One woman making waves in the ideas behind digital technology as we know them is Sherry Turkle. She graduated from Harvard with a dual degree in sociology and psychology. The following link is to an interview she did in which she touches on her description of the relationship bewteen materials and the self. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfvRA0zrL4 She is the current director of the MIT initiative on technology and self. If doing this doesn’t keep her busy enough, making appearances on Nightline, 20/20, and commentating for several big radio shows should.

     She is a postmodernist who argues that there is no difference between the self and the representations we make of ourselves in the digital world. “  This tendency can also be found in another idea, that simulation and “reality” will, one day, merge or become indistinguishable as a result of the progress of science and technology (Transparency).”

     She also has interesting ideas on the use of communication technologies. She argues that you have to create a culture where there is sacred space that the always on, always on you technology is off. A link to an interview where she discusses this topic follows.http://www.monitortalent.com/talent/Sherry_Turkle_video1.html She says that when someone sits through a meeting on their blackberry it is not a sign that the meeting is not compelling, but rather that there is a cultural expectation to be always connected (always on, always on you technolgy).

     All I can say is that I sincerely admire this woman. I aspire to be a psychologist myself, and had never considered how much the technology field is turning into a realm of philosophy, sociology, and psychology. If I am able to do half of the things with my life that she has done I will intensly fulfilled. Her ideas about the connection between the virtual space and meetspace, as well as those on the incessant need we have as a society to be in constant communication really make me think.

Sources:

   http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/sturkle/

http://www.transparencynow.com/turkle.htm

http://www.monitortalent.com/talent/Sherry-Turkle-Profile.html

I agree with Lessig and another student in our class that manufacturers are not responsible for crimes committed with their product. What would we have left in the world? Spray paint is used to deface public property, toilet paper as well. Just to play devils advocate though, who is responsible? Admittedly I know very little about p2p technology, or downloading music for that matter. I still live in the age of CD’s,  with my ipod containing the same music a friend downloaded on it 3 years ago. Maybe there would be a way with more security to make copyrighting less easy. Artists deserve to be paid for their work, and I do not agree with illegally obtained music or videos. I like to believe people are good, but for the purpose of portraying a different side of things let’s assume people are not “good.”

In this case, people will do everything for themselves. In general they don’t believe artists deserve to get paid, or may even resent the abundance of money that stars earn. The nature of these people would lead them to bend rules as much as possible, and break them when getting caught is unlikely. I may not be overly knowledgeable about downloading music, but I do know it is fairly easy to get it illegally with little risk of being prosecuted. So why not share some files here and there, give a friend some free tunes.

Going back to my lack of being a download consumer of any kind, CD’s can violate copyrights too. File sharing is not a new issue. Security techniques have improved slightly from the “not for commercial use” screen that used to appear in green(or was it black?)  before movies. Copyright infringement will be an issue no matter what widget is being used, and people will not change overnight. Punishing manufacturers for the misuse of their product will not help anyone. Even if this was a good motivator for them to increase security, people will continue to find free ways to be less than legal while sharing files. I strongly agree with the statement that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Something such as “p2p sharing devices don’t infringe upon copyrights, people do” just doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely.

I recently watched the movie Avatar, although probably much later than everyone else did. I cannot remember what the line was word for word, but Neytiri tells Jake Sully that all people are the same. If my memory is not failing me, she even says all white people. She was referring to their complete lack of grace and inability to “see.”  In this film it was the white people that were not willing to compromise or leave alone what wasn’t theirs. Instead, they ended up destroying everything that was beautiful and all-important to the Na’vi.  Avatar does support what Nakamura is saying about black people being a minority in films as well.

Please forgive and correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t remember any black people in the story at all. Nakamura said that if and when black people do appear in film, it is generally in the role of support staff. I think it is quite possible there were people of different ethnicities that I didn’t even notice in Avatar because they played such minor roles. Sexism was something brought up during the open fishbowl yesterday. Several people in the class seem to agree that women are always portrayed as nurturing characters , and this is true in Avatar as well. Neytiri is assigned to teach Sully to “see” by her mother. Her mother takes on the role of interpretor for their kind of deity. Here I digress from Nakamura, but I wanted to throw out there that I don’t believe having women in nurturing roles is sexist. Women can be in strong roles as well, look at Laura Croft.  At any rate, Avatar attempts and in my opinion succeeds at turning it back around on white people. This movie not only makes white people out to be environmental enemies and heartless, but all similar as well.

