Bobby Miller
Writer Website
Scrutinizing Society
More is Less?: How Choice Overload Affects People, Businesses and Society
2,200 words
Our society often acts as if more choice is always better. Businesses try to lure in customers with a wide variety of products, colleges try to entice students with huge class lists and numerous amenities, and we ourselves often think we’re better off if we have plenty of activities to choose from.
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Copyright and Creativity: How a Legal Gray Zone Fosters Art
1,600 words
All art builds off other art to some extent. The greatest writers find their voice by reading the works of others, the greatest painters develop their skills by analyzing other paintings and so on. However, things become problematic when somebody flat-out copies another person’s work. It is for this reason that copyright laws exist, to protect the rights of intellectual property holders. Yet, the line between copying someone else’s work and building off of it to create your own is not always clear. In fact, there have been a number of cases where questionable dodging of copyright laws has brought us amazing works. Ranging from fan art to video games and more, playing around in the gray zone of copyright laws has helped producers reach their full potential.
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The Gamepocalypse: Everything You Do is a Game
1,900 words
You’re brushing your teeth with an electric toothbrush. But not just any old electric toothbrush: this one has a Wi-Fi sensor built into it. It can tell how long you brush every day, and then it uploads the data online for the whole world to see. You want to remain the Toothbrush Titan of your neighborhood, so you keep brushing to earn more points. The toothbrush company will reward you with discounts on toothbrushes and toothpaste because they want you using up those resources as often as possible.
Although this might sound like a crazy amount of attention to give to such a mundane task, game designer Jesse Schell believes that programs like this might be in place by 2015. According to him, advertisers and governments will want to turn everything into a game in order to motivate people to perform certain tasks. This comes from his own experience as a game designer and as a thinker in game technology.
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Are Americans Getting Greener?
The Facts on Recycling, Electric Vehicles and Solar Energy
1,600 words
Walk around in a typical store nowadays, and you’ll see plenty of products advertising that they were made using environmentally friendly materials. Drive around a typical neighborhood on garbage day, and you’ll see more recycling bins out than you did years ago. And I’ll bet that vehicle you’re driving around in guzzles less gas than ones from the past. Does this mean that we’ve successfully “gone green,” so we don’t have to worry about climate change or any of that stuff anymore?
Some Americans sure think so. According to a Gallup poll from March 2014, 34 percent of Americans only worry about the environment a little—or not at all. A whopping 51 percent said that climate change is not on their minds either.
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The Lonely World of Digital Communication
1,300 words
Many of us have Facebook profiles with hundreds of so-called “friends” on our lists. We have Twitter accounts devoted to following all sorts of people, from acquaintances to celebrities. And even more social media websites are garnering attention because, apparently, we can never have too many ways of connecting with one another. We shouldn’t forget our phones, either. As Business Insider points out, Experian Marketing Services found that “U.S. smartphone owners aged 18 to 24 send 2,022 texts per month on average—67 texts on a daily basis—and receive another 1,831.”
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Political Revolutions: Like Us on Facebook
1,300 words
For most people, Facebook and Twitter are ways to chat with friends and catch up on the latest news. Many people use the sites to procrastinate when they have something important to be doing! However, in some countries, these websites have saved lives and allowed political upheavals to occur. They allow for free communication that has challenged authoritarian governments, making some go so far as to say that the Internet is a tool for democracy.
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Qualified and Healthy: The Connection between Wellbeing and Employment
1,200 words
Ideally speaking, anyone who is willing to work hard should be employed. This lets them contribute to society while making money for them to spend on their own desires and needs. However, as the recent recession has made obvious, this isn’t always the case. Some people want to work, but they can’t find employment. Recent studies have shown that people with poor mental or even physical health are especially vulnerable to unemployment, which may make our society consider new ways to handle the unemployed segment of our population.
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