Foursquare's competitive edge

One of the biggest things I noticed when I joined Foursquare has become even more pronounced: Foursquare is competitive.

When I joined Foursquare, the "Mayor" system, where a member is rewarded with the status of Mayor for being the person to check in the most at a particular venue, was the most obvious way the site encouraged competition, but since I've been there, the site has taken it up a notch.

The point system, implemented about a month ago, gives users points for their check-ins. As far as I can tell, one only gets points for the sake of getting points. The site also awards "badges" for checking in at certain types of venues, for example, but there has not yet been any indication that members will be receiving badges based on their points. So why do we get points?

Well...members are now encouraged to keep going -- check in everywhere you can! Check in at places you've never been and get more points! Check in somewhere your friends have never been and get extra points! Check in somewhere at least three times a week and get extra points!

Every time you get points for a check in, Foursquare reminds you how many points you got, tells you if you passed any friends in total points for the week, and encourages you to pass the friend you're closest to catching. All of this seems to really just be competition for the sake of competition.

My guess is that this must be Foursquare's way of trying to get its members to check in at every venue they visit. Some people, as I've mentioned in class, only check in to certain places that will create a "cool" Foursquare persona. Perhaps the site is using its new point system as a way to boost its stats, so to speak. If people are checking in more often, as my friends have been since the change, Foursquare will be able to boast about the amounts of check-ins that are taking place on the site.

Have any of you seen your sites using competition in this way?

I'm the kind of person who's always hated group projects...

As I tend to be pretty conscious of my grades, "aw, heck naw" was my knee-jerk reaction to the idea of crowdsourcing grades. I did my best, especially after reading Davidson's reply to her critics, to take her word at face value and not to scowl.

I must say, I think Davidson's argument has value. She has students be more responsible through the whole process of taking the course and makes them responsible to one another for the quality of their work. From this angle, I think crowdsourcing grading sounds like a relatively great way to do it.

As a student, though, I don't think I could help but object to crowdsourcing. I don't think I would choose a class if it said this would be going on in its description, and I think the idea of my peers grading my papers and other assignments would make me...angry.

If Dr. Davis gives me a really awful grade on a paper, I'm not going to be happy, but I wouldn't question that she's the authority on the subject. Like with group projects, though, if a peer seemed to have not done a satisfactory job and caused me to have a poor grade, I'd be angry. This class, with these specific people, after reading your blogs and interacting with you in class, I MIGHT be willing to participate in this with.

I think Davidson's argument presents a sort of utopian idea of what classes are like. All the students are suddenly motivated to work hard when they have the opportunity to run the show (at least a little). My fear is that this wouldn't be as much of a motivation for other students as it would be for me and that those students who work hard would be subjected to the group project nightmare - all semester.

S/R 3: eXistenZ

In the beginning, whether or not it’s really the beginning, of eXistenZ, a group of gamers is given the opportunity to test the newest creation of Allegra Geller, the gaming world’s best and most famous game designer. Before they get a chance, however, Allegra is attacked and shot by a realist, a person who wants to end the influence of gaming’s alternative reality. Ted Pikul, a marketing person for the gaming company, is sent away with Allegra and told that she is in great danger. When Allegra believes she is somewhat safe from the attacks of the realists, she brings up the trauma that her game pod, a fleshy object that we later learn is made with animal innards and synthetic DNA, must have gone through, and that she needs to check on the game by playing it. Allegra convinces Pikul to have a “port” inserted into his spinal cord (an enhancement she is shocked he didn’t have to begin with) so that they can play the game. After multiple complications with Pikul’s port, the two are finally able to play eXistenZ. Once in the game, Pikul is surprised to find that he feels he’s really there, like his body in the game is real. Allegra and Pikul work their way around, soon going into a game in the game. Pikul realizes that in the game he can’t tell what’s real and that he has no idea what’s going on with his real body. After pausing the game and finding that they seemed safe, Allegra convinces Pikul to return to the game. In the game, Allegra and Pikul find themselves realizing that they don’t know who their friends or enemies are, and both in the game and “out”, later on, they find themselves willing to kill people that they don’t truly know the motivations of. Finally, Pikul realizes that he is Allegra’s true assassin, but she is one step ahead of him, and she blows him up through a bomb she inserted in his game port. Suddenly, all the characters we recognize from the game are sitting in a semicircle, taking off headsets, and being told that the trial of a brand new game, tranCendenZ, is over. They’ve been in the game for twenty minutes, though it feels like days. In the final moments of the film, Ted Pikul and his somewhat timid girlfriend, Allegra Geller, shoot and kill the designer of tranCendenZ, using the wording of the original realist shooter, leaving the characters and the audience to wonder whether or not the game is still going.