This bug goes through several transformations, and the reader sees it all through the little insect’s perspective. I have often pondered what life is like for my cat. Hopefully I won’t be checked into a mental hospital for explaining this. My cat is older, and rarely plays. She spends her days eating, sleeping, and to my dismay sometimes throwing up. She seems thoroughly disgruntled when I don’t tend to her attention needs at her every whim. Does she have the cognitive processes that Gibson describes the insect as having?

I think it is more likely that the author wanted us to look more deeply into how we think about and treat nature than how animals think. My ability to speak for other people is extremely limited, but I know I don’t always appreciate the world for what it is. When I was in a biology class last semester we learned about plants and cells. After that lecture, I walked outside and marveled at the complexity of every blade of grass, every insect calling it home, and every goose walking on it. Just like every organism is composed of individual cells that make up organs, organ systems, and the organism, every organism interacts.

Gibson writes about the interaction between the blue beetle and the bees. The flowers and bees are codependent. I think we can take this interaction and look back at ourselves. We interact with our environments, and with each other. We have just spent a copious amount of time discussing the definition of communities. One of the requirements agreed upon was that everyone contributes something. In the real world we help each other all of the time. People have been able to incorporate virtual communities into their lives to extend the groups they belong to, and join others. We have a lot to learn from people like Gibson, who take the time to observe the world as it is. I get so caught up in everyday life that I don’t enjoy the beauty of the world. One argument against becoming too involved in the virtual world would be a loss of connection to nature.

When I am on my computer or cell phone, I am not appreciating nature. Often I am sitting at the kitchen table, with nothing to stare at but the wall behind my screen. Gibson was ill as a child so he was only allowed to wander the garden for an hour every other day or so. In that hour he absorbed as much as possible, and collected samples to take back and study. In no way am I saying we should all become botanists or biologists, but taking a closer look every now and then might help us understand interaction, and how community can help us.

My position on this is one that is tricky. Immediately after reading this I was ready to agree entirely. In class I brought this up and it was agreed that we as humans want the best of both worlds.We need human touch, personal interaction to be content. With virtual communities constantly gaining popularity and communication at the touch of a button, it can be difficult for some to stay focused on the people you’re with. My stepmom recently made me aware of how annoying my texting is to her. She admits that this is probably because she does not text anyone, and does not understand why anyone would want to use a form of communication that she views as inefficient. My stepdad is horrible about it, and has no problem informing perfect strangers of how rude their texting is.

Not everyone, however, has this predicament. Many people can be absorbed into the virtual world when it is no inconvenience to anybody. The thought of being equally near and equally far to everything struck me, because I am beginning to understand that. I didn’t used to see why my texting was a problem. I do not do it during meals, or when I am interacting with my parents. It is likely that I will pull my phone out when both my parents are deeply absorbed into their Sudoku and crosswords. Now I am more conscious of it because I may not be talking to my parents, but I’m not really “with” them when I am talking to 3 relatives and my boyfriend on my phone, and 2 coworkers on FB at the same time. At Mcdonald’s, the person who takes your order is often times nowhere near the store you’re at. Technology has allowed us to have people in different countries all together take your order, and the joint you’re at will have the food ready by the time you get up to the second window.

Another item that struck me in this passage was, “For they offer whole new dimensions of mobility, and, at the same time, make detachment from the real world ever more efficient and systematic” (232). This was referencing new developments in virtual space. With the invention of itouches, smartphones, and more gadgets I am way too behind the times to know about, we have connection to the virtual world anywhere, anytime. It used to be that we had to go home to get on the web. I don’t subscribe to the services that would allow me to access it on my phone, but I could. We seem to be trying to become as efficient as possible, which leads to using nonhumans to do work sometimes. ATM’s have been around for a long time. Fast food places don’t even have to have people fill your sodas anymore. It is all done by a machine. I apologize, I digress. As for easy disengagement from the real world though, I am afraid of how close we probably are to some sort of inplants that connect to the web. Actually, knowing me, these are probably already in existence and I’m still in the ages when a game of pac man required a joy stick on an arcade game.

My opinion, however, is not that the virtual world is all bad. I think people can lose “reality” if you will, but to me these are people that need an escape. As we have been discussing for several weeks the web can provide an unequalled amount of information, create community, and recreation. The tools such as facebook and my cell have enabled me to stay in contact with my mom, brother, sister-in-law and friends. Therefore, it has in fact leveled the field so that my relations in places from Florida to Hawaii and in between are equally near now. I just know that I personally need to be careful not to take the people right in front of me for granted.

