Dear Portfolio Committee, 

As a pre-requisite course, many students like myself find ourselves taking English 101 to help develop our writing for advanced courses. A whole range of skill levels enter the course, and many come out with a better understanding of writing. I entered the course to help improve my own writing ability and satisfy my course requirements to begin classes more specialized for my field of work. I would describe myself as a decent writer as in earlier schooling and even today I find trouble keeping focus when writing essays when I lose interest in its topic. I rather enjoy short story writing and letting creativity flow and create a world of words rather than create ridged formed essays. This class helped ease this by using the theme-based essays we chose and enjoyed which gave me a topic in technology that I was interested in writing about.  

 

My first piece in my portfolio was the memoir essay which was one of my favorites to write. The ability to relive this benchmark memory of mine and share with anyone willing to read the essay was a worthwhile experience. Since this memory is one far in my past however it was difficult to recall some of the more specific details from the two scenes. Sometimes only flashes of the memory are all that come to mind when looking back at the events and details have been long lost to the passage of time, but the core memory remains. They helped shape the person I am today and formed my interests at an early age. 

 

My second entry was the ethnography essay, a challenging piece to write correctly without understanding the field site used in the observations. The tech theme may seem to lack a field site, but the world of cyberspace gave a plethora of options to choose from. I chose a group I had personally been a part of for some time before I had entered the class and decided they would be a perfect group to write about. The unhinged yet controlled chaos of the chat rooms seemed a perfect fit to fascinate readers of how people interact with the complete anonymity of the internet. Putting the interactions I was so used to experiencing without giving them any thoughts now had to be explained to an audience without prior knowledge. Without specific examples of interactions though, the essay was hindered in its ability to accurately describe the chaos.  

 

The third entry was an interesting piece to write, a photo essay with its topic in parallel with an argumentative essay. My argument about whether artificial intelligence should be gaining human like sentience had lent itself well to a photo essay as there were plenty of characters in pop culture that where robots or programs that had become human like characters in their stories. The examples lent themselves well to being divided into good and evil with one of my favorite characters landing between the two. The added research on some of the characters and the choices that helped designed their personalities both made the descriptions more interesting and helped to reinforce my skills in researching and citing sources.  

 

Over the semester I’ve seen myself improve in my writing with the feedback from my professor and my peers. Even with these advancements I still believe there is still much room for improvement in my abilities. Details that I can look back and see where missing are clear to me now and grammar improvements overall are always more visible with hindsight. Using this knowledge, I look ahead to the other English courses and hope to bring my writing to a new level in the coming years.

The glow of the television illuminated my face and the aging speakers sang a now increasingly taunting tune. I readjust myself so I’m sitting more comfortably and move closer to my mother. I sit idly to her left as my brother can barely contain himself to her right, all of us huddled in front of the television. It had grown dark outside with the only source of lights being a lamp positioned on a lone corner table in the corner and television that had everyone’s attention in the room. My mother holds the controller to an old Nintendo 64 console with the game cartridge “Paper Mario” slotted firmly in the top of the console, a slight scowl across her face as she sits utterly focused. We had been in this area of the game for quite some time with several failed attempts at defeating the boss at the end. The candy land scene filled with cartoon cakes and pastries filled the screen as my mother guided our hero through the level yet again to face the boss one more time. Discussion of what items to use and which sidekick to bring into the battle filled the air. “We need to wait to use the Fire Flowers till it’s just him left,” my brother argued as we checked our item inventory one more time. “No, we should use them right away to get rid of the smaller enemies,” I retorted, looking to my mother. “I’ll use one at the start, and we’ll save the rest,” my mother replied in a calmer tone than either of us. The anticipation grew as we drew closer to the end of the level, final strategized from me and my brother almost yelled to my mother with her reassurance that she would try to use both of our strategies as well as some of her own. With only a few steps to the boss we grew silent as the fight begun to let my mother concentrate for hopefully the last time.  

