What is a spime?

Bruce Sterling coined the term "spime," which is an object that can constantly be kept track of. An example of such would be a car with a GPS. A working GPS constantly shows the driver the position of the car on a map. The GPS is connected to a network of some sort, that means someone has the potential to locate the car remotely.

Anything that can be located remotely is a spime. Spimes are becoming very common today because of the advancement of the internet. Any kind of device, be it a desktop computer or a cell phone, being connected to the internet is not uncommon.

A professional Baseball team can even be considered a spime. (Such as the New York Yankees.) During the baseball season, the press constantly follows the team around to give the public updates on how the players are performing and where they're going to travel to next. All of this information can be accessed remotely on the internet on the computer or even on a cell phone. It's a strange concept, but through the internet, almost anything can be a spime.

Usability mistakes

Facebook.com doesn't have a bad layout, it's very easy to use once you know what you're doing. But for someone new to Facebook, it can be very confusing. One thing Facebook does wrong is that it constantly changes its layout. As soon as people have gotten used to the new layout, the web designers feel like it's a good idea to change it again. Maybe by moving the location of the "logout" button or putting videos and photos on the same page. At first the designers might think that the changes make the website easier to use, but that's probably only because they are the ones who came up with these ideas. Whenever the layout changes, nobody knows where everything is. It's one of those websites where, unless you've been on Facebook for a while, you're not going to understand what everything means.

There are advertisements on the right side of the screen that are often false, or just plain strange; and on the right side of the screen you'll see applications, pages and groups. Facebook, as of late, has blurred the line between group pages, and regular pages. Those two types of pages pretty much do the same thing. Anyone a part of a group gets the group status updates, and anyone who liked a page will get the page's status updates. Having two types of pages that do the same thing is confusing because there can be a group for a certain topic, and a page for that same topic and people will just join both. That's a very pointless feature.

Overall, Facebook's biggest flaw in it's usability is how its navigation is constantly changed.

Cyberdrama

A video game called "Shadow of the Colossus" is an excellent example of cyberdrama. The game does an excellent job telling a dramatic story with minimal dialogue. The game tells a story of a boy who wants to bring a girl back to life, and in order to do so, he must defeat 16 giant monsters called the "Colossi."

The player has very little influence on what happens in the story, the player is limited by the creators of the game. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because this way the story doesn't have branching story-lines, this way the developers were able to concentrate on telling one compelling, interesting and immersive story-line.

Even though the player has no influence on how the story ends, the game does a fantastic job of making the player feel like they did, or at least had the opportunity to change the ending. The game gives the player the illusion of agency. (Having an impact on the world.) During the last scene of the game, there will be a few moments in which you're given control of the main character, but no matter what you do, the outcome will always be the same. Because you're given the illusion of having a window of opportunity, but then forced to miss that window, you feel like you're a part of the story because it makes you feel like you actually messed up. This makes the player feel like their a part of the game by making them feel like they could've changed the ending.

The six qualitative elements of structure

Persona 4, a video game for the Playstation 2, is a lot like an interactive drama. It's got the six qualitative elements of structure in drama, and while playing this game, the user uses or alters all six of them.

Action: When playing this game, no actions will happen unless the player does something. It is "collaboratively created between the system and the user." The user presses buttons to make what he/she wants to happen, happen on the screen. The user tells the game what actions he or she wants, which is an action in itself, the game then preforms these actions.

Character: There are pre-defined characters in the game that you meet up with, but you define your own character the way you want to. The game even allows you to have an impact on how other characters change.

Thought: The user does a lot of thinking in this game. There are many choices he/she can make, so they think a lot about how they want the story of the game to unfold. Because the player is playing the role of the main character, the main character is communicating the player's thoughts to the characters in the game.

Language: When given several responses to choose from when interacting with characters, the user is allowed to choose the connotation in which to respond. If it's someone you don't like, then you might choose a rude response. This is how the user has control over language.

Melody: Based the choices the user makes, different things can be heard throughout the game. Such as different songs or different dialogue.

Spectacle: Based on the choices the user makes, different things can be seen through the game. Such as different friends or different enemies.