Essays

The research essays can be collected from Tama (in his office) from Wednesday 10th November.
Thank you to everyone for your participation in this unit - I know I learnt a lot from being part of it!
As the unit is now finished, this blog is no longer active (although if you really feel the urge to post there is nothing stopping you).

Reflective Post

Weblogs
This area is new to me and it has never occurred to me that it can become a learning resource. In a way it's been good as it allowed me to look at how other people feel about the topic and the different ideas they have, which we don't have enough time to cover in the tutes. And for me, I don't speak up much, so typing is my way of communication.

Being a cyborg?
Like the others, I don't really think I am a "full" cyborg. I still rely on technology and connect to the Internet at least once a day, watch some television programs and listen to music, which are all digitally produced. But there are times when I like to get in touch with nature, with no technology involved. So I'm a "half" cyborg.

Likes and Dislikes about the course
Even after the course, I still think it's very technical. And there're loads of readings to be done each week, which contains jargons, and I have no idea what it's all about. But I do like the workshops and how it's been involved in group works with scenarios and movies to discuss about. Karen and everyone else has been a great help to me during tutes, because I really don't know how to speak up on the topic. Thanks everyone and good luck for exams!

Playing Politics Workshop Response

The simulation, September 12th, gives the player a choice to shoot or not shoot. As the rules suggest, it has no ending. It is impossible to kill everyone in the game. Houses that are ruined will be rebuilt after some time. If the player decides to shoot and innocent are killed, the civilians will mourn for them and in turn, they become terrorist. For those who became a terrorist, they will return back to normal is the player decides to hold fire. However if the player decides not to shoot, there will be no additional terrorists or any changes to the game.

September 12th would be effective via the Internet if the players are patient in looking at the results. It is very interesting to find political games that reflect the terrorism and allows players to simulate themselves into the “terrorist” behaviour. The message was not immediately obvious to me. The instructions “This is not a game. You can’t win and you can’t lose. This is a simulation. It has no ending. It has already begun. The rules are deadly simple. You can shoot. Or not. This is a simple model you can use to explore some aspects of the war on terror” does not state the idea that “Violence generates violence” at the first glance. However, if one pays more attention to the bombing after launching the bomb, then the idea would be obvious. This simulation has drawn my attention to look at the additional information after playing the simulation.

New York Defender has simulated the game into a scenario where the Twin Towers graphic is placed in the middle and the player is the ‘hero’ to protect the Twin Towers from being destroyed by the incoming airplanes. By moving the mouse and clicking on the airplanes, it can be destroyed before it crashes into the twin towers. New York Defender will remind people of the terrorism that has happened and it is effective in promoting the message against terrorism due to the fact that almost everyone knows about this disaster. But this game has not driven me to find out more information on it. Personally, I feel that it is the interest in breaking the high score which ‘keeps’ the player in playing the game, as with the Donkey John game.

I think the main thing in keeping people attracted to the game is the graphics. September 12 had rather colourful, interesting and 3-d graphics whereas the other games such as Kabul Kaboom had static, boring images. If I had to write a political simulation game, I would design it to be in a similar way as September 12, and state the instructions or idea before the game starts. The game can be designed in a short story-based scenario to bring the player into the situation. It does not need active participation all the time, but allow the player to sit back and view the story-like simulation. I feel that these kinds of games would leave a more lasting impression on the players.

Who Needs Ethics When You Have a Flowchart?

One take on ripping CDs. [via Boing Boing]

Webliography Responses

For guidelines on making your Responses to your peers' Critical Annotated Webliographies, please see details here.

Critical Annotated Webliography

Q3) Critically access the ways in which constructions of identity have been extended and/or altered by information and communication technologies.

Lisa McGerty’s article states that the virtual identity can bear as much or as little relation to the “real” self as the user desires[1]. Online identity has always been defaulted as “white” and “male”. However the construction has slowly changed as technology is slowing opening up to more groups. Reading through some of the blogs discussed earlier in tutorials has allowed me to have a broader view on the topic. Using two of the widely used search engines, Google and Yahoo! with keywords such as “constructions of identity extended or altered by information and communication technologies” and “identity extended or altered by internet” has amounted to thousands of search queries. From there, I have selected six articles, ranging from online relations to chat rooms, on the kinds of identity in the technological aspect.

Cyd Strickland’s article[2] focuses on online relationships, relating to her experience from an online seminar ElComm, learning to communicate within a virtual community with unacquainted people. Community identification is described as one of the ways in which people differentiate themselves. Strickland assumes an identity of a man by one of the facilitators judging from her name and non-feminine style of writing. Although all modes of identification were not mentioned within the community, the facilitators managed to recognise her during one face to face encounter. Strickland’s argues that offline meeting has completed the “missing social cues” of the online world. Living in different areas and having different cultural background and personality did not stop them from communicating effectively online. Instead it has brought them together, through a common ground in interest and work.

