Blog Post - Response to Bots and Self-Generating Texts

I found that this blog post was comprised of the topics of bots, text, creation, and generating because those are the top 4 most used words within the blog. This was interesting because the words bots and generating are in the title as well as most commonly used within the body of the text. When looking at the world snippet (below), I was not surprised to see the words bots, create, human, generating, and text in the biggest font and having the greatest connection with one another. If I had not written/read the blog post “Response to Bots and Self-Generating Texts,” I could still hypothesize what the genre of the text would be from the key words and phrases provided by the Voyant technology data-mining website.

    When I plugged in the top 4 most commonly used words from our blog into Google’s Ngram viewer, the results were not in strong correlation with one another. The words “text” and “create” follow the same linear pattern, with a slight upwards spike in the 1940s and a downward shift closer to the 2000s. The words text and create have a steep upwards slope in the 1980s-90s which is important to note because that was when the Internet was becoming a prevalent part in everyone’s lives. The word “bots” seems to have little to no data, while the word “generating” has very little to no data until the the 1900s with a small jump near the 1970s. With such little data, I cannot hypothesize much.

Blog Post - Response to E-Lit - 75 most common words

This post was a response to electronic literature, and we focused on a piece titled “Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge” by Dinty Moore. His name was the word used most commonly. This makes sense, as we frequently referenced his work. The most common words all make sense within the context of the post: moore, story, literature, electronic, plimpton, etc. 

When plugging the three most common terms into an Ngram viewer, I disregarded ‘Moore’ and ‘Plimpton’ as they are names and are unlikely to wield results. When using the words ‘story,’ ‘literature,’ and ‘electronic,’ the result was the following:

The word ‘story’ has always had fluctuating popularity. There is a correlation between a rise in the frequency of both ‘literature’ and electronic’ from around 1940 to 2000. During that time, there was a rise in the number of digital products being researched and made available, and before this time they were almost unheard of. ‘Literature’ has always had some popularity, and it is steadily increasing over time (with a few dips here and there). If the Ngram viewer could show up to this year, I would be curious to see if there was an even greater correlation between them because of the rise in popularity of electronic literature.

Serendip-o-matic Run of a CNN News Article

Rachel Heming - Original Work of E-Lit

The title of my original work of electronic literature is Impractical Magic, It is a "choose your own adventure" story made with Twine where you play as a wizard's apprentice making potions.

Devon Cuda Original Work of E-Lit

My Final Season is the title of my DH original work of E-Literature. This is a google maps essay that tells the story of my senior year of high school wrestling. It highlights the areas in Pennsylvania where I trained and had my biggest tournaments.

Hunter Rose Myers DH Media Project

The title of my DH Media project is DH Original Media Project with my name and 12:00 as the description. It is about my spring break excursions and includes my personal ideas and pictures.

Brenden Bowser -- Original Work of Electronic Literature

Synopsis: For my final piece, I decided to create a twitter bot based on fitness. My inspiration for the piece is Aziz Shavershian, an Australian YouTuber and bodybuilder who inspired thousands to begin their fitness career. As one of my most influential role models, Aziz a.k.a "Zyzz" created his "aesthetics revolution" through his love for bodily perfection, trance music, and a pursuit of happiness. Tragically, On 5 August 2011, while on holiday in Thailand, he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 22. I saw this twitter bot as a way to combine bot technology with an ever expanding twitter page created in memory of Zyzz.

https://twitter.com/Aesthetics_Bot1

Blog Post #6

This blog is a focused response to Kurweil, thoughts on the so-called singularity, virtual identities, artificial intelligence, and sentience.

Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and science fiction writer, who posited that accelerating technological change would inevitably lead to machine intelligence that would match and then surpass human intelligence. Coined the term “singularity” in 1993.

Technological Singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super-intelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.

“The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” is a non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil (2006). The book builds on the ideas introduced in Kurzweil’s previous books. He describes his law of accelerating returns which predicts an exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Once the singularity has been reached, Kurzweil writes that machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. Afterwards he predicts intelligence will radiate outward from the planet until it saturates the universe. Ray Kurzweil claims that AI will outstrip human capabilities by 2045.

Ray’s predictions are a byproduct of his understanding of the power of Moore’s Law, more specifically Ray’s “Law of Accelerating Returns” and of exponential technologies. These technologies follow an exponential growth curve based on the principle that the computing power that enables them doubles every two years. [Moore’s Law was coined by Gordon Moore, who was considered to be a pioneer of silicon valley (1965) that observed information technologies as following an exponential growth curve based on the principle that the computing power that enables them doubles every two years.] As humans, we are biased to think linearly. However, entrepreneurs think exponentially. Peter Diamandis talks about the 6D’s of exponential thinking in writing that most of us cannot see the things Ray sees because the initial growth stages of exponential; digitized technologies are deceptive. Before people know it, they are disruptive—for example, the massive companies that have been disrupted by technological advances in AI, virtual reality, robotics, internet technology, mobile phones, OCR, translation software, and voice control technology. Each of these technologies de-materialized, demonetized, and democratized access to services and products that used to be linear and non-scalable. Now, these technologies power multi-billion dollar companies and affect billions of lives.
John Markoff wrote “When is the Singularity? Probably Not in Your Lifetime.” He writes that the idea of singularity is a misconception. He thinks that computers will not outstrip human capabilities within many of our lifetimes, and that humans won’t be obsolete for a long time, if ever.

Blog Post #5

Wikipedia defines literature as works which are considered of superior or lasting artistic merit; it defines art as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination. Video games embody all of these characteristics, thus making them both forms of literature and art. Many scholars argue over the differences that distinguish video games as separate media forms, but various real-life applications have presented their evidence otherwise. However, the term "video games" is very broad, so one could look at how different video games cover different questions we have about our interactions with these games. Video games over the years have changed exponentially, from the classic arcade games such as Pong and Pacman, to the current ultra-realistic, and even virtual reality games we play today. What started as a joystick and button has been revolutionized into an all immersive, in-game experience where we are now able to change into a virtual body.

Different game studies have been completed and experimented with in order to further understand the culture and logic behind video games. This research employs study through the social sciences, industry and engineering, and the humanities. Areas such as the players in the games, the design of the games, and the role games play in society are each examined in order to better comprehend how video games affect people.






One of the most controversial questions raised about video games is the effect they have on behavior, and more specifically, anger and aggression. For years, video game cynics often blamed certain video games for certain acts of violence. The real question that should be asked is why people relate video game violence with real-world violence in the first place. Games such as Call of Duty and other first person shooters that people often associate with violence, only produce spontaneous violence, lasting usually around 15 seconds (normally directed towards the noob who shot you). So if video games don't attack our daily emotions, then what effects do they have on us?

Furthermore, an article written by Drew Guarini titled, "9 Ways Video Games Can Actually Be Good For You" outlines specific examples of video games which have had a positive impact on people. For example, expert action gamers who play "Call of Duty" have a higher contrast sensitivity function, which allows them to notice subtle changes in the brightness of an image. This is applicable to those who drive at night because they can pick out bright patches of light much easier. The ability to apply video games into the real world is one of the biggest developments that is changing the way we understand and appreciate video games.