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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Boys Without Prom Dates
I'm glad the internet has created a domain for those boys who have moved beyond Pokemon cards, but still lack the social interaction skills of real life. On the internet they are kings of their realm. When they see what the class posts about them, they come and defend themselves under the pretext that we have threatened their superiority, but really they're just excited that someone agrees that their kingdom has value. Okay, politeness has led me to use the ambiguous "they," but I respect Aldon. He is a computer nerd, a proud nerd whose contributions to class allowed us to explore questions and subjects we would have otherwise missed. Jason, however, dominated all conversation. When Colin asked why he came, he claimed, "I'm more engaging in person." I won't comment...
Jason was right when he said that Wikipedia is a game and that "You play someone who is smarter than you." He then contradicts himself when he states, "I'm in the real world, not in academia." He's not in the real world. He's playing 12 different roles while hacking with an internet site that doesn't even care he exists. Instead of spending all of this time and effort messing with someone else's product, perhaps he should try creating his own Wikipedia, though with a 1.7 GPA, does he have the skills?

1 Comments:

At 10:26 AM, Jason Scott said...

I'm sorry to hear that you consider appearing in person to be an act of petulant reaction; I saw the closeness of the class and the subject matter at hand to be a great opportunity. And I hopped in my car and took it.

Never, not once, did I interrupt someone, shout them down, or indicate that what I was saying was more pressing and important than them. This is why I record all my public speaking; I have a .WAV/MP3 file telling me how things went, not how fuzzy memory recalls it. I am very careful in discussions to leave room for others. Multiple times McEnroe asked for others to jump in, and only a handful did. I'd have gladly yielded the floor each time there was silence but the open question was something I had direct information about.

I AM more engaging in person; most anyone is, with few exceptions. Witness how your previous posting simply said the whole topic of Wikipedia bored you, but this posting at least got you interested/reactive enough to write something about it.

Your definition of "spending all his time" leaves something to be desired; besides my full-time job I am shooting two documentaries:

http://www.getlamp.com
http://www.arcadedocumentary.com

And run the many sites under the textfiles.com banner. Additionally, I spent four years previously on the BBS Documentary, which included 205 interviews of people, and release onto DVD. Heck, go ahead and read my Wikipedia entry. :) It certainly indicates I've done a bit else.

So yes, while I do enjoy riding the gossamer bannister of the infinite web, I've been known to hop into a car and go face to face with the world. You can, of course, do both. My 1.7 grade point average belies the fact that I was on the school newspaper, school humor magazine, acted and produced in several college plays, held a radio show, and ran games on the internet, back in 1988-1992. It's not all about grades.

And yes, I didn't have a prom date; I told my girlfriend I thought proms were stupid, and took her to see Cats on Broadway instead.

 

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