Digital Spaces

Digital Spaces
Welcome to the Digital Spaces presentation. Our presentation will have a special focus on the internet because all digital spaces are either hosted on the internet, connected to it, or are moving in that direction.

Group Members:
Jungsoo Moon
Ana Catarina Fonseca
Venla Linna
Ieva Suste
Ville Hoikkala

The schedule:

09:30: Video and introduction (Moon) 15 minutes
09:45: Crowdfunding and discussion about the available services (Catarina) 20-25 minutes
10:05: 15 minutes break
10:20: Videogames (Ieva) 15 minutes
10:35: Deepweb (Venla) 15-20 minutes
10:50: New media vs. old media group discussion (Ville) 20-25 minutes



Part 1: Intro (Moon)

Intro video - “My amazing 3 days in Finland”

What happened to Moon and his flat mates when internet was broken during 3 days?

Internet? World Wide Web?

Before we go on to the main issue, let’s define the concept of ‘Internet’ clearly .

• ARPANet was a computer-based transmission system for bomb-proof communication network for military use. And it became available for public use by mid-1970s and known as network for sharing academic research.

• The progress from APRANet to Internet happened after Protocols, TCP/IP, were created for transmitting and addressing digital packets of information.

• TCP/IP, primarily text-based, allowed for written communication and provided methods for addressing and moving these communications among multiple computers.

• World Wide Web (“web” for short) is that large software subset of the Internet dedicated to broadcasting HTML pages. The Web is viewed by using free software called web browsers. World Wide Web is based on HTTP.

• HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is the language which allows users to hyperlink to any other public web page. It allowed linking, branching and redirecting not only text but also image.

So, Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use this TCP/IP (although not all applications use TCP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web and the infrastructure to support email.


Part 2: Crowdfunding (Catarina)

The internet gives creators a public, the opportunity to share their work without the need of a middleman such as a publisher or a big corporation. Often, if the work is published within the right communities, it can become quite popular and gives it’s creator a total control over their projects, without being legally bound to a corporation that retains it’s intellectual property rights and dictates how the project should be run.

But if you want to take your project to a next level and mass produce it-- like producing several copies of a novel you have shared online, printing a volume of a webcomic, or even get funding to finish a game project-- you will need money, and often quite a lot. And that’s where crowdfunding comes to play.

Crowdfunding? How does it work?

There are different options for crowdfunding such as kickstarter, indiegogo and even razoo, but I’ll be addressing kickstarter and indiegogo mainly. To explain how these two sites work, and crowdfunding in general, I’ll use a concrete example.

I started a webcomic four years ago and I have been publishing a new page on the internet every week, sometimes more. So now I have enough material to make a full volume of the comic and already have a bunch of readers that have been following the story. I’d like to be able to print the first volume of the story and sell it, but that will cost quite a bit of money since I’ll require the services of a print house in order to print it in bulk, like for example 500 copies of it. So a good way to try and raise enough money for this is by using crowdfunding sites such as kickstarter or indiegogo. So how do these work?

You present your project to a public. Usually it’s a good idea to describe it the best you can, have already some sample material that people can experience, so they know exactly what they are funding. In my case the webcomic can be read online for free, so all the pages that will be included in the printed version are already available for reading online.

The project will have a funding goal, so in my case let’s imagine I need 5000€ to print volume 1, so this is my goal and how much money I will need to raise to be able to print my comic. But you have a determined amount of time to get this project funded and it’s usually about a month. Why is this important?

On sites like kickstarter, if your project isn’t fully funded within this allotted time period, then you will get no money at all, nothing. Even if, let’s say, your project is only 1€ away of being fully funded by the time your funding drive came to an end. So it’s important to reach as many people as possible, and as fast as possible. Indiegogo differs a bit from kickstarter here, since it has different funding options. In Indiegogo’s case you can collect all the money you’ve gathered, regardless if you reached funding goal or not. You can also keep the same fixed funding model of kickstarter where it’s “all or nothing”.

So I’m just donating my money?

Often, a lot of people confuse crowdfunding with donation drives, which is not the case at all. In fact it’s like a pre-order service with some special rewards, according to how much money you decide to give to the project.
People can fund the project by selecting a variety of different rewards, or the so called “pledges”. So in the case of my webcomic if you pay 5€ you usually will be getting a digital download of the product, and 25€ will get you a signed copy of the book, which is what I’m actually trying to get funded. There are other incentives to get people to fund more money, such as posters and other merchandise items, or even have a character named after you in a later scene of the book. That’s how it usually goes for comics, but there are other type of funding incentives according to the type of product that is being sold. Usually people can be quite creative and original with the pledges. The more money you put into the project, the greater the reward.

So in the end you will always be getting the product you are funding, with special rewards if you decide to pledge more money to it. You aren’t just donating your money as a pat in the back to the creator and wishing them the best, without getting anything in return for it.

Indiegogo or Kickstarter?

