Compass

    Personal and professional ethics are easier with the gospel. When deciding what to consume or have in your home, just determine if it is virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy. If it isn't, then it won't help you. When dealing with your fellow man, make sure you are honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and you are doing good. If you aren't, change. In addition to these guidelines, we have the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost to help us know when a situation or choice is bad. We do, however, have to listen.

"Okay...just let me finish this quest"

   Balancing our lives is challenging, and it can even be difficult just to balance our forms of recreation. Variety is the spice of life, and doing one thing in excess is bland and unhealthy. When parents moderate the time their children spend on certain activities, they help their children discover the range of experiences this life has to offer. Children will learn the principle of moderation, and eventually be able to decide for themselves that it's time to put down the book and go play tag, or turn off the Wii and draw for a while. It is a good idea to make sure that if children play games online, that those games don't involve long matches or raids that cannot be paused or exited from without heavy social or ranking consequences. It is that kind of game mechanic that leads people to neglect chores and other commitments.

Violence, Games, and Parents

Everybody, Everybody!

    Clay Shirky opened my eyes to the deeply social nature of our species with his book, Here Comes Everybody. I had never thought about it before, but it makes a lot of other things make sense, like why people are so addicted to social media and social video games. We as humans have a deep-seated desire to collaborate and feel like we are valued contributors. This is why Electronic Arts can get away with releasing yet another iteration of SimCity---this one lets you build your city next to another user's city so you have to work together to avoid disasters. It is also why things like the Steam Workshop are so successful. People with specialized skills are willing to contribute their time and talents to improve their own experience, and that of the group. New tools are helping make more parts of our lives group experiences, and are helping us share the fruits of our individual improvements with our peers.

Techo-Church

    Regarding technology, Boyd K. Packer said, “The Lord has inspired men to invent these great tools. Now if we don’t use them to teach His gospel, Satan will use them to lead the people astray.” It is wonderful to see social media used to spread the gospel in a personal way that other media cannot achieve. It is helpful, however, to periodically assess how you use social media, and the amount of time you spend doing so. It is easy to spend two or three hours of your time online without noticing, only to look back and realize nothing you did during that time mattered. As great as media is, we do well to make sure we do not spend too much time entertaining ourselves when there is always work to be done.

Cathedral, Bazaar...or Both?

   Eric Reymond talks about two different methods of software development: Cathedral, and Bazaar. These two methods don't have to be as exclusive as Reymond seems to think. These days game developers are starting to release open beta versions of games earlier than before. Open beta testing usually means the public have freedom to play-test the game and report any bugs they find, or suggest improvements. This large amount of crowd-sourced testing does a great job at finding bugs, but what if the game's source code were included in the beta? Bugs could be fixed faster, and for free, but users might not buy the finished game if they already possess a near-working version. As far as users adding features, many games, especially newer games on Steam, already have ways for users to create additional content and integrate it into the game. The cathedral is in the bazaar, and the doors are opening.

Family Binary Search Tree

    I had to smile when I read about a 12-year-old girl who was apprehensive about family history because she didn't think she'd even be able to "work" the computer. It's safe to say that the average 12-year-old in America today feels at home on a computer, and this has boosted family history work. It's interesting to see how the Church's technology for family history has evolved with our culture. Specifically, FamilySearch.org has progressed through the last couple decades by assuming a much more social approach, mirroring the way our culture has made video games, job hunting, home videos (think YouTube), etc. more social. Now users of FamilySearch can correct and add to each other's work, and even request specific pieces of information. The whole project has become collaborative.