Throughout the movie, the characters bring up the question of reality. Like in the Matrix, characters are given the choice between the game and reality, but in eXistenZ, the preferences and subconscious thoughts of the players create the world in which the game operates. As in the real world, those playing the game both bring their own thoughts to create the game and are changed and manipulated by the game itself. Pikul’s objection to the world of the game and its not giving him much free will leads Allegra to say “it’s like real life – just enough to make it interesting.” We have free will, Allegra the Designer would argue, but only so much as we’ve been given by our circumstances. This critique of life, by a woman who is intent on staying in a game that she created to mimic life, brings an audience to consider our own lives. It seems the game is both an imitation and a critique of the lives we lead. In a way, characters in the game are like people we deal with in our lives. We can at no point determine their true motives or know how their stories will cross with ours. We are at once a being that gets to make conscious choices and one that cannot decide for itself its next steps. We are constantly being shaped by the role we were given when entering the “game” and by the other players. When considering whether or not we have free will, many people determine that humans don’t have any. On the other hand, even people who believe that humans have free will would be remiss to ignore the fact that our position in society, the game character we’ve been given, has a huge impact on what we become, or even on what it is possible for us to become. The question of where our motivation comes from is a more complicated one, but it doesn’t take much a logical leap from here to see that the world we live in has a huge influence on what we desire. Reality, it seems, creates us and is in turn created by who we become.

eXistenZ: Too Real?

When, in a moment of uncertainty, Ted Pikul (Jude Law) tells Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that he feels like he's just stumbling around, unsure of the motivations of anyone else and not sure of even himself. After raising this as an objection to being in the game and saying that he can't believe anyone would really want to play a game like this, Allegra responds, "But it's a game everybody's already playing." This really hit me, because in a game like eXistenZ, or online where Case "jacked in", or when using AR technology or SNSs, we're "playing the game" the way we live our lives. In all these cases, the participants can't be completely sure of the motives of players we interact with. Our lives are so intertwined with the game and with the lives of the other players that our fate depends on them, even if we can never figure out whether they're trustworthy or how much they really know.

This comparison that Allegra makes is one that is well taken, whether or not our nervous systems are actually connected to the interface. In a way, me, the real me, the Jenna that people believe they know, is the one that can be found online on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Online, on these sites and others, I am the character, and my life outside the "game" could be forever affected by my actions online. I never thought of myself as actually "in" Banjo-Kazooie or Sarge's Heroes (yes, my video game knowledge is small and not too up-to-date), and I was never too invested in the characters. I got multiple chances at life, and if I decided to, I could reset the world and start over. eXistenZ seems so real because it offers players a chance to feel that their actions truly have some consequence. In eXistenZ, the game has become so real that Pikul and Allegra end up having a hard time deciding whether or not they're actually in the game, and the audience, it turns out, has been tricked into its own dilemma about whether or not the game is still going. In a way, Pikul makes a great point, whether you're in eXistenZ, "jacked in", or posting on Twitter. You need to be worried about your body, your real body, because it might be in danger.

Separation on the Internet: What does it mean?

When it comes to this idea of people separating themselves out voluntarily on the internet and its effects on the perfect democracy we may have hoped for, I'm going to have to take a position that opposes what the Stephanek reading and what many of my classmates said. Do I think people are just as separated online? Maybe. Do I think it's a bad thing? Not really. First, let me explain a bit. Since we read Jenkins, I couldn't help but keep in mind that while some sites provide a lot of "democracy", stratification happens there. "In" groups happen there. And the sites themselves tend to be based on the members having common interests (Survivor, etc). To me, this system seems to definitely be different than our daily "real" lives, but because we use our own identities (or at least part of them, through our interest in the subject), it isn't surprising to me that we see the same class and social stratification that we do in the real world. Online, what we do is every day more likely to be connected to us at some time in the future than ever before. Potential employers, graduate schools, and many other professional and personal resources could find what you've "done" online and link it to your future in the "real world". Because this is so, we're less likely to be pushed to engage in conversations online that we wouldn't want to answer for later, and we're less likely to step out of our comfort zones. Because I don't see employers and such putting an end to their checking our facebooks, twitters, etc, I don't see people doing much online (at least as themselves) that they wouldn't be able to quickly and easily explain offline.

How do you escape the grid?

