Second life well... it didn't captivate real life for me. Now I am all for trying new things so I went into second life with an open eyes. Thinking maybe I can make friends or perhaps take this on as a personal hobby. First off second life is not for those with a little bit of ram. I quickly realized how important it was for me to order a ram upgrade. Second life ran ridiculously slow on my computer freezing every couple of minutes and making the whole experience much harder than it seemed. After I finally borrowed a friends computer, the experience finally began. I must say I never really got the hang of it. As I kept "exploring" new worlds I found myself craving to do real life things. I found a park, trees real green and I found myself craving a real park. I hadn't been to the park all summer or fall and found myself a bit jealous of the second life me. I visited something that looked like a beach and found myself craving a vacation.
Meeting people on Second Life was awkward for me. I was completely out of my element. I usually base my starter conversations based on the social atmosphere I am in. So say I meet someone in the academic setting I ask questions around this fact as a starter, what school you go to? what's your major? what highschool you went to? etc. But in Second Life I am literally meeting people from all walks of life and find myself socially awkward introducing myself and starting a conversation. Conversations with males in second life went quickly from Hi, hello to ASL, and do you really look like that. I just found myself uninterested in continuing the conversation. I felt like I was lacking focus when meeting all these new people. I feel we needed a context for this meeting, second life felt like I was on the train talking to every person there, for no real reason. After a few failed attempts at starting conversations I just roamed around in silence and explored and watched people and their interactions.
Although Lahti readings excited me for the whole experience on second life. I thought if an adult, a professional, could get so caught up in second life, then perhaps second life could have something to offer me. Instead of craving the second world i began craving real life more. I found myself wanting to interact with real people and real friends. I found myself socially awkward in second life. But after trying it, I can see how people could use this world to recreate themselves and live vicariously through the characters they create because of the space Second Life creates. Second Life provides its users with a new life, a born again feeling to reinvent oneself. Unfortunately for me i was born again a socially awkward person.
Monday
Finish Him..... Fatality.....
These readings were very interesting and provoked me to explore my own childhood. As a kind of tomboy growing up I wondered why I was never drawn to what I now know are Mattel's attempt at integrating girls into the video game world. For me it was quite simple. I didn't like complicated games. I wanted the action to happen right away and to play, without having to do a lot of work. Characters already laid out and one simple mission, to win by killing the other player, if you died you could always continue. Although this may be oversimplifying my childhood to me it was simple. Video games were a realm where you could carry out the fantasy. Why play video games about making Barbie clothes? I could very well just get up and make my own as I use to do with leftover cloth my mom use to give me to destroy, I mean create dresses of my very own. I reserved the gaming world to provide me with a fantasy I could never really carry out on my own. While I understand that most girls may not necessarily appeal to the Fatality option on Mortal Combat for me it was art. How many creative ways could I pull of his head. As sick as it sounds the mere fascination with the violence was because i reserved it for the fantasy world. I know I could never do this in real life so why not take advantage alternate world where I can get away with all this without doing a life sentence.
Although the violence drew me in the lack of female empowerment in characters drew me out of the gaming world. The female characters were never as "strong" as the male characters. Although they were always faster, and the men portrayed as sluggish, they never made as big hits as the men did. As RPG games began to gain popularity I found myself frustrated by the lack of female rolls I could relate to. A Laura Croft just didn't seem to really fit me, or the fantasy version I envisioned of myself. It seemed to be biased towards men and I just didn't feel comfortable playing a game that I knew wasn't "for me". I think this kind of male dominated world that video gaming breed created a kind of boys only club mentality, where you had to be boyish enough to get in if you were a female. I feel gender neutrality would have helped growing up. It seems to me that all games should come with the option to choose your character but it should be a man or a woman who are both of equal power, shape, and speed. I feel that while although games like Resident Evil had a character option of both male and female, games like Grand Theft Auto Remain to keep women outside of the boys club. Who says a woman can't steal a car, shoot a hooker, and start a gang war in opposite sides of town? Even in the gender equality game of Resident Evil where both male and female can get killed by a zombie there are sad differences that perpetuate gender inequality. For one the male protagonist is stronger, and can carry six items and a knife, while the female character is weaker, slower and carries a lock pick. It seems that the gaming world is just unable to open up the playing field for equality between men and women, and until they do gaming will remain a kind of gentlemen's club.
