Life, The Internet, and Everything In Between?
1. In terms of the Reconstruction of Space and Time I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about two of the ideas presented (a) camping and (b)cocooning and how these terms are similar in their construction but different in their location. Both are designs that focus heavily on personalization, from the physical device to the use of technology within that space, from which device is being transported and to what it is being used for. When reading the section on camping I made a note to myself “silence? You’re writing in a public café” (in regards to Bob who goes to his local café). Then I started thinking, the location is his to navigate but it is not his to control – the control comes from the portable technologies and what the infrastructure of the public space allows him the opportunity to do as well. The silence is his lack of interaction with the occupants of the space, so he creates his own cocoon. This cocoon is his way of privatizing a public space and creating his own sonic space. I’m also thinking about private cocooning. This idea needs to be fleshed out a bit more, but this is something I’m interested in researching and looking at a bit more, the idea of cocooning oneself within their private space, what about people with agoraphobia, who have a constant fear of leaving their own space, how do they experience location based media devices (other than cell phones)?
2. While reading Still Connected I couldn’t shake this sense of loneliness as a meta term for everything and anything that could potentially describe aloneness (which was mentioned in the first chapter). The idea that these reports used such meta terminology as a scare tactic of some sort. I also think its language like this that perpetuates misinformation and the misled public into believing that technology is the root of all evil. Or language like this that forces me to do the research that I do and inform the public that technology does not necessarily create loneliness and can be a factor in the perpetuation of communities and community ideals. I think it’s also interesting how the differences from the 1970s to today is mostly societal, albeit there have been technological innovations that have changed the ways in which we live our everyday lives, the societal changes have affected us across the board. With the lowering of the birth rate, the raising of the average marriage rate, all of these things change the ways in which we interact with each other.
3. One main thing that I was struggling with in Turkle’s chapter was the idea that the Internet is this heavenly thing that allows for consequence free experimenting – so much so I used an interrobang to show my confusion and somewhat disdain for this type of thinking. This isn’t to say that the Internet is not used to explore identity; however, the case can be and has been made the body still gets read in very racialized and gendered ways, especially through the use of language that it is nearly impossible to reach a utopian picture of the Internet. Communities are still forming around specific ideas and allow for people to explore within the community same as the material world, but the idea of the Internet as utopian is a bit of a stretch. I also find it interesting that she uses The Guild’s “Do You Want to Date My Avatar?” as an example of the body in virtual worlds saying that “once we remove ourselves from the flow of physical, messy, untidy life — and both robotics and networked life do that — we become less willing to get out there and take a chance. A song that became popular on YouTube in 2010, “Do You Want to Date My Avatar?” ends with the lyrics “And if you think I’m not the one, log off, log off and we’ll be done.” I struggle with that because it is a parody of what MMORPGs are and do. I would argue that in this instance there is no removal of ones self from this physical, untidy life, because MMORPGs represent a place that is a replication of the material places in which we exist. There is a life that we start living that gets messy, untidy, but is still physical. In short I think she gives the Internet too much credit and fails to acknowledge the actualities.