Ellen Baird[3] discusses on the Internet and a web-based chat room for American Indians. The chat room is open to two distinct groups, namely Indians and non-Indians. Stage name would be one way to identify the person’s ethnic group since both groups’ naming convention is different. Language and style can also identify a person, in terms of ethnicity and gender. Several categories of speech including Racism, Personal Networking, Commercialised Spirituality and Indian Humour are found. The chat room allowed Indians to bond online as well as offline and it is also a place where their ethnic background is identified, accepted and strengthened. One drawback about the article (which I feel) is Baird uses too many quotes from the referencing materials.

Mark Warschauer’s article[4] places emphasis on the use of language in both Media and the Internet. There is a saying which implies that no matter what kind of identity we hold, no one is able to find out until we start to communicate. Although English in the earlier days of technology was widely distributed, other languages are also opening up to the world of technology. Re-localization by corporations is occurring quickly so as to spread the market. The case of race-passing by Onaona brings a different light to Nakamura’s argument. It describes Onaona of using the Internet to bring out her ability to express a part of her ethnic heritage, which she was unable to do so in real life.

Sandy Zipp[5] starts with the MCI Commercial and introduces the group, Youth Outlook (YO) and Plug In, and their views on race relations. Race issue, that happens frequently offline, now appears as much online in chat rooms and newsgroups. However, some youths still retain the hope in meeting people and finding out more about the different cultures. MCI’s racial anonymity is one way to stop racial discrimination, but it might attract predators that are simply there to harass others using anonymous identities. Racial bombings would be something uncontrollable as it is a creation of the real world into virtual world, even if anonymity is brought into the picture as most youths are unwilling to hide their real identities.

Sherry Turkle’s article[6] provides an insight on Multi-User Domains (MUDs). Assimilation of media (television) settings of a bar is applied to the real and virtual world, where it is seen as a “neighbourhood place where everyone knows your name”. One user in MUD comments on the identity as “free” and “real” as MUD is the virtual world which they have created, to allow them to be themselves. Identity is re-formed as some group of young people claims they can better voice out in cyberspace than in the real world. Although virtual gender-swapping and abuse of MUD occurs, it has not deterred people from going back into the online world to find their “true” identity.

Gianna LaPin discusses on how a user’s identity can be affected by the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC)[7]. Gender questions are often one of the popular questions staring with a/s/l (age, sex, location) when chatting with a stranger online. Nick names are part of the process to a virtual identity and sometimes users give names which answers the a/s/l question. Identity can be intentionally portrayed while it can also be unintentionally giving signs to the real self. LaPin states the two cues which gives assumptions to the real identity are email address and communication style. There are two possibilities to users who intentionally hide their real gender and takes on the opposite gender’s status. First is to communicate effectively with the community and another is the curiosity to “the other half’s life”. Women sometimes are forced to take on a status of a man for the first reason.

In the above examples, we have seen a variation of the different types of identity that can be perceived in the digital world. Gender and race will always be a topic which most people will put their emphasis on. Identity of portraying ourselves can be hidden intentionally yet given away unintentionally. A popular way of identifying an online user is through the writing style as well as nick name. If the user takes a neutral stand on both, he/she will most probably be seen as the masculine counterpart. The virtual space is also acknowledged as a “safe haven” for those who are unable to voice out in the real world, due to gender or racial issues. As the saying goes “Nobody on the Internet knows that you're a dog[8]”, that is, until you give yourself away.

Footnotes:
[1] Joseph Turow & Andrea Kavanagh (eds), The Wired Homestead, Cambridge: Mitpress, 2003.

[2] Cyd Strickland, “A Personal Experience with Electronic Community”, CMC Magazine (June 1998) http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/jun/strick.html(accessed 30/08/04).

[3] Ellen Baird, “Ain’t Gotta Do Nothin But Be Brown and Die”, CMC Magazine (July 1998) http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/jul/baird.html (accessed 30/08/04).

[4] Mark Warschauer. "Language, Identity, and the Internet". In B. Kolko, L. Nakamura & G. Rodman (Eds.) Race in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge, 2000, pp.151-170. http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/lang.html (accessed 31/08/04).

[5] Sandy Zipp, “What Color Is the Net?”, The Netizen (March 1997) http://hotwired.wired.com/netizen/97/11/index2a.html (accessed 31/0/04).

[6] Sherry Turkle, "Virtuality and Its Discontents", The American Prospect vol. 7 no. 24 (December 1996) http://www.prospect.org/print/V7/24/turkle-s.html (accessed 31/08/04).

[7] Gianna LaPin, “Pick a Gender and Get Back to Us”, How Cyberspace Affects Who We Are (May 1998) http://www.fragment.nl/mirror/various/LaPin_G.1998.Pick_a_gender_and_get_back_to_us.htm (accessed 01/09/04)

[8] Mark Warschauer. "Language, Identity, and the Internet": Language In Cyberspace (2000) http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/lang.html (accessed 01/09/04).

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.