So how do you decide between Indiegogo or kickstarter? The choice is easy for us that live in Europe, since Kickstarter is only available to US. and U.K. residents, so our only option is Indiegogo. With kickstarter your project needs to be approved before it’s allowed to go live on their site, whereas at Indiegogo any kind of project is allowed in their site. Not having a gatekeeper is always great, but it also means that anything and everything can end up on the site.

Both sites will take a processing fee, but Indiegogo’s is lower than Kickstarter (5% for kickstarter vs 4% for Indiegogo). Like mentioned earlier, on kickstarter the project needs to be fully funded for the creator to be allowed to collect the funds, whereas in Indiegogo there is the option to collect the money regardless if it reached it’s funding goal or not, although you will have to pay a bigger processing fee to Indiegogo in this case (9%). If the project reaches it’s funding goal before the allotted time period is over, people can continue funding it and some projects have gone way past their initial goal.

Accountability issues

A webcomic called Sfeer Theory reached it’s funding goal only 24h after the campaign went live, so it still had 29 more days to go before it’s funding drive was over. Until then, people could still continue to pledge and fund the project, thus it raised a lot more money than it’s initial goal.

Another very popular case is that of Amanda Palmer, who got $1.2 million via Kickstarter to support her new album and tour. She set a new record for music funded projects on the site, since the average ask and receives 5,000 $, whereas Palmer asked for 100,000$ and received 12 times that. But now she's being asked to better explain what she's doing with all that money, and questions are being raised about kickstarter’s -- and crowdfunding in general -- accountability problems. Palmer's planned spending seemed extravagant—even impossible—especially in light of the fact that she was refusing to pay horn and strings players. Palmer's explanation of her finances was difficult to accurately fact-check.

Another example was of a campaign to fund 3d- printers where the funding goal was $25,000
but the amount received was $830,827.The IRS immediately smacked the creator with a $330,000 bill and now there’s very little money left to deliver the product to all the backers.

Yet another example is of the Pen Type A, which was a project by two designers in which they intended to produce a small run of sturdy, minimalist steel pens. They got an order for 6,000 pens when their initial goal was 60. Got a cease-and-desist letter of an alleged copyright owner that required legal counsel. Later the factory that was to manufacture the product did not have the possibility to meet the product specs, so they backed out of the deal and yet again more legal counsel. Later a new manufacturer also proved unsatisfactory and required further legal counsel. Now all the backers that pre-ordered the product will have to sit and wait, and hope the situation gets resolved.

Group Chat: Discussing crowdfunding

So this leads us to raise some questions about crowdfunding.

• Have you ever used the service to fund a project, and if so was it a positive experience?

• Have you ever considered using these services to fund your own project?

• The service is often seen with suspicion, especially since some projects were fully funded but could not deliver, for one reason or the other. Do you think that these cases will ruin the credibility of crowdfunding to the point of it not being a viable option for funding anymore?

• What is the correct way to use this service? Should the service be used to fund concepts, or as a final push to projects that are complete or almost completed? And what about creators whose projects went well beyond their funding goal, but production can’t meet the high demand? How can you prevent this from happening?

• Should the responsibility be solely of the sites and creators, or should individuals funding the projects use better scrutiny before funding projects?

Part 3: Social interaction in videogames (Ieva)

Video games have been continuously evolving and changing with the times since the golden age of arcades and first home consoles. Humans are social beings and with this need for social interaction games have been developed to provide communication between players first introducing co-op functionality and later with the discovery of internet implementing online networking within the games. This turn of events not only gave you the possibility to interact with your friends directly in the game but also opened new possibilities of meeting people from all around the world, establishing new friendships and providing cultural enrichment. With the introduction of online gaming players began establishing their own online communities, developing their own social networks inside and outside the game and providing support and knowledge to the members. These types of communities have been growing and changing over time becoming bigger and more complex. Nowadays you can see many of them existing not only in one game, but even extending over several different platforms to accommodate wider range of interests.

The benefits of online communities

With the rise of online communities people gained an ability to meet likeminded people who shared the same interests and opinions. It not only provided you with the opportunity to meet new people in your area but even across the globe by giving you the chance to see how people from different cultural and religious backgrounds viewed the world, interacted with each other and how their opinions differed on various topics due to different upbringing and culture. This type of interaction provided a vast enrichment by giving the members the possibility to discover a wide range of cultures and personality types. Being a part of an online community also provides you with support, not only regarding the game and the strategies used in it, but by members sharing their experiences of real life issues and providing advice and emotional support.

Genre development within gaming communities

Back in the day such genres as fantasy or science fiction were very little known and had small, specific local communities surrounding them. But by the time when games started to gain popularity around the globe the fantasy and science-fiction culture also grew and developed. New stories were introduced which soon were surrounded by huge fandoms, the most notable ones are the Final Fantasy series by Square Enix and Heroes of Might and Magic series by Ubisoft. Over time more titles were introduced and nowadays many more iconic fantasy and science-fiction games have reached “cult” status such as Assassin’s Creed series by Ubisoft and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim by Bestheda.

