What is the attraction of alternate realities like Second life?

In the words of Godin Second life lets players “find their tribe”(TED2009 2009) be it vampires, sports fanatics or single people looking for dates, all kinds of groups exist in second life and players can communicate and form relationships within the virtual reality game. Unlike real life people in second life represent themselves through self-constructed avatars enabling then to project the image they wish people to see.

Second life has its own currency which can be exchanged for real money (Linden 2011) therefore people can get real paying jobs, buy clothes, houses, attend events, learn, invent, create etc through the virtual environment. Therefore it is possible to make money from second life to support your real life.

Therefore it could be said that alternate realities like second life allow people to transcend their physical location and embodiment and in order to live in an virtual world, although as Malpas points out this doesn’t “release from the limitations of embodiment” (Malpas 2009) in the real world. In order to contribute to this online society users still need to operate a form of ICT of some description, therefore second life doesn’t replace real life it just an alternative way for people to connect and to contribute to their tribe.

 Linden, R. 2011. How to sell Linden dollars. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/How-to-sell-Linden-dollars/ta-p/1018151 (accessed 16/11/11).

Malpas, J. 2009. On the Non-Autonomy of the Virtual. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 15 (2): 135-139. http://con.sagepub.com (accessed

TED2009. 2009. Seth Godin on the tribes we lead. TED Ideas worth Spreading.

3.3 How do you use Facebook? Do you chat? Update? Link? Share? Poke? Create fake profiles?

I'm on Facebook. I update my status occasionally, chat with friends and upload photos. I've created a group around the production of a short film my husband was involved in making as a way of keeping in touch with all our new contacts and I have also created a fake profile for an art unit I studied last year. The unit was called Art and Creativity and the assignment was to think of  "100 things to do with a bucket" - my bucket gained a persona and joined Facebook.

I found it interesting to read about Facebook as a performance (Westlake 2008) as I find that I tend to "perform" or alter my personality more to suit the face to face interactions of a work environment than I do on my Facebook profile.

Office jobs require professionalism that in turn, I feel, requires you to keep parts of your personality under wraps. For example - in work life you should ignore the rude comments of a customer and tolerate the nasty witch you sit next to in order to maintain and air of professionalism, keep the peace and get the job done.

While on Facebook you can unfriend people you don't like, or hide their comments, and choose the things about yourself that you want to let people know. Facebook is a social performance while professionalism could be explained as a corporate one. Or maybe this is more reflective of my desire to avoid confrontation which according to Westlake is a typical attribute of Generation Y. (Westlake 2008 p 37)

Westlake, E. J. 2008. Friend Me if You Facebook Generation Y and Performative Surveillance. Project Muse 52 (4): 21-40. https://auth.lis.curtin.edu.au/cgi-bin/auth-ng/walkin.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmuse.jhu.edu%2Fjournals%2Fthe_drama_review%2Fv052%2F52.4.westlake.pdf (accessed 14/11/11).

online journalism stands to alter dramatically the traditional role of the reporter and editor" (Harper, 2003, p. 272) Do you agree? Why?

I think this question boils down to the trustworthiness of the reporter.  The online environment allows for anyone with an internet connection to become a citizen journalist and report news – be it on a blog, Twitter, Facebook or submitting an article to the Huffington Post. But does having the ability to broadcast news necessarily make you a trustworthy news source?

The Media Alliance Code of Ethics describes the fundamental principles of journalism as the “respect for truth and the publics right to information” and that journalist commit themselves to “honesty, fairness and independence”. Their 12 bullet points on what makes an ethical journalist cover things such as “striving for accuracy”, “giving a fair opportunity for reply”, “attributing a source” and not allowing “personal internet, or any believe, commitment, payment, gift of benefit, to undermine accuracy, fairness or independence”(Media Alliance Code of Ethics  2005). All of which relate to the gathering of information and the telling of a story, not on medium used to present it to a wider audience.

Harper also touches on this in the reading quoting computer consultant Leah Gentry as saying “It took a while for radio and TV journalists to discover how to use the strengths of their particular media to tell stories. On the web, we have the same challenge” (Harper 2003)p 276. Here Gentry doesn’t see role of the journalist as different in the online environment, the underlying fundamentals remain the same.