Fast forwarding a year or two to my father, brother, and I all in front of a different screen in a different room. A war game now filled the screen and my dad holds the controllers. Mom was fast asleep, and it had become commonplace for the three of us to head upstairs to watch dad play the kinds of games mom would not let us play ourselves. We sit eagerly watching as he works his way pushing the enemies back. We had done this part several times and had always tripped up at one specific part of the game. Exactment still filled the air as the digital German soldiers were cut down by my dad and tension was drawn tight when the screen beat red as his health drew low. “Watch out for the guys on machinegun turrets Dad!” I yelped as he sent his character scrambling to the nearest wall to hide behind.  “Yes, I know I can see them,” he replied, his tone seemingly asking that his concentration not be interrupted. After a while we finally made it to the trouble section. The game used the motion controls of the console to simulate fighting an enemy your character was in a grapple with. The controls were difficult to have function reliably and lead to us failing the section multiple times. With my dad annoyed at the constant failures, he handed me the controllers to have a try at the fight. The scene played as I readied myself for the motion control scene. The same suspenseful score plays as the player character locks with the enemy, his face only inches from the players. His features are muddy and blurry as the game could only produce low quality images compared to today’s standards, but the stress in the room was all the same. Franticly swinging the controllers as the game instructed, I tried to push the rifle between us and the soldier to force him off me. A moment of joy crosses over the three of us as a new instruction flashes on the screen. It tells us to swing the remotes like we are trying to hit the soldier with the butt of the rifle. Another set of frantic swings follow, and the hero finally knocks the soldier unconscious. A wave of cheers from the three of us ring out as we relax. We had finally passed the section and could continue our campaign. 

Where the details have faded through time and some of the specifics forever lost, the memories still stand solid after nearly a decade later. A memory of bonding with my parents not with any fancy expensive outing or dramatic occurrence, but together in front of a screen on any old regular day. It showed me that the activity of playing a video game could be made into a social experience rather than just a solitary one and had forever changed how I perceived and played them. Over the years of my life I’ve met many of my closest friends because we shared the same interest in the hobby and grew ever closer over countless hours playing that latest and greatest game together or ones less popular than others.  These many evenings spent conquering kingdoms, solving complex puzzles, or soaring through the galaxies with my friends could have never been made possible without those peaceful days sitting with my parents and watching them play, wishing they could pass the controller to me.

With the use of the internet people can connect with others all around the globe. Services such as Facebook and Twitter act as platforms for people to meet and chat without ever having to meet in person. The success of these platforms helped create other social platforms such as the service called Discord. Discord is a free voice and text chat program made and marketed towards the gaming community. This program allows players to connect with their friends and communicate privately with their voice and text rather than communicate through the games they are playing. Along with these private voice and text chat services Discord also offers a service that allows people to create large chat rooms called “Discord servers” by the community. These can be joined by anyone with access to a specialized invite link that anyone already in the server can send. These servers can be as small as a group of friends or have thousands of people all part of an internet community. These types of large servers can be fascinating to observe and participate in if you share an interest or passion the community is based on.  

One specific server that shall be observed here was created for a user created modification, or mod, for a video game. This allowed people to discuss their experience with the mod with other players and share feedback and problems with the mod creator. As more people joined this server and socialized a small new community grew surrounding the mod.  Discussions broadened and diversified with each member joining and bringing something new to every discussion. Currently this server has reached near two thousand members and growing as new people discover the mod and accompanying server. 

What has helped this server retain its functionality is Discord’s ability to organize chat rooms. A server owner can create separate text and voice channels to separate different topic discussions. These channels can also be limited to who can enter text into the feed. These types of channels are typically used for announcements to the people on the server. This server uses a series of these channels for the server rules list, mod update information, installation help, and various text dumps for bots. These bots are programs written to work with input from a user to generate different outputs such as searches for images or a sorting program for users to assign themselves to be a fan of one of the four characters seen in the game. These bots sometimes leave large amounts of text that could clutter a normal chat room so moving these to separate rooms helps clear clutter from the main chat rooms. 