Culture clash between the old and new generations

One of the most notable problems in videogame industry is the culture clash between the generations. Most parents are opposed to their children playing videogames claiming that videogames cause the youth to become violent, antisocial and disturbs their development. But many aspects of games have been proven to be educational and beneficial, one of the most popular pop-culture jokes is that children learn English faster through playing videogames than through school. Also the lack of knowledge in older generation regarding how big the whole gaming industry is creates an even bigger gap between the generations. A good example is e-sports, while most parents would like their children to get “real jobs” instead of being professional gamers they don’t realize that most pro-gamers have higher annual salaries than lawyers and doctors.

    
Group discussion:

• Does violence in videogames distorts the player’s perception of reality and has it had any major impact on the youth?

Part 4: The untraceable Internet (Venla)

Question: What bad experiences have you had on the internet?

The internet creates a good forum for communication: strangers from every corner of the world can talk about their common interests and share their opinions with hundreds of people in a second. But as the internet keeps growing at a pace that is almost impossible to monitor, loophole after loophole appears in the security of information sharing. As younger generations grow more and more skillful in hacking and operating within the internet, old institutions like the law forces struggle to keep up with them. By being an easy, cheap forum for the normal law abiding citizen, the internet gives the same service for the nasty underground.

The internet allows us to communicate almost completely anonymously if we so choose, and this presents us another problem. Anonymous communities have the ability to do almost whatever they please, and can do so without having to suffer any consequences. A perfect example for this would be the “Jessie Slaughter” case from 2010, where a 11 year old girl - perhaps a rather silly one - made a Youtube video of herself acting a fool. This came to the attention of certain anonymous communities, who then started teasing her - this elicited a response from Jessie, which only made her situation worse. Within 5 minutes, the community had found out all of her accounts to every website she was on, her telephone number and address (and each family member’s), her social security number etc. They found her self-taken nude-photos, which were spread to her parent’s email and pretty much anyone the community wanted to share the picture with. They bombarded her home and accounts, ordering whatever they could think of to her address like (unpaid) pizza, cardboard boxes, anything. Once again, the girl responded with a teary video on Youtube (which became a popular meme) in which her father threatened to report all of them to the “cyberpolice”.

Was anyone ever prosecuted? No.

Deep web

Many people think that popular search engines like Google can provide you with almost all the information that the internet holds, but this is very far from the truth. In fact, the hidden side of the internet, the so called “invisible net” or more popularly known “deep web” is estimated to be around 500 times bigger than the surface net that we browse every day. The Guardian went as far as to say that we only browse around 0,03% of the internet. Deep web cannot be reached with normal search engines, but mostly by certain networks that lists all the websites that host content on the anonymous deep internet.  

Most of the content found on the deep web is bland and boring, but on this almost completely anonymous and untraceable space, the worst of the worst lurk. And this is what people go to find on the deep web, either because of warped curiosity or, god forbid, an actual reason or need for the service these sites offer. And what they offer is the most unimaginable, unethical and illegal content, often something you thought only existed in horror movies.

Deep web is divided into different levels depending on the severity of the content offered. It should be said that browsing the deep web is extremely unwise however curious an individual would be, because of the incriminating content that pops up whether you like it or not. No matter what you do, your journey within the deep web is going to be unsafe, be it because of viruses, worms, the police or the sick individuals who are looking to destroy you for fun.

The first levels are (on the deep web standard) relatively ok; there are websites for buying and selling drugs, weapons, prostitution, and also “mild” childpornography, banned videos and such. Beyond these levels the content transforms into the stuff of nightmares; recreational murder, human trafficking, terrorist organisations, hitmen for hire... Browsing even the first level is risky and requires a proxy, but the deeper you go the more you need to know about securing your computer and your anonymity, such as softwares like Tor (The Onion Router). Leaving your computer bare, with no protection, will either get you time in jail for child pornography (which the deep web is full of to the point that you cannot escape it) or much, much worse. Protection on especially the deeper levels is important to the point of having to manually block the screen of your webcam, so that if someone were to activate it from god knows where, they could not see your face.

Though it seems hard to believe, the deep web still has a benefit to it. Because of how incredibly difficult it is to trace people (if you’re doing it right), it has come in handy in situations where extreme secrecy is required. Activist, like in Syria and China for instance, can communicate without state security monitoring their activities, and thus are not arrested. Of course, the benefit of the deep web always depends on the point of view of the person crawling through it, but in most cases, the cons definitely outweigh the pros.


Part 5: Old Media vs. New Media - Debate (Ville)

Discussion with the class about the evolution of modern technology. Is the old media dying, being replaced or just evolving towards a better direction?
Bloggers becoming the new journalists. Can ebooks overthrow paper books? Does podcasts and streaming music have more appeal than traditional radio? Is the future of television connected with the internet?