Reflecting on the Boyd article made me realize how interconnected and networked we all are. Facebook profiles are somewhat of an artificially and intentionally structured personality-- a way for us to express ourselves in a very particular way to the public. We are able to choose exactly what we list on our profiles: pictures, music tastes... everything-- to make ourselves appealing in a certain light. Not only is this information available to the public (be it however large or small your privacy settings allow for your public to be), but lots more is available through a simple google search. One can find myriad information about schools, interests, blogs posted, awards won... lots of information about any given person.

True, our personal information is all over the internet. That is, for most, a little alarming. But we all enjoy (just as Prof. Chun discussed in class today...) the ability to access information about others.

Does this information serve to better our community? Or is it just scary?

MOOs vs Facebook

Based on my experience in the MOO, I had a difficult time determining how the "Rape in Cyberspace" was even taken seriously enough to be analyzed.  The program seemed extremely distant and impersonal to me, despite my efforts to be sucked into it.  The rigidity of the commands and the boring textual format reinforced the fact that the MOO was not a real society, but a technological program. 

I wonder if my inability to relate within the MOO has to do with my experience on Facebook and more contemporary networked publics that seem to bear a closer relationship to our real life identities.  I found myself desperate to ask everyone how old they were in REAL LIFE, what they looked like, where they lived, etc. and it was impossible for me to become engaged as a "character."

Networked Publics

In her article, Danah Boyd discusses social networking sites such as Myspace as Facebook and their popularity among teens. Social networks are appealing not just because people can keep in touch with each other, but because they can present themselves as they would like to be seen. The appeal of a profile is that you can manage exactly how people see you. You can put up pictures that are the most flattering, say you like popular movies and music, and in general customize your profile to your liking. When people interact in real life, there are always little details that cannot be controlled that others use in their judgements. In a profile, you can only see exactly what the owner wants you to.

The article also mentions the complications of privacy in social networks. People write private messgaes on their friends profiles which end up being in public for anyone to see. However, they are aware that their messages will be read by others and in a way desire it. At least in Facebook, there is the option of leaving a message in a person's inbox where only they can see it. Facebook users choose to leave messages on the public Wall, even if they might be semi-private, so that people will see them as being social and having friends that they exchange messages with. A series of exchanged messages on a Facebook Wall generally denotes friendship past the automatic friendship that Facebook grants. In many ways, Facebook is used much more to promote the user's own social life than to actually keep in touch with people.

My Adventure in the Coat Closet

So I did the tutorial and logged on as Guest.

When I entered the mansion I felt an immediate sense of paranoia...not that I was going to be textually raped...maybe...but over not revealing too much information about myself, about not compromising my real identity. It was very difficult initially for me to comprehend the freedom that comes along with being nameless, faceless, and traceless. 

When I finally finished the tutorial and committed the commands to memory, I found myself in the Coat Closet by myself so I used the @user command to find out how many people were allegedly around. The report read 106 players and I suddenly felt not so alone, but at the same time incredibly awkward because I had no idea how to find them, or if anyone was in the closet with me. I left and explored a good 75% of the mansion only to find one or two other players who were either sleeping or had been staring into space for 20 hours...I felt alone again

Ultimately I found the MOO to be a cool experience, but very boring because of two dominating personal traits: I am an extremely visual person and I am excessively moral.

Maybe I'm just lazy, but reading all the text was very cumbersome to the point where exploring rooms and objects became a confusing and time consuming burden, now this may have been heavily influenced by me pushing a certain button and ending up in a secret room with no apparent exit for a good while and had not a kind player named Brew helped me out, my opinion of the "game" would have been even lower. 

I ended up in Coat Closet again with Brew and Devil-Bunnie where the two entertained me with the actions of previous visitors from my class. I mentioned the article to which the two both responded "its a stupid article" and how the victims easily could have ended the situation. I found this very intriguing how the victims in the article actually allowed themselves to lose control of a situation thus emulating a "real-life" situation.

We then got into a conversation about the class again where I declared that as a gamer, I felt it was intrusive and annoying to ask questions to which Devil-Bunnie responded "I don't know why they come asking us questions, its not like we answer truthfully anyways." Whoa. 

Then it dawned on me that I was having a very difficult time dissociating my real self from my textual avatar, any and all impulses to do something wildly un-me and inappropriate were immediately subdued by my moral code. 

The paranoid feelings, I realized, revolved around a fear that my identity would be misinterpreted, that I would be mistaken for somebody I wasn't because I consider my identity to be my conduct around others. Unlike a video game where my character has a function and an objective separate from your person, in the MOO your function and objective is your person. 

To be Real or not to be Real, this is the question. And is the only differentiation between Virtual and Real technological?