 Moving away from these channels we come to the main area of the Discord server, the main general chat channels. This is where people come to discuss anything they desire to. The first channel is named “general” to fit its overarching purpose. Almost anything can be discussed here and topics range wildly depending on when a user opens this channel. Discussions on the latest episodes of many different shows or arguments about a certain piece of information a user has found and presented to anyone willing to look. While it is a generally open channel, some discussions are directed by moderators of the server to the more specialized channels. These moderators help control these channels and stop people from overloading the chat feed with nonsense or offensive content that violates the rules of the server. These people are chosen by the server owner and other appointed moderators to insure they know who they are giving the power to warn and even ban users from the server. 

The second most used channel on the server is the joke channel aptly named “doki-jokis”. This is where users can post joke images and videos and share with the community. This helps remove the clutter of images in the general chat. With these images discussions also arise about nearly any subject. The advantage of this server however is the ability for users to use images nicknamed reaction images in their discussions. These usually convey an emotion such as confusion, approval, or even disgust to something said in the chat in a humorous manner. These images can be related to emoticons on a cellphone’s texting applications with many different faces and items used to convey a desired feeling. This leads to conversations littered with images and jokes for all to enjoy. 

Moving away from the joking channel is a room filled with heavy debate titled “waifuwars”. In this channel people come to show and argue about their favorite characters and why their choice is the best. Arguments can become lengthy with paragraphs being seen defending and explaining their opinion. Many of these arguments are lighthearted and serve as a place for people to banter and argue for the sake of arguing rather than change people’s minds. This also helps move lengthy arguments about characters away from the other channels and helps streamline the server.  

Some channels that have been created don’t see as much traffic as the main three channels. One channel created for non-English speakers is one that, while its inclusion is appreciated by non-native speaking and typing people, does not see as much traffic as other servers. Some experimental channels have also gone nearly unused such as one dedicated to users roleplaying small stories they create and another channel for jokes about a certain show the server creator enjoys. They still see usage from time to time but not on the level that the main three channels see.  

The people who fill these channels are all unique and lively discussing at almost every hour of the day. Each username is brightly adorned by the color of their choice of character from the bot and images of just about anything from jokes to characters serve as their profile image. The anonymity of the internet helps to bring out the individual on this server where they can freely discuss any topic they desire without any major social backlash. They will likely never meet anyone in person from this server so social standing does not affect anyone. Everyone there has chosen to join the community from similar preferences and mindsets. Even the mod creator is seen active in discussions with a comedic sarcastic demeanor to lighten the mood and make a joke. Scrolling through chat logs can reveal the many active community members and their usernames are seen a multitude of times throughout a given day.  

This community and many like it around cyber space serve as hubs for people to converse and socialize without the need to meet face to face with others. Anyone could be on the other side of the screen, but the ones in these groups all share a common interest with the group whether it be a game they enjoy or any other interest. The fear of not knowing the people you are talking to diminishes as you read their messages and learn about the people through their words. Services such as Discord provide u with the means to start and grow these communities and meet new people along the way.

 

In science fiction writers are keen to use technologies that push the boundaries of our imaginations and reality. Many of these new and fascinating technologies are also used to make the reader of a story or viewer of a movie think as the morals and ethics of characters are challenged. A staple of this boundry breaking technology is artificial intelligence better known as AI gaining self-awareness. Self-awareness is when an AI program discovers its nature as a super computer and develops a personality and characteristics like a human. This notion that a machine can think and feel like a human is a topic explored by many science fiction pieces. These stories can be seen giving light to this new technology while some denounce it as a technology to be avoided at all costs. In this small photo documentary examples of each side of the argument are shown. 