Reading Benkoil's article on AR, or Augmented Reality, I couldn't help spending most of the article thinking one thing: "Wow, that's cool..." At the end of the article, though, Benkoil mentions the "'creepiness' factor" of the whole thing. He argues, as one who'd been reading the article might guess, that the technology should move forward anyway, as it is only in the early stages and is making a lot of progress. Part of what he said, though, struck me as odd. In the final line of the article, in his final plea for AR technology to move forward, Benkoil says, "But let's see how far the technology goes...then see what objections are raised to how the technology is being used." It seems that Benkoil wants to halt debate on the merits/downfalls of AR. This is where skeptical of the government, conspiracy theory me kicks in. In cases where I hear about new technology, I try to consider, especially lately, partly because of this class, what the technology does to my ability to "go off the grid" if I were to choose to do so. After reading this article, I've decided that this sort of technology, if used widely, would fundamentally alter my ability to "go off grid".

This technology, it seems, makes the "real world" part of the grid. With a very common tool, a cell phone with apps and a camera, one can turn the world, while walking down the street, into a digital one. For me, this sounds a little scary. Not because it's not cool to be able to go apartment hunting by walking down the street, because I think that's pretty awesome. However, the way a government (or a powerful company, Google, for example) could use the technology seems a little scary. As I've said in a previous post, I've gotten in the habit of telling (presumably just my friends, but also the technology behind Foursquare) where I am at all times. Could AR be linked to this technology? Point your phone at the Union and find out that me and twenty other people are sitting here at this very minute? It doesn't seem too farfetched to me. This henges on human action, though. I have to say where I am (or at least carry my GPS-enabled iPhone with me, if you want to further the conspiracy) in order for me to show up on the grid. The question, I guess, isn't whether all this could happen, but whether we'll let it. If that's true, Benkoil's idea that we should just wait and see what happens, without much discussion, sounds like one I wouldn't suggest.

S/R 2: William Gibson's Neuromancer

As we begin Neuromancer, we are immediately introduced to a world that is unlike our own. The story is set in Chiba and the color of the sky is defined by technology. The main character of the novel, Case, a rather young man, in his early 20s, is in an awful state. He uses drugs, alcohol, and any other remedy he can conceive of to attempt to forget the terrible thing that has happened to him – his nervous system has been damaged, seemingly beyond repair, and he can no longer “jack in” to the matrix, the cyberspace where he used to work as a hacker and to which he so desires to return. Suddenly, Molly and Armitage show up, Armitage offering Case a job. He needs a hacker, one who is desperate, both for money and for his life, and is willing to have Case’s nerves fixed, if only he’ll take the job. Case, being desperate to return to the matrix and to do what he loves, takes the job, and the story begins. As the book goes on, Case and Molly learn more about their mysterious employer, and are introduced to some AI, Artificial Intelligence, which they soon learn is really running the show. What they are working for, truly, is to bring Wintermute and Neuromancer together, both of them being very powerful AIs that were, conscientiously, separated from one another. In their quest to hack into ICE, similar to firewalls in the matrix, Molly and Case are confronted with many characters, each of them very different from our reality and more interesting when considering the human condition. 3Jane is a clone, Riviera is a sociopath, and Armitage, it turns out, is basically a shell of a man, built by a computer on the broken spirit of a soldier named Corto. In the end, Wintermute and Neuromancer are together, contacting AI from other galaxies, and Case, our antihero, goes on with his life, in a way that seems extremely normal after the whirlwind and game-changing job he has just been a part of.

Throughout Neuromancer, I could not help but compare my own dealings in cyberspace with “jacking in.” Though my neurons are not connecting me physically to any sort of matrix, I am no doubt connected, and the emotional reaction I would have to forgetting my phone at home or to being without internet service in part proves that, like Case was at the beginning of the novel, I’d probably be in a sort of desperate, miserable state if my version of jacking in was taken away. As far as being “in” the matrix is concerned, between my Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts, I could only be more “in” if I truly were. On my Facebook, one can find all my day-to-day ramblings, pictures of my friends, accounts of my interactions with others, and reminders of events I’ve attended and plan to attend. On Twitter, one could read about 2000 short entries chronicling my life, starting in April 2009. On my Foursquare account, one can see where I’ve been the past couple of months, and where my body that is not in the matrix is at most times during the day. Perhaps Gibson caught onto what we’d be like thirty years later. He seems to have a good sense of the sort of withdrawals that one can experience when we can’t “jack in”. On top of this, Case can get stuck in the matrix, his body forgotten, or he can live on as a saved consciousness. In a way, this idea of a saved consciousness or disembodied personality is like the way we interact on Facebook. Though our bodies are not in the matrix, a piece of us, a piece that is every day less likely to be truly deleted, is still online. We can even leave messages for friends who have passed away, and speak to them as if we expected them to respond. While we’re away, our friends can interact with our online identities, leaving messages for us to attend to the next time we “jack in”. None of us are truly disconnected anymore. We may not feel ourselves going into the matrix, but we are increasingly like Case and his obsession.