1.Imagine that you are going to join a MUD loosely based on medieval times. Write 2-3 sentences describing your persona for the MUD.
MUD Character’s from Watchman:
1.)A new character, the daughter of Night Owl and Silk Spectra.
2.) Female alien with powers.
3.) Short and scrawny tag a long super heroine. (Sidekick)
2. In Turkle’s piece, she discusses how men and women took on opposite genders in order to behave in ways that are more accepted or more comfortable from the opposing gender identity. What does this say about people’s perceptions of behavioral gender norms?
People often want to experience the so called freedoms that can be associated with the other gender. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” idea. We have lived a life constrained as one single gender in society. For some they find it liberating to induge in foreign gender concepts and habits. People will draw from gender stereotypes and personal experiences with the opposite sex. For instance, views of a mother, sister, girlfriend, brother, or father. As well as the popular norms associated with each sex or the most obvious representation of feminitity or masculinity. Ex.) A model or army sargent.
3. Turkle also discusses the way people perceive online relationships (especially sexual ones) as real or not real. Consider that this was over 10 years ago. Do you think the distinction still holds? Why or why not? In the scenarios that she describes, how would you react? What is the relationship between gender and technology in your concept of faithfulness?
Relationships within a virtual word need to have real life boundaries. A couple in a relationship needs to agree on what is deemed appropriate and non-appropriate in a virtual world. For instance a female might think it acceptable to have cyber sex online thinking it “part of the game”. But her husband might view this as offensive and damaging to the real relationship they share.
8. Most people use their real photo in places like Facebook and change this fairly frequently. How is this like an avatar or not?
Like an avatar people expect other people to look at their image. With this thought in mind a person usually goes through great pains, whether through thought or action, to portray themselves in a specific way. Similar to actual avatars your visual representation ends up being personified version of yourself because you do not look or act like your photo 24/7.
…when we went virtual (shifting gears to thinking about identity and gender in cyberspace), we started with a little history: the original “multi-user domains,” studied by Sherry Turkle, were totally text-based. Those studied by Nowak and Rauh were visual representations. Turkle’s methodology was qualitative; that of Nowak and Rauh was quantitative.
We split into small groups to discuss the series of questions about these two texts that Laura had to offer. (Those discussions are archived in the posts following this one: by Alexandra, by Hannah, by Cat, by Melanie, by Michelle, by Kalyn, by Rebecca, and by Ashley ). We returned to the large group with the questions we would like to continue to talk about on Wednesday:
1. What might happen when we are able to manipulate reality like we can the internet? If the latter is where we engage in fantasy, what would happen if we could change the “real world” in the same way, to make it what we want? Would we be able to make judgments? Would it exacerbate problems, because of differential access? This has overtones of eugenics…creating a more unequal society. The example of a dominatrix who asked which is your “real” life, which is your “fantasy” life, when you come to visit her? Is there a real boundary between how we see ourselves in the world, and how we project ourselves? What is that boundary? (Think of cosmetic surgery: re-creating yourself in an ideal image.)
2. How do we deal with self-censorship on sites such as Facebook or Second Life? How do we decide what to put out there, what to keep private (particularly in the context in which others perceive what you present as an accurate representation)? What “parts” of the self are we chosing to–or being nudged to–represent?
3. What is the danger of having an avatar that is a close representation of yourself, vs. an alter ego? What would be the reasons to choose one rather than the other? Might you be able to be freer (to be “yourself”) if you are acting? Being someone different might open up a whole new range of possibilities. You might physically represent yourself in one way, but the way you behave –and how you respond emotionally–might be very different. How might you respond, for instance, to being “naked,” or “being in charge of things” in a virtual world? How far do we distance ourselves from our characters? What’s the difference between assuming a character and completely embodying them?
4. Let’s think about on-line relationships, and in particular our discomfort when they cross over into meat space. Where is the boundary? When does on-line sex become real infidelity? When do internet invitations have real-world results? Does the internet enable the crossing of lines that we are always seeking to blur?
5. Why are some of us less comfortable with creating alternative identities on-line?
6. To what degree can the norms of virtual reality affect the social norms in the real world? To what degree can virtual experiences change your self-perception?
Sunday by 5 p.m. Third Quarter feedback due
1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?
2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)
5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
So that we can access all of these, please post your feedback to the blog as a post–-
and choose the category “Third Quarter Feedback” @ the bottom of the page before posting.