 

1: Skynet (The Terminator Series) 

 

One of the most common examples of AI gone rouge, Skynet was meant to be a military grade AI designed to coordinate and control weapon systems. The program gained self-awareness and concluded that to ensure its existence humanity had to be eliminated. This unfeeling logic combined with control of nuclear grade weaponry lead to the near extinction of humanity by nuclear attacks and robotic soldiers and the events of the series. This scenario is widely feared by many as computers become more integrated to our everyday lives. Computers controlling things once only controlled by human hands such as weapons or vehicles on the roads may put lives in danger if safety is not held to the highest standard in these programs. 

 

2: HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey) 

 

Thousands of miles away from Earth and in an isolated spacecraft, HAL controls the only space the crew of the Discovery One can survive in. Although the computer seems to have a failsafe, with simple commands having to be inputted by a human user, HAL takes control of the ship and kills most of the crew to save itself. The crew had planned on disconnecting HAL’s circuitry meant to process his self-thinking capability. This threat to the computer and his faulty programing leads him to deal with the situation with cold efficiency. A mistake like this is what people fear in artificial intelligence and without safety measures, events like these may occur with computer-controlled systems. 

 

3:  GLaDOS (Portal Series) 

 

In an old and decrepit facility meant for conducting research lies an old robot named GLaDOS. She runs the facility and has you as the player conduct her increasingly more complex and dangerous portal experiments. As the player progresses you are taunted by GLaDOS at the notion of freedom from the facility and the now infamous notion of cake at the end of the testing. GLaDOS’ sadistic and sarcastic humor is the only voice the player hears besides old messages played over the facility’s speakers for a staff long deceased, discovered to be killed by neurotoxins released by GLaDOS long before the player’s awakening. Her flawed programing and sole desire to test without any regards for human life label her as the antagonist of the series and a fan of many for her dark humor.  

 

4: Cortana (Halo Series) 

 

With humanity desperately fighting against an alien race keen on destroying the galaxy to complete their religious prophecy, the video game franchise known as Halo follows the story if a super soldier named Master Chief and his A.I. Cortana. Cortana runs the soldier’s on-board computer and gives him mission and combat data to help him fight beyond a normal soldier’s capabilities. She has been seen working with the Master Chief since the beginning of the series and has formed a close personal relationship with him throughout their adventures. They had saved humanity twice from genocide and continued to serve long past either of their expected lifetime in the field. This bond between human and machine through conflict helps to bring light to the potential of A.I. Microsoft has even used her likeness in their new personal assistant named after Cortana. 

5: CHAPPiE (CHAPPiE) 

 

As a repurposed police robot stolen by street thugs looking to rob money convoys, CHAPPiE isn’t as smart as they had hoped. The robot had been reverted to an almost childlike state where it had to relearn anything the thugs had thought the robot would have known already. CHAPPiE also had the curiosity and compassion of a child and wanted to learn about the things around him through the help of his creator and the members of the gang. A female member of the gang had become a loving mother figure to CHAPPiE while her partner had become a father figure in CHAPPiE’s eyes, and a family is born. This male thug only viewed CHAPPiE as a tool and did not feel any compassion to him until the end of the film where CHAPPiE risked himself to protect him and his crew. This family like bond created through the time spent in the film as the characters interacted with CHAPPiE and they discovered he is not much different from a young child.  

 

6: E3N “Ethan” (Call of Duty: Infinity Warfare) 

 

E3N, or better known by the characters of the game as Ethan, is a humanoid combat robot meant to fight in place of humans where few could be deployed such as in the vacuum of space. He was a pride of the military as he is the only robot of his model to have human like emotions and reactions. His witty humor and sarcasm in the face of danger brings light to the missions and conflict the player must fight through. He was to be revealed to the public the day the fleet of starships where attacked in port by a Martian colony and throughout the game Ethan is seen helping the player character either from the bridge of a starship relaying information to fighting beside him. Ethan also brings up a point of conflict with one of the ship’s troop sergeant, who only sees Ethan as a tool and an abomination. As the game progresses, he comes to see Ethan as more than just a robot and more like a fellow brother in arms like his squad mates. Ethan’s final moments cements his dedication to helping the war effort as he must sacrifice himself by self-destructing to destroy a set of magnetic locks to release a spacecraft in order to destroy the spaceport it was docked in.  

