Menu-Driven Identity Workshop Response

1. Which categories are available for users to choose from when signing up for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or in order to use the Second Life gameworld? What presumptions do these categories make about users, and what does the absence of certain categories of identity say?

There are some fields which are necessary to fill in, which includes Name, Gender, Password, Security Question & Answer and Date of Birth (in US format).

In Microsoft and Yahoo! Mail, the language and country are set by default, English and United States, whereas in Second Life there is no need to enter language. However, country is displayed in the Billing Information part, where the user is required to enter a state and city, regardless of the country they select. Microsoft has implemented the function when the country selected is not US, it will automatically refresh the entire webpage to add in or delete the state as well as ZIP code. Yahoo! Mail requires the user to enter a ZIP code regardless of the country chosen.

For the security questions, it is gendered. Microsoft and Yahoo! Mail favors the masculine gender, where the questions include “Father’s middle name”, “Favorite sports team”, “First car or bike”. Second Life’s security questions acts more towards the feminine gender with questions like “Mother’s maiden name”.

I assume that although Microsoft and Yahoo! Mail allows the user to select the language and country which the user belongs to, the default is set to the categories of “White” and “Male”. There is an interesting part about the plans in Yahoo! Mail, where the basic / free category has the image of a female while the paid plans shows images of white and black males.

However for Second Life, no language is chosen (I’m unable to try out to game as I don’t own a credit card =( ) but it’s presumed that the general language is English (the website is in English). Last Name of the user name is bounded by the category which is given, but there were some last names which seem to select the gender, for example relating Baggio and Cruyff to a famous football star. Second Life has a more general category with no relation to race or gender shown deliberately.

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2. What sort of 'identities' are visible in the profiles on Lavalife? How are they displayed? What presumptions does this display make about both the people reading these profiles and those users who made them?

Lavalife has 2 kinds of search categories, (i) Heterosexual and (ii) Homosexual. In these categories, it is split up into 3 types, (1) Dating, (2) Relationship, and (3) Intimate Encounters.

Depending on the region which the user has selected, the search will generate a number of people with the users who signed up and are within the search range. The ethnic background that is most commonly seen is “White”. However there are other ethnic groups such as “Black”, “Asian”, “Other”, “Mixed”, etc…

Under the Dating category, the information displayed shows the Age, Gender, Location, Ethnic Background, Horoscope and Religion. Information on Height and Body Type are also included. Here are some examples on the category Dating:

(1) 24 year old Female, located in Perth, Western Australia, Australia. I'm White, a Pisces and Catholic. I'm 5'6" tall with a few extra pounds. I don't smoke. I drink socially. Last changed Oct 14, 2003.

(2) 26 year old Male, located in New York, New York, USA. I'm mixed, a Leo. I'm 5'11" tall with a fit body. I'm a social smoker. I drink socially. Last changed Aug 5, 2004.

I presume the profile allows readers know the general idea on the people who made their profiles online. Under the different categories and regions, they will be able to look through their profiles and send a message to the person who they are interested in. Some of the users post their photos allowing the general public (people who sign in as Guests) to view them whereas some put as Backstage, which requires an acknowledgement from the user to allow the requester to view it. The general idea is the Ethnic Background, Age, Gender and Location that they belong to.

One interesting thing to note about the images on the 3 categories (Dating, Relationship, Intimate Encounters) are:
(1) Man seeking Woman: All images show only white people
(2) Woman seeking Woman: All images show white and colored people
(3) Man seeking Man: All images show only white people

Changes to this tutorial blog

Hi Everyone,

New Link
A couple of changes to your tutorial blog. Firstly, you will notice I've added a link to the main Self.Net blog; this contains occassional posts from myself or Karen focusing on items which may be of interest for all students. Also, a number of curious people have found my own personal blog. Since some of you have found it, I may as put a link here, so if anyone else wants a read, you're most welcome (but do keep in mind, this is my personal blog, so isn't always 100% academically orientated!).

Blog Navigation Bar
I'm sure you've all noticed this new Navigation Bar at the top of the blog:

This adds some functions which might make using the tutorial blog easier:

• The orange Blogger button will take you directly to Blogger.com.

• Entering a search into the empty form box (the white box) and hitting search will search this blog (or whatever blog you are viewing). This should make finding earlier material much easier (only 15 posts remain on the front page, the rest go into the archive, accessible via the links on the side).

• Finally, the BlogThis! button will automatically open a window to let you write a blog post.