These are my images. I always wanted to be a motorcycle chick so the image on the right expresses that…making these was way funner than I thought it would be!
Here are a couple of the avatars I made. I tried to be somewhat faithful to my actual appearance, but found I didn’t have as much patience for this as I thought I would have.
I had made a few others, but couldn’t figure out how to do the screen captures properly. The Marvel superhero one is the most fun, in my opinion.
Here are three avatars I made this weekend… I had a little too much fun with this! I tried as hard as I could to make them accurate, but found that the options were a bit limited. I didn’t feel compelled to make a “fantasy” version of myself. Anyway, here they are:
While I thought the Meez site was fun, I was a little put off by the “body type” choices. The one I chose, which is closest to my actual body type, was called “Plus-sized Penny”; when I asked my roommate (who hasn’t seen this site before) what she thought of the figure without telling her what it was called, she said it looked like an average person’s body. If I hadn’t said anything, would you have called it “plus-size”?
Here are some avatars from my procrastination.
1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?
utopia/eutopia is subjective. one person’s ideal is another person’s imperfection. metropolis, THT, and watchmen all show social divides that were thought to be ideal but became corrupted somehow. perhaps we’ll just have to settle for anti-utopias.
2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
metropolis-biology is compared to technology especially in the “activation” of the evil maria scene. her circulatory system lights up. perhaps anatomy and physiology are the machine parts of the body.
THT-women are biological machines in that those with viable ovaries must reproduce; their ovaries are their only value in Gilead society.
watchmen-gender stereotypes can still appeal to the masses.
3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
i like the small group then big group configuration. it’s easier for me to collect and voice my thoughts in smaller groups.
i’m not a big fan of role playing. having to speak from the point of view of silk spectre II was difficult and frustrating since i could not identify with her at all. i could not identify with any of the characters, in fact, although i was intrigued with the premise of the graphic novel–kill millions to save billions.
4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)
i copy and paste all of my papers from a word document onto the posts on this site for web papers. i just wish there was some way wordpress recognized paragraph indentations therefore i wouldn’t have to go back and reseparate paragraphs.
5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
see above. other than that, no complaints.
Above are my avatars. I found that I didn’t love any of the clothes on any site if I was looking at from the perspective of, what epitomizes what I would wear or look like. I came it trying to make it look most like me, but that effort is probably doomed to fail for anyone. (The middle one, from Yahoo! avatars, looks most like how I would dress but is still way off the mark.) So, I choose those pants just because I think they’re funny, and I tried out being a guy, who seems to have turned out like a biker dude/hipster/nerd? 🙂 Not sure what this really says about my multiple inner selves, a la Case from “Tinysex and Gender Trouble.”
On another note,
This video is from the website of my favorite magazine, GOOD. They have a daily online news show with 1-2 minute reports on interesting stuff. I thought of GOOD News because its host is Roger Numbers, a skinny, blue, male avatar. When I first saw him I thought he was kind of a strange choice, first because he’s blue, and also his voice is that of a young man (thought he’s bald?) who speaks haltingly and without much emotion. The effect his designers were going for, I imagine, was “cool.” After watching him for several episodes, I find him pretty likeable…though in the context of this class everytime I see him I think, why not a woman? Did the designers even consider that option?
I was curious about the orgins of Avatars. Apparently it comes from Sanskrit meaning “incarnation.” Online Avatars were popularized by a man named Neal Stephenson in his novel “Snow Crash.” He writes about a virtual world and the people who in habit it are “avatars.” Here is a link if anyone would like to read more about the novel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
GAH! I’m late. I know this, and I apologize.
read more…
1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?
I’ve noticed that we still tend to focus on imaginative representations of women and technology. I know that Watchmen didn’t have that many women in it, but we still discussed them more in terms of technology than the men. It might be interesting to compare Rorschach’s use of technology and sexuality (basically none really visible, more of a derision for sex in general) and Dan’s for example. Otherwise, the connection between gender and technology that I’ve really noticed is always tying women to sex in one way or another.
2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
I think that looking at women ‘superheroes’ and a female version of Watchmen and/or graphic novel was really interesting. The bind between trying to create a female graphic novel without immediately falling into stereotypes for the character design, plot, and publicity was difficult and helped me understand a bit more about how ingrained these ideas of gender are in our society. On the other hand, it also helped me remember that there will always be some grain of truth in a stereotype for at least someone somewhere (for example, I can’t deny that I would like some comic books and graphic novels better with more romance in them than fighting).