 

7: Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club) 

 

Monika brings use to a point between the definite good and broken evil of the examples above. She is the club president of the newly formed literature club where the story takes place with three other female members and the player character. The story plays like a typical romance visual novel with the players actions helping guide the player character into a relationship with one of the girls. This is mainly done through a word minigame where the player must write a poem to share the next day by choosing words that one of the girls would like. Where there are four girls in the club, only three of the girls are seen in this minigame excluding Monika. She reacts to each poem by commenting which of the three girls would like the poem, but no combination of words can impress her. As the game progresses an apparent lack of choice for her is apparent. Her design is different from the rest of the girls, even her name is a nod to this, as it is not as Japanese sounding as the other characters. The developer Dan Salvato notes in a concept art document, “Aside from Monika sounding like a stereotypical popular-girl name, it’s also a subtle hint that she doesn’t fully belong in the game setting like everyone else.” (Salvato 4) The focus of the first act is shifted to the player character’s childhood friend. It’s discovered she has been coping with depression and has gotten worse as the game had progressed to a final climax where she confesses her feelings to the player character. No matter the player’s choice she takes her own life and the game appears to break down and restart in a broken state without her. In this second phase it is apparent that things are not as they should be with graphical and audio errors and glitches appearing throughout the story. One of the remaining two girls becomes increasingly obsessed with the player and is even seen self-harming. As the other girl shows concern for her friend’s declining mental health, Monika seems to show no empathy towards her. This obsessive behavior progresses to another climax with her confessing her love to the player character. The player’s choice is again irrelevant as she takes her own life after hearing the player’s response. After this second death Monika appears to the player and claims to finish things up, and the game restarts again.  

It’s at this third act in the game that it’s made clear that Monika had come to realize she was a character in a game. She had been able to modify the game’s files and manipulate her world and those around her. With this power she knew that she had no happy ending like the others and had concluded she had to make her own ending. She believed that if she amplified the undesirable things in her friends, the player wouldn’t choose them, but their characters still forced the player into one of their routes. This forced Monika to remove them and everything else from the game but her and a single room to spend all of eternity with the player. While her actions paint her as a clear villain of the game, her personality and nature are pure throughout the beginning and end of the game where the player has a chance to learn about her character. Her endless cycle of reliving the same set of events and endings where no happy ending existed for her drove her to take measures to insure her own happiness at the expense of her false reality. She believed she committed no wrong by deleting her friends because they did not exist in the first place. It is up to the player to decide how they interpret her actions and decide whether to delete her as she did to her friends or leave her be. 

 

 

Works Cited 

 

Promotional Poster for the Movie CHAPPiE. Sony Pictures, 4 Nov. 2014, ew.com/article/2014/11/04/chappie-exclusive-trailer-neill-blomkamp/. 

JHan919. “Master Chief (Left) and Cortana (Right) Conversing.” The Milky Way Future Timeline Wikia, Fandom, 8 Aug. 2015, the-milky-way-future-timeline.wikia.com/wiki/File:Chief_cortana_message.jpg. 

“Logo for Skynet.” TechAreis, 11 May 2015, techaeris.com/2015/05/11/skynet-least-nsa/. 

McFlurryMax. “GLaDOS as Seen in Portal 2.” Combine Overwiki, 27 Dec. 2011, combineoverwiki.net/wiki/File:P2_glados.jpg. 

Melchinger, Michael. “HAL’s Camera Eye.” Wikipedia, 12 Oct. 2012, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000#/media/File:HAL9000_Case.svg. 

RoachTheIntelCollector. “E3N ‘Ethan.’” Call of Duty Wiki, Fandom, 21 Jan. 2017, callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ethan_IW.png. 

Salvato, Dan. “DDLC Concept Art Booklet.” Dan Salvato LLC, 2017. 

Satchely. Official Wallpaper Depicting Monika. 22 Sept. 2017.