FollowUp Comments for those Introducing Readings
Just a quick note: most of you who have already introduced readings this week in tutorials have gone back and published your reflection upon the tutorial after it finished. Those who haven't (and those presenting in the coming weeks) please remember that part of your tutorial presentation is to go back to the post you made before the tute and reflect on how well your presentation went (how well the ideas were received; what sort of conversation happened; any ways your ideas about the reading might have changed/expaned). Ideally, this should be done as soon as possible after your tutorial presentation (but really should be before the next meeting of your tutorial). Others are reminded, that they are always welcome to comment on any posts in their tutorial blog and are also welcome to post relevant links/ideas whenever you find things! (oh, and for those of you who've never read other people's comments, give it a go; there are some really interesting dialogues taking place in the comments!).

A reminder:
Before clicking the 'Publish Post' button, if you place the cursor inside the window where you have written your post press either Ctrl+A to select all and then Ctrl+C (on a PC) or Apple+A to select all and then Apple+C (on a Mac), this will place the text you have written in the memory of the computer (this is referred to as placing text on the clipboard). If something goes wrong during the attempt to publish, all you need to do to make the post a second time is place the cursor in the post window and press either Ctrl+V (PC) or Apple+V (Mac) to paste the text from the clipboard into that text box. (Occassionally blogger does 'hang' [which means not finishing the posting function], so it is useful to make this quick backup in order to avoid typing out the entry a second time!)

Gattaca - Genetic Screening and Manipulation

Does genetic screening and manipulation as presented in Gattaca evoke a new eugenics? Does this scenario seem credible given current scientific trends?

Yes, upon the birth of Vincent, just by drawing a drop of blood, they have determined the health problems that he will be likely to have in later part of his life. However for the second child Antonio, he has the "best" of both parents' genes, minus the negative traits such as heart diseases, as compared to Vincent.

In the short clip of Gattaca, Vincent is found to be "protected" by his parents, so much that even for the slightest illness like a cold, it is also seen as "life-threatening". However for Antonio, he is the "stronger" and "more perfect" sibling out of the two. Unlike Vincent who has 99% risk of heart disease, Antonio does not suffer from the same fate as his brother, due to genetic manipulation even before his birth.

In current scientific trends, genetic screening and manipulation is possible. One advantage is it allows the removal of hereditary diseases.

There are two categories of genetic manipulation - (i) Somatic (ii) Germline

Here are some links if you're interested to find out more information:

Ethical Issues in Genetic Screening

Human Germline Manipulation and Cloning as Women's Issues

Inheritable Genetic Modification

When do Doctors Recommend Genetic Testing?

Tutorial Presentation 1: Cyberstalking – Gender and Computer Ethics

The article looks at two aspects: how new computer ethics discipline could benefit from insight into feminist theory and how feminist theory could be used to make a more extended analysis in discussion of computer ethics through examples of cyberstalking.

Feminist ethics applied to computer ethics provides three major alternatives. First is a possibility of countering the technological determinism. Next is continuing inequalities in power and how these are “gendered”. Lastly, an offer to alternative, collective approach to the individualism of the traditional ethical theories encapsulated in computer ethics.

Alison Adams focuses on new analysis of examples from cyberstalking, arguing that the traditional liberal ethical response does not get to the heart of the problem whereas feminist theory may offer a more promising alternative.

In developing various woman-centred approaches to ethnics, the overall aim of feminist ethics is ‘to create a gender-equal ethics, a moral theory that generates non-sexist moral principles, policies and practices’ (Tong 1998).

In all three cyberstalking examples, the female victims felt unhappy about the level of protection that law offers to them. The perpetrators impersonate the victims in anonymous Internet postings, where they defame the victim, sent out postings containing pornographic invitation thereby causing others to display threatening behaviour towards the victims.

Although men can also become victims of anonymous, defamatory postings, the features of the case (Godfrey) shows differing results as compared to the above three examples. This case is not seen as a case of cyberstalking. It revolves around the idea of a consumer winning the lawsuit against the Internet Service Provider.

Journalism

For those people that were interested in blogging and/as journalism, this article from Rebecca Blood might be of interest - it looks at what blogs are, what journalism is, and how the two do and don't coincide.

Blog Fiction

Having raised the issue of using blogs to create (fictional) narrative in yesterday's tutorial, the www has come up with an example for me this morning (via jill/txt). How might blog fiction challenge traditional notions of narrative, or how might it remain within that model?

Newbie to Blogs

Hi everyone,

Blogs and Macs are really new to me. *still trying to explore*
Macs really seem cool, compared to what I have (IBM -_-").
This interface seems familiar to the msn group which I used to go to, but everything seems so different?
Oh, is it a must to use Mozilla?

If you would like to know more about Japan, this would be a good site to go to --> Japan Guide

Welcome again!

Hi everyone,

I hope you haven't had any problems with joining this blog! If you are signed up, can you please reply to this post so I can get an idea of how it is going (and you have a chance to get used to how things work). If you are having problems, feel free to email me.

Welcome!

This (we)blog is intended for the Monday, 2pm tutorial group (Karen Hall's group) in the unit Self.Net: Communicating Identity in the Digital Age.