In Boyd's discussion of youth and networking sites, I was struck by her use of and emphasis on the public. In showcasing and displaying their identities on networking profiles, youth (though I'd argue not just youth - the number of adults I know on facebook seems to continuously rise) youth are comprising a mediated public in the form of social networks defined by persistence, searchability, replicability and an invisible audience. Yet I'm not entirely sure it's fair to classify these social networks as 'publics;' facebook profiles include a "Notes" application, which basically serve the same functions as do blogs. On nearly all networking sites, users can choose to make their public profiles private. To some extent, facebook even complicates the idea of searchability as a key characteristic of social networking sites; I know some friends who have used the privacy settings of facebook to prevent themselves from being searched - they can only friend people by searching others, which is perhaps more than a little bit voyeuristic, a la Laura Muvley.

Still, what I'd like to suggest is that the privacy settings and personalization of social networking profiles reflects the confluence of the private and the public. It seems as though there are no definite boundaries between the public and the private anymore, this idea underscored in Levin's commentary on the permeation of surveillance into virtually all spheres of 21st century life. It seems as though surveillance, technology and the internet has rendered the public and the private somewhat synonymous. Even as we meet public figures, we are fascinated with their private lives. I am thinking in particular of some discussion - during the earliest months of the election - regarding Barack Obama's (former? or not?) cigarette smoking habit.

The television theorists we've read this semester seem to themselves support this confluence of the public and the private; the idea of television having an underlying familial structure with news anchors as patriarchal figures is itself a blend of the public and the private.

The Role of Memory in the Construction of Imagined Communities

In exploring the many different perspectives of the theorists on the broad field of "media," it seems as if there is no apparent space (or need?) for memory. Perhaps because of the temporal value of media, and its substance - information - that is to be emitted, distributed, disseminated, and shared, and yet having to give in to the newer materials that are constantly flowing in...

For example, Anderson's notion of the imagined communities that are founded upon the idea of sharing prints that hold information in the age of mechanical reproduction and simultaneous consumption, Saussure's emphasis on language, Feuer's idea of the liveness of television, and  Terranova's notion of "general intellect" -- the existence of "free labor" as a participant of the networked sites...('networked publics' of Boyd). Considering these views in the examination of media, how does one, as an individual in a society and in the world, come to view his or her life, or the imagined communities that he comes to partake? Does one's memory matter, is there a space for something so private or personal - in the world of constant acquisition for knowledge. (As Professor Chun refers to the Enlightenment thinking, does all this knowledge really lead to progress? the superfluous information that leads to better action? What about the highly rendered quality of these social and thus cultural constructions (information - knowledge)? What does this problematize - that the public accounts weigh heavier, looms over the personal accounts of private memory? What are the complications of the position we are to take as a member of the mass - mediated world? 

In a way it almost seems as if the highly -mediated world of the present voids of "personal," or something such as private memory. Consider the Lambdamoo that is a quintessential imagined community. 

"[In LambdaMoo] participants lose themselves in their roles and collaborate in a form of collective authorship... MUDs are characterized by a tightly knit - though globally dispersed - community of characters engaged in an ongoing dialogue that combines the aimlessness of nomadic wandering with the focused creativity of world building." (omnispace.org) 

Detaching oneself from the media-theory-student position and instead examining it from a critical perspective, how does one view - life? Has it merely become a part of the larger imagined community that feeds on the creative force of individuals - whose identities have become - in a way - amorphous and vulnerable to change to the ever- changing conditions of the world? (that is directed by media thoroughly in all ways).

Reality, realism, true, and the gap between the virtual and the real. 

I guess it all comes down to the question of "what is real?"

...but then again since when was there such a truth, as both history and memory are in essence  ultimately a social construct...

Social Networks

As I read Boyd's article, the section "But Why there?" had me question why I had joined Facebook to begin with. My account is fairly new and I obtained it in April after my visit to Brown. Facebook is not a South Texas thing; however, it was all the rage with everyone I met. In order to keep in touch with new friends, I got an account. Facebook was a connection to the people who I couldn't just give a call to or who I couldn't just visit. Later I was introduced to the Brown Class of 2012 page which answered all my questions about the next four years of my life, and Facebook became an obsession.

Facebook seems like a good source of information and a great way to stay connected, but I must admit that sometimes it gets creepy. The safe space that they promote is in no way that. Take for example Facebook's history. According to Wikipedia, "Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Ivy League. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 120 million active users worldwide." (My cousins in Mexico had a Facebook account years before I did.)

The ads that are placed around the website gives us insight into why Facebook would open the network to the world. The bigger audience it can reach, the more convenient it is for companies, the more money Facebook gets, and everybody wins. But should we blame Facebook for the fact that my 60 year old neighbor has a Facebook account?!

Perhaps not because my 60 year old neighbor loves exposing his life to the public as much as Facebook does too. Not many people would be interested in obtaining his pictures, but he still posts them. He also is not trying to escape reality as Boyd says most teenagers are trying to do.

So I guess it's an ongoing circle of Facebook's need for exposure and our own. Everyone is as responsible as the other.