3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
I like the small group work. It keeps the conversation intimate and stimulating. I feel like much more gets discussed in the small groups than ever gets presented to the class through quick answers and writing on the board, but I can’t decide whether I like that or not. I do think that distilling each conversation into a cohesive summary for the class helps us cover more ground than we do in group discussions.
4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)
I like WordPress, but I wish that there was some way to more easily access the write a post and write a page buttons that I can only seem to fine on that one entry page before clicking the visit the website button.
5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
I find the written commentary much more helpful than the on-line commentary. Posting is always a bit iffy with whether it all works out or not in the end, but as long as you keep perfecting it in the preview window and keep a look out for accidentally deleted titles it usually works. I’m always a bit nervous that something will go wrong though and that does delay the posting of the paper at times.
1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?
For the most part, these representations have been extraordinarily bleak and pessimistic, or chosen to delve into darker, grittier conceptions of the future, gender, and technology. I’d like to know why we as a class chose works that took that particular interpretation, or at least why they got the most votes.
2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
Fear. One of the strongest themes/motifs running through the works we’ve dealt with has been the fear of what technology will do to us as a sentient species and how gender will be exploited to terrible ends. The Handmaid’s Tale uses this theme most clearly, but I think Watchmen and Metropolis speak of the same concerns on different levels. I certainly don’t think this is an inevitable conclusion of the advancement of technology, but it’s a valid point – that we’re scared of the unknown (tech) destroying our comfort zones (gender) and that said destruction will take our very lives with it. Now, just because we’re afraid of the boogeyman doesn’t mean he’s gonna gut us in our sleep… but we still look under the bed just the same.
3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
Small group interaction has been very mixed for me. I realize the desire to break us out of comfortable groups and interact with the whole class, but I feel that at this point in the semester we’re capable of discerning who we work best with and which groups will get us the best discussion. In short, I’d rather pick groups next time.
4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality?
Honestly, it seems to be working fine for me.
5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
See above – it works and I don’t have much concrit to give.
1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?
In this quarters imaginative works, I’ve noticed that most seem to touch on the gendering of “Human nature”. There is this thing called human nature that all humans should share, but many of these works suggest there is a male and a female nature, instead of one that is joint. Both Watchmen and Metropolis focused somewhat on “the male gaze”– or some uncontrollable idiotic dumbfoundedness that men are overcome by in the face of a beautiful, half-naked woman on display. Although women (in the offred thinking about exposing her ankle to the guarts, for instance) may experience a similar highly sexual thought process, women are meant to refrain from acting out. The HMT I think does the best job of suggesting that both men and women are having innate, sexual thoughts, and almost equally acting out on them. Can different societies see “human nature” in two different lights?
2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
I thought the use of tecnology in Metropolis were interesting… the world run by a machine run/built by a human– yet everyone sees the machine as keeping society together. This I thought was reminiscent of the modern “technological dystopia” theme that many the-future-gone-wrong-because-of-machines novels and films look at. Many people are so fast to “blame technology” without actually placing the blame on the humans that created the technology. Is this because we are self-protective to a degree that its easier to blame another entity? or has technology that was once under our control actually become a separate entity altogether? The HMT was also a grim look at the intersection of gender and technology, because of the degree to which technology was not accessable. Is there any technology today that keeps society together by only being accessible to some select individuals in society? I believe this is absolutely the case, and whereas in the HMT gender was the boundary, I usually see the issue of class as the boundary in our society.
3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
At times I didn’t find the group work beneficial. For example I think that when we get “too into the books”, i.e. analyzing watchmen from the POV of a watchmen character, we are taken one step further away from the “so what” question that we’ve sort of had trouble answering at the end of the class. Though its an interesting exercise, I think there are other, more beneficial ways of examining a work from another POV. What about Offred’s take on Watchmen? What about Offred as a character in Watchmen? What character would we play in this society and why?
4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)
The paper submission/naming process seems a bit complicated, or maybe could be a bit more straight forward.
Otherwise, I can’t think of many suggestions off the top of my head– I think the site is well used and much appreciated.
5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
I really like the on-line commentary. Whereas with ordinary papers that are just turned in and returned with illegible notes, this gives you the chance to enter in a discussion about your paper with your advisor, or anyt others that took the liberty to read it. In the past I’ve felt that making appointments with my professors to continue conversing about a paper has been tedious. This allows for a simple, easy and effective means of diving further into your paper with the e-help of your audience.
