easy, but against all moral judgment I am still envious of a woman with a CS degree.

Re: Earth-Smiting Curse

Malachi never learned how to use a computer. Perhaps embarrassment led him to omit technical details from his prophecy on family history and an earth-smiting curse. In his short prophecy, he does not mention the microfilm deep in Wasatch Mountains. He does not mention the internet on our desks and in our pockets. He does not mention the digital portal of Family History Library kiosks. Malachi was able to view temple work and genealogy work from a mountaintop, so our gadgets didn't amuse him. He realized that electronics are just a channel for the message.  Malachi only attributes importance to the work -- the turning of the heart; the sending of Elijah -- as the necessary steps in preventing an earth-smiting curse. Its amazing that today, so much of the work can be done via the internet.