Another community I am party to is facebook. I add little to my group, mainly enjoying the ability to read about the daily events of my peers. I have met every person on my friends list in “real” life. This to me would make it seem more like a community that uses technology to further communication. To see my page you technically have to have been approved by me, which means I must know who you are and desire to increase communication. It sounds like most of you could get around that barrier though.

My grandma belongs to several stamping groups. She and the other members exchange cards through the mail, and keep in touch using chat rooms and email. These are communities. My grandma has no interaction with these people outside of the web and mail, but they get to know one another. They teach each other new techniques and all bring something to the table. The creator of the group has to accept you in order to be part of the community. In this case, you do not have to have approval of each member of the existing group to join. An interest in stamping is required, although no level of experience is specified.

I would say that under certain circumstances a “real life” community that is in part virtual could become a virtual community in itself. For me the line gets fuzzy here. A group of friends that texts to determine when they’re going to meet for pizza is not a virtual community, but rather a group that uses technology to simplify communication. If, however, this same group of friends met online to engage in some kind of activity this might change the nature of the organization. I say this because people can take on different identities on the web. Someone brought up during class discussion that a person is not truly part of a virtual community if they do not represent themselves as they do in person. I would argue that portraying a different side of yourself, or fiction all together could create community. According to Bakardjieva, “in all forms of virtual togetherness, unlike in the consumption mode, users produce something of value to others – content, space, relationship and/or culture” (cybercultures reader 239).

In the previous examples from my own life, the book, and class discussion, it seems that to be a true virtual community people must be able to bring something to the group. The community can provide different things for different people. The virtual realm and “real” world can overlap, as in the case of the woman in the essay who became incredibly close to ten people and even went to visit them. Another woman gained comfort and understanding from her online peers when she had a chronic disease. I would agree with the author of the second essay when she writes, “Thus virtual communities cannot be declared inferior to real-life communities simply because they lack face-to-face materiality” ( cybercultures reader 238).  I believe there is much to be gained from the involvement in virtual communities.

    There are two definitions which I feel are closely related to my own preconceived notions about cyberspace. The second definition hits very close to home. “accessed through any computer linked into the system; a place, one place limitless; entered equally from a basement in Vancouver, a boat in Port – au – Prince, a cab in New York, a garage in Texas city, an apartment in Rome, an office in Hong Kong, a bar in Kyoto, a café in Kinshasa, a laboratory on the moon.”  Instantly the iPhone came to mind. This device and its closely related counterparts can access the web anywhere there is wi-fi. That is probably a hugely limited view in itself, because most cell phones, mp3 players, even video game systems can access the web.

      The other definition that I believed to be true was the ninth one. “From simple economic survival through the establishment of security and legitimacy, from the trade in tokens of approval and confidence and liberty to the pursuit of influence, knowledge, and entertainment for their own sakes, everything informational and important to the life of individuals - and organizations – will be found for sale, or for the taking, in cyberspace.” Benedikt added after his definitions that these were not real, that did not exist. At that time perhaps that was the case, but I believe this definition to be extremely true. Even just taking these words at face value, without trying to interpret a deeper meaning, this is real. I do all of my banking online, as do my parents. In class we started discussing Facebook, and the money being gained by the lack of privacy. You can find everything online.

     Admittedly I had great difficulty understanding much of the rest of the article, but I still marvel at the accuracy of such predictions made about cyberspace. In class yesterday we started talking about all of the bad things that could happen, the implications if google went “evil.” This might just be the naïve 18-year-old in me, but I think it is important to remember all of the good that the web does for us. It helped reconnect my grandma with her siblings she was seperated from as a child, and theoretically we are saving trees with Universities requiring instructors to post their syllabi, and eliminating course catalogs. Overall, this article greatly increased my view of what cyberspace really is.

     I must say I feel that name suits me best. I try not to take life too seriously. During the summer I love to go wakeboarding, and spend as much time outside as possible. School is something I look forward to, with breaks always seeming too long. I have chosen psychology as my major, and plan to graduate at the end of fall semester next year. In my spare time I love to read, go to the gym, and spend time with my family. My dad goes to OSU online. I am really excited to have bragging rights over being the first in my immediate family to earn a bachelor’s degree.