Therefore overall I would say that I don’t agree with the above statement as it is still the role of reporters (be it journalist or citizen journalist) and editors to gather information and check facts in order to present news to an audience. The online environment doesn’t change this; it just means that there are more places for news to be consumed and more opportunity for ethical journalists and editors to rise to the top as trustworthy sources of information.

Harper, C. 2003. Journalism in a Digital Age. Democracy and new media: 271-280. lms.curtin.edu.au/@@59FE5910C5E0F0C6A9542F9A2E4F0BF9/courses/1/312160-Vice-Chancello-935083018/db/_2975043_1/embedded/Christopher%20Harper.pdf (accessed 7/11/11).

  Media Alliance Code of Ethics. 2005. http://www.alliance.org.au/information-centre/media/view-category (accessed 8/11/11)

1.2 Notes: Four puzzles from cyber space (Lessig 2006)

In this article Lessig discusses some of the defining features of cyber space. Some points I have taken from this article are:

• People can manufacture and control their identity in cyber space. You can choose who you want to be, what you look like, rewrite your history,  live out fantasy, explore different parts of your personality and form relationships based on differing attributes and circumstances from that of the offline environment.
  As Lessig states "they appear (in a form they select, with qualities they choose and biographies they have written)" (Lessig 2006) and while is true in many aspects of internet life (such as in MMOG's, writing blogs or fan fiction) it does not really represent the current trend of representing your actual identity online through social media sites such as Facebook (presumable because this article was written in 2006 before its mass popularity). While it is true that we present a "version" of our real selves on social media sites (one that is fit for public display) it is not one that is completely fictional as presenting a fantasy persona to online friends that know you in offline reality is difficult to maintain. I think social media sites such as Facebook blur the lines between online and offline life,  the real and the virtual and challenges the idea of having complete control over your identity in the online world.

• Community: Cyberspace allows people to form groups around a common interest that is not bound by physical location or local and cultural custom. You no need to rely on those who live close to you to share your interests, you can do so online and find people form all over the world to chat to about it.
   
• Cyberspace is global and as such is difficult to regulate as each country has its own set of laws. Crimes can be committed in an online environment (such as music or movie piracy or virtual child pornography) but even if the laws in every country on earth agrees that that these are punishable offences - the guilty parties are difficult to track and therefore difficult to persecute.
  Lessig discuss allowing governments to use "worms" to scan  the content of personal computers for illegal content. This would mean that government could view items on personal computers without first informing the computers owners that they were doing it. This brings up debate about personal privacy and also raises a questions again about identity. Even if illegal content was on a personal computer how governments prove who put it there?

• On the flip side and back again to the example of MMOG's - cyberspace allows people to create their own rules. They can defy the rules of nature (such as having the ability to fly or to come back to life) and can form the laws that govern the online space that they inhabit. The people who write the code define what is and what is not achievable in cyberspace, and those who can manipulate the code can wield the most control over their virtual environment.

 Lessig, L. 2006. Four puzzles from cyber space. https://www.socialtext.net/codev2/four_puzzles_from_cyberspace (accessed 7/9/11).

 

1.1 Activity 1: Tell me about your digital self. What online media sites do you engage with? Provide a map of your online lives.

For me the internet is a space where I can keep up to speed with things in both Australia and my husbands home country of Wales. I read the Sydney Morning Herald online while listening to Welsh radio while the news headlines from the BBC UK RSS feed scrolls along the bottom of my browser window.

Skype has been invaluable asset for keeping in touch with the overseas in-laws and the rest of the family - in fact at Christmas time the family and I Skyped my bother who was in Canada and sat the laptop on the table so he could be involved in Christmas lunch. It kind of felt like we were in the movie Back to the Future but without the flying cars or hovering skateboards!

I tried twitter but didn't like it much and although I do check it every day I am falling out of love with Facebook as reading about peoples trip to the shops, bad driving and what they ate for lunch today really isn't cutting for me at the moment. I can however while away hours on YouTube - this is my favorite time waster of the moment... 

Also -  thanks to NET102 I now while away hours on blip.fm finding and listening to music.

I  shop online, learn online  and work for an online store yet still do not feel as if  I am an overly plugged-in person as I do not have a iPhone  - so once I am away from my desk I am free of on-line connection. My digital self is very much about being present when it suits me, not about being accessible any given time.