Although the violence drew me in the lack of female empowerment in characters drew me out of the gaming world. The female characters were never as "strong" as the male characters. Although they were always faster, and the men portrayed as sluggish, they never made as big hits as the men did. As RPG games began to gain popularity I found myself frustrated by the lack of female rolls I could relate to. A Laura Croft just didn't seem to really fit me, or the fantasy version I envisioned of myself. It seemed to be biased towards men and I just didn't feel comfortable playing a game that I knew wasn't "for me". I think this kind of male dominated world that video gaming breed created a kind of boys only club mentality, where you had to be boyish enough to get in if you were a female. I feel gender neutrality would have helped growing up. It seems to me that all games should come with the option to choose your character but it should be a man or a woman who are both of equal power, shape, and speed. I feel that while although games like Resident Evil had a character option of both male and female, games like Grand Theft Auto Remain to keep women outside of the boys club. Who says a woman can't steal a car, shoot a hooker, and start a gang war in opposite sides of town? Even in the gender equality game of Resident Evil where both male and female can get killed by a zombie there are sad differences that perpetuate gender inequality. For one the male protagonist is stronger, and can carry six items and a knife, while the female character is weaker, slower and carries a lock pick. It seems that the gaming world is just unable to open up the playing field for equality between men and women, and until they do gaming will remain a kind of gentlemen's club.
Hackers: Friends, Enemies, or Frenemies?
This week articles go through the mistification of the hacker, and of technology as a whole. Usually I just percieved hackers as a kind of sub underground group of people hiding in their homes trying to ruin your life with identity theft, or emptying out your bank accounts, or sending you a virus via an email or even a facebook post. Turkle does a great job of trying to add the person back into the image of the hacker. She created a hacker more as an obsessed hobby than as a malicious sub group of people. This kind of destruction of the hacker image is one that I found productive. In exploring the ideas of gender and technology. While I know that I have a set of bias' about hackers as nerdy males this kind of safe environment that the reading was trying to push us to understand the hacking world to be opened it up to a greater genre of people.
Perhaps the evolution of technology as becoming second hand should evolve my belief about hackers. Turkle seems to establish a society of hackers as more anti-social or even socially phobic people. Personally I feel that this reading evolved my reading of the hacker. Thinking of how much technology is apart of our world people who seem to be involved in an obsession relationship with technology doesn't seem so far fetched. Thinking about how people are obsessed with their facebooks, are they that different from computer programmers? I would beg to differ not really.
Adding gender into the mix of technology always leaves me thinking about the lack of the female image in technology now. Even thinking about the simple commercials from Apple "this is a PC, and this is a Mac" being both males leaves me as a female feeling like an outsider. Perhaps programming and hacking isn't so far fetched but they never seem to include me. I may not be a girly girl but I don't feel that the "nerdy image" includes females. The idea of the MIT boy, is one I am familiar with, as some of my friends go there, but the idea of there being a MIT girl to me seems far fetched. While technology seems to advance does the public image of women advance with technology? Will women be finally seen as being able to do as much as men in technology?
Sex and the Mechanical Bride, How ideal?
The readings for this week presented me with a lot of facts and information. Basically I was at awe at reading how much sex and technology were intertwined with technology in our day to day lives. Advertising is a huge way that the sex and technology ties filtered into my everyday site without learning it. It's hard to admit that my life is bombarded by propaganda after propaganda, wether I'm watching television and watching commercials, or I'm waiting for the bus reading ads plastered on the sides of buses. When reading though I couldn't help but think about how we have gone so far as to include sex into technology, aside from media production to simulate sex in programs such as SIMS game. Where the SIMS can go off and create an offspring or not in bed, and sparks fly quite literally between the two SIMS. Or even in Grand Theft Auto where you can hire a hooker and commence to have sex with her in the car. This kind of close connection that exists with sex and technology is one that I didn't necessarily see before this article, but it is one that concerns me.