MY ADVENTURES IN LAMBDAMOO (and reflections)

I logged on as Silver_Guest

"You see a tall shimmering God hovering over you. Or Goddess. You can't really tell because it looks like a penguin from where you are standing"

So on my Journeys to LambdaMOO, I ran across a fellow traveller, Ecru_Guest (it appears to be moving toward you rapidly, but your eyes can't seem to focus on it. You must decide quickly whether to try to communicate with... or to flee), who stated was a TA for a class (info 2450). We goofed off and after some silly emoting where my unborn penguin children were made into a delicious omlette, we both explored together and ended up talking about media and such in the Yard, where things just started running like a poor session of AIM. I found out s/he is a PhD student at Cornell, read the Dibbell article also, and was there for similar reasons I was: academic interest.

I ended up having a really involved chat session with this stranger, and what I ended up thinking about is about communal spaces where people are able to open up to each other; similar places where I've been able to talk to strangers about my interests and sort of instantly connect have been the Comic Book Store, the Magic The Gathering tournements, hobbyshops... basically bastions of hobby nerdiness. Again there's something about a MOO or MUD that has a level of connotative myth of "tech-wizardry" or "living in your parents basement on the computer all the time" where everyone sharing in the same societal sin of nerdiness come together, knowing that on at least they all share the same world together.

Speaking of nerdiness, I felt that the experience of being in MOO was firstly a lot like the old text based adventures (Zork), but even more so like a session of Tabletop RPG. In both cases there is a divide of imagined action, space, movement, and character which exists in a symbolic world: for MOO it's in text, and for something like Dungeons and Dragons its in spoken language. My personal interest is in tabletop RPG games like Risus where there are dice and maybe a few base rules, but for the most part it operates on an even more freeform level (and interesting play with language) where a persons allowable actions are based on the "cliche" they define themselves as. The language in a sense sets up the rules, or precludes it, in the way the person defines their character. Also, in any tabletop there's a strange collapse between oneself and one's character. I wish we read the Mary Flanagan, because just as she talks about players responding to Lara Croft as "her" one moment and "me" the next, the tabletop has a constantly shifting identity between "my character" and "me", and just as much one man can control their tabletop character, that character is ultimately at the whims of a Game Master (or Dungeon Master if you're focusing on D&D).

I ended up with the person's email (I dont know if the person on the other end was a man or woman) and an interesting conversation. I'll probably keep in touch and hopefully make a new friend. But, my experience in MOO is kind of weird, and I want to ask y'all: what do you make of it?

Monkeyspheres IRL

While we currently live in a world where the digital is inescapable, the distance between the real and the virtual needs more emphasis. This virtualization of most activities does indeed make evident the "psychic double" we all carry around with us, but that does not mean one can simply forget the bodily aspects of interaction.

Dibbel wisely points out that "while the fact attached to any event born of a MUD's strange, ethereal universe may march in straight, tandem lines separated neatly into the virtual and the real, its meaning lies always in that gap" (16). Indeed, we construct meaning for the virtual world in our real lives. We interpret the virtual and make it part of our own, ourselves.

It is also important to note that this virtual world which we're discussing is completely incorporeal. The circuit board is not the body for our virtual reality. With the virtual, humans externalize their internal. But the construction of meaning is purely internal (by this I mean the act of constructing meaning--not the determinants of that meaning, such as the social factors which influence it). The virtual is then a way to cut out the bodies involved in communication. Yet their are still always bodies sending and receiving information.

Here is where we step into the realm of the monkeysphere. The moneysphere is defined as "the group of people who each of us, using our monkeyish brains, are able to conceptualize as people." On the interwebs we all meet so many people that eventually we stop thinking of everyone as people. This is when the conception of Virtual reality becomes dangerous: when we take this step back, and stop thinking about the people sending and receiving information.

Social Networking identity vs. real world identity

One thing I found odd about the Boyd article is that it seems to equate the socialization on social networking sites with that in the real world.  I personally find the two to be extremely different--in a social network site, your profile is not a description of you so much as it is a description of your tastes (music, movies, etc.), in a social networking site all conversations are written words which do not have the added complexities of intonation and body language, etc.  There are inumerable differences between the online world and the offline, and because of that, I think it's not necessarily safe to assume that socialization into one will entail the same for the other.  While their early initiation into the public sphere via social networking sites could lead to the current generation being more comfortable with the public sphere and more competent in wading through offline social networks, couldn't it just as easily be the case that people socialized into the rules of online social networks could find themselves hamstrung by these rules as they are completely different from those of the real world?  I'm not saying that the latter would necessarily be the case at all, I'm just playing devil's advocate as Boyd did not seem to take this option into consideration. 

Also, a separate thought--I wonder if the fact that social networking sites so strongly tend to highlight tastes in things (music, movies, etc.) as part of their profile pages is not only a remainder from their dating site origins, but is done out of commercial interest--i.e., defining a person in terms of the things they like strongly supports consumer capitalism, and pushes people to buy more things, and to equate these things with their own identity?