I am all for technological advances but how far is too far? Thinking back on my childhood and how much technology has drastically changed the way society lives and functions, I am afraid we are living too much in the digital world and not enough in our real lives. People spend hours on facebook, and AIM talking to friends, things that use to be done in person or at least over the phone where one can hear a more humanizing voice at the end of the telephone. If we can further technology enough to develop experiences similar to sex, will people just stop touching? Will everything be done online now, from dating to kissing to "going all the way"? Now although my concerns may seem a bit drastic it is one of concern, aside from using technology to mobilize people socially around the world, people are also becoming stagnant in their homes. Technology in one way has facilitated our day to day lives, but is perhaps keeping us from living "normal" ones. Lives where we go out and play and socialize, and interact with one another. Where we explore our worlds surrounding instead of exploring a virtual playground. Will perhaps technologies draw be so strong that we will all live in the virtual and the real world will seem unappealing and perhaps even boring to our virtual one at our disposals?
Maria! Maria!
Metropolis was an outstanding silent film. While the outdated technology of the film and the over dramatics of the sets made the film entertaining the message couldn't have been any better. The idea that the hands the drive and manipulate a country and or city are forgotten to the heads that run the city is not foreign. After having just read Frankenstein, I couldn't help but see parallels with the idea that the scientist forgot about the idea and feelings of the creature. He didn't think that it would retaliate and rebel. The scientist was only thinking of himself. In Metropolis I see Federson as more of the scientist and the people of the city down below as the creatures.
The elaborate scenes of the scientist and his robot version of Maria created in my imagination what I expected from Frankenstein before reading it. It was the glitz and glam that Hollywood had implanted in my brain about what Frankenstein would be like. The robotic Maria seemed to be so perfect in model. Having no brain of her own she was reckless in her mission and seemed to be feeding off of the anarchy she created in the city. The real puppeteer in this whole film was Rotwang. Who while manipulating Federson, he seeked out to accomplish his own personal goal of ruining his life, by destroying that of his son. When thinking about the victimization of all the characters I can't help but wonder is everyone in this story somehow the victim. It seems that while one can point the finger at Federson or Rotwang, one also has to feel sympathy for all the "villains" in this tale. Rotwang has fallen victim to becoming a scorned man, after losing what is assumed to be the love of his life to Federson and then death. Federson seems to have been more caught up in the city and lost a sort of humanity even with his own son, and so in turn cannot be fully blamed for suppressing his own people down below. This lends to read like Frankenstein where not only was the creator but the creature was also a victim to his reality.
Personally the scene I find most fascinating is the scenes of the factory/city down below. Although the people running the machines are human and have families, one can't help but see them as one machine. They come in all together like robots and leave all together like robots. They work without break and seem to do it as automatic as breathing. This scene brings into question if really all people can be driven to become robots. Although there was only one Robot in the film, she seemed to be full of life scandalously so (ie. her seducing men at night in the "clubs") but the real robots seemed to be the people from below who didn't really come to life until they rebelled and who one never really saw as individuals but as one huge group known as "the hands"
The elaborate scenes of the scientist and his robot version of Maria created in my imagination what I expected from Frankenstein before reading it. It was the glitz and glam that Hollywood had implanted in my brain about what Frankenstein would be like. The robotic Maria seemed to be so perfect in model. Having no brain of her own she was reckless in her mission and seemed to be feeding off of the anarchy she created in the city. The real puppeteer in this whole film was Rotwang. Who while manipulating Federson, he seeked out to accomplish his own personal goal of ruining his life, by destroying that of his son. When thinking about the victimization of all the characters I can't help but wonder is everyone in this story somehow the victim. It seems that while one can point the finger at Federson or Rotwang, one also has to feel sympathy for all the "villains" in this tale. Rotwang has fallen victim to becoming a scorned man, after losing what is assumed to be the love of his life to Federson and then death. Federson seems to have been more caught up in the city and lost a sort of humanity even with his own son, and so in turn cannot be fully blamed for suppressing his own people down below. This lends to read like Frankenstein where not only was the creator but the creature was also a victim to his reality.
Personally the scene I find most fascinating is the scenes of the factory/city down below. Although the people running the machines are human and have families, one can't help but see them as one machine. They come in all together like robots and leave all together like robots. They work without break and seem to do it as automatic as breathing. This scene brings into question if really all people can be driven to become robots. Although there was only one Robot in the film, she seemed to be full of life scandalously so (ie. her seducing men at night in the "clubs") but the real robots seemed to be the people from below who didn't really come to life until they rebelled and who one never really saw as individuals but as one huge group known as "the hands"
It's Alive, well not quite...
Where was the monster, the mad scientist, Igor, the tower conjuring up lightning and the darkness associated with a scientist thinking he could be God? Reading Frankenstein left me feeling sympathy for the creature and the scientist than fear. I went into the book thinking I was going to be shocked and scared and was more surprised to feel a sense of remorse for the characters. Everyone in the novels seems to have been caught up in an unfortunate fate. Science in this novel seems to play a role that can lead you to obsessed madness, and an ill fate. It can burden you with responsibility over your discoveries and creations. As I read the book I was more reminded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude than a menacing science fiction novel. In Marquez's novel a sleepy town is plagued by technological advances, science instead of signifying a positive move towards modernity exists as a troublesome issue. Marquez even has a family member go mad in his own office trying to prove that by using theories in Alchemy he could turn stone and metals into gold. He let science and all its burden take over his life the same way Victor Frankenstein did. This association with Marquez's novel is one I didn't expect to see. The novel angel is also one that makes the text more real and feeling. The story isn't told from a all knowing narrator but mainly from Victor Frankenstein himself, a man grief stricken, alone and changed by one monster, his monster.
Victor seems to have fallen victim to the passion of glory and knowledge, to his own ingeniousness and discoveries. His scientific creation seems to be the burden that destroys all his happiness, the murders of his family and the grief related death of his father rest on his shoulders as the creator of the monster. At the same time one can fully be upset or angry at the monster, who is equally plagued by his monstrosity and seemingly destined solitude because of it. This kind of negative turn science takes in the novel is one that can be applied to our world now. Reading this book let me to think more about how many "monsters" have been released through the discovery of certain sciences. To think of the ozone layer disappearing, how we are destroying the worlds resources, how certain species are going extinct. Have we also created our own monsters. With the efforts to go green publicly I can only think of Victor Frankenstein and for the remorse he felt, and is going green our remorse for our monster. It seems that this association with science as a curse and a gift is one that can be applied to the world outside of Mary Shelly's world. How many monsters have we created, how many monsters have been let loose and are now getting their revenge on us?
Allow me to reintroduce myself...
Hi All,
My name is Aileen. I was born and raised in New York City, in Manhattan. I am now a junior in Trinity and am a International Comperative Studies Major and Spanish Double major. I took this course to have a new an interesting course aside from the typical Latin American courses I take. Gender and Digital culture caught my attention when thinking about the way one can be genderless online or have different forms of media which seem to be gender specific. Say for example video games. I love to play video games as a pass time, but it seems that most video games are intended for a male audience. This kind of gender specific audience is not only evident in the visuals of the video games, but as well the actual "missions" or "challenges" presented in games. Say for example in Grand Theft Auto the male character, which is the automatic character for every person playing can actively hire a female hooker. The male dominance that exists in modern media is one that I would like to further explore in this course. Not only do I find it in extreme situations like Grand Theft Auto, but it can also be found in as simple as a Mac commercial where only males represent both mac's and pc's.
Throughout this course I expect to learn more about technology and media, and the digital world that perhaps I have turned a blind eye too. I look forward to a different, fun, rewarding course for the fall.
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