Avatar is a record-breaking film containing awesome 3D effects and made my eyes think they were really in a breathtaking tropical planet.  The story line is wonderful and the emotional content is superb but Avatar is just a typical Hollywood production in gender representation because Avatar dichotomizes it.  When viewing the movie, I couldn't help but notice that the people who were out exploring, running and fighting in Pandora were almost all men. 

This is almost forgivable because the military is mostly made up of men, however the movie shows the leadership positions among the humans and Na'vi occupied almost exclusively by males.  In the movie, men are adventurous and fun loving but women tend to passively experience the planet and do not have such a sense of fun and excitement.  This movie portrays men as cutters (adventurous and active learners) and idolizes this mind-set.  Women are seen as the non-cutters (non-adventurous and learn passively).  This is a stain on an otherwise good film and unrealistically dichotomizes the sexes.

The main character, Jake, is especially of interest because he has the opportunity to live a second life in an avatar.  Jake is an adventurous character who became a cripple because of an injury on earth.  He dreams of flying over jungle and forest in complete freedom however his crippled body harshly remind him of reality.  In his avatar he is able to experience the joy of swinging through the trees and have enormous agility and athletic freedom in real life. 

In real life, our bodies are a part of our identities and limit its free expression.  On our homepages we have to ability to choose what we want to be rather than having our identities given to us by others.  Jake's avatar is not a digital being but his situation is similar because his identity is what he desires it to be.  Jake's avatar allows him to express his true self and enables him to be physically adventurous rather than just mentally so. 

Charles Cheung argues that homepages allow people to more freely create and express their identities in his essay "Identity Construction and Self-Presentation" when he states:

The distinctive medium of characteristics of the personal homepage allow net users to become active-cultural producers, expressing their suppressed identities or exploring the significant question of ' who I am', often in ways which may not otherwise be possible in 'real' life.

 (Cheung, p. 274)

Cheung also observed that homepages are under the control of users and they actively construct their new online identities (Cheung, p. 275).  Jake did not choose the characteristics of his avatar and it was not even modeled after him, but after his dead brother.  It was just luck that his avatar allowed him to express his true self.  Even though, his avatar was not modeled after him, it allowed him to pursue a second life far better than any homepage will because his avatar itself is in real life and is not a fictitious construct.

Avatar is seen by most to be a classic, but it is not a classic in the sense in that it dichotomizes gender like most other movies.  The relationship between Jake and his avatar parallel that between the Internet user and her homepage because it allows him to express his true identity in another world, however his avatar or new identity was constructed by others.

Bibliography:

Cheung, Charles (2007). Identity Construction and Self-Presentation. In D. Bell and B. M. Kennedy (Ed.), The Cybercultures Reader (2nd Ed.). London and New York: Routeledge



We are not the Machine

The computer is a daunting and complex piece of technology which is very prone to seemingly unfixable errors.  This is not a message that Dell wants to send to users and like all companies gives a utopian view of their products.

This is a picture of a Dell computer, is made in the hope that people will buy their computers and is part of a website that is dedicated to selling their computers http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-mini1018/pd.  Deborah Lupton expresses this tactic when she asserted, "The overt reasons for portraying computers as humans is to reduce the anxieties of computer phobia that many people, particularly adults, experience" (p. 428).  Computers are seen by many to be scary and so computer people's humanizing of them relieves much fear.  Dell attempts to seel a brand of laptop called the New Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook by using such terms like "battery life," "the Inspiron™ Mini 10 lets you," and "perfect travel companion."  Dell boasts how "lightweight" this computer is (Dell). 

Lupton sees this sort of description as a sign of how much the borders between we humans and our computers are become blurred.  She thinks that because computers are treated almost as individuals, we are becoming a part of them and they are becoming part of us (p. 423).  Her view is exaggerated and in fact people have very little emotional connection with their computers.  This explains why people are constantly throwing out their old computers and getting newer more modern ones.  To most people, they are simply machines and nothing more. 

In chemistry, atoms are sometimes referred to as individuals so people can beome more comfortable with them and learn how they work.  This sort of simplification is preferable to attempting to explain atomic theory in all its complexity to users who know next to nothing about it.  We form emotional bonds with our computers like we form emotional bonds with our houses or cars, however our identities are hardly changed and our bonds are simply emotional.

This course helps me understand digital technology in a far deeper sense than just knowing how computers function and how to use and program them.  We as a nation must be aware of the directions technology can go and we must decide how we wish to use technology.  The way we understand technology is seen though the eyes of our culture.  I now see technology more objectively and outside the bounds of my culture.  For example I learned that Japanese people see the Internet more as a tool for accomplishing things in real life rather than something that disconnects us from real life (p. 759).  This concept was elaborated by Adriana Silva in the Cibercultural Reader.

I wish that this course was more about understanding computers rather than simply writing  and talking about them, however I absolutely cannot say that I have taken nothing away from it.

Bibliography:

Dell. Advertisement. Satisfies Even Your Most Avid Tweeter. Dell. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-mini1018/pd.

Silva, Adriana De Souza E. "From Cyber To Hybrid." The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Lupton, Deborah. "The Embodied Computer/User." The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Vital Pegs

Have you ever seen political news on the Internet that shocked you and sparked a desire to debate with someone about it?  Often there are few opportunities in the real world to discuss the issues, however there are many on the web.  That is why I inhabit a website called volconvo.com in which I can have respectful debates with a diverse group of people over politics, culture, philosophy, and religion.  On this forum popular debate topics and debaters come and go.  I usually debate a topic, become bored with it, and then go on to another topic. 

I do not know the people I debate with very well so our relationships are short and transient.  Some like Z. Bauman may accuse websites such as Volconvo as being peg communities and in most cases they are.  Bauman thinks that peg communities are places where people temporarily discuss things that they are interested in.  Their relationships with other users are ephemeral (p. 257).  Bell argues that we need pegs and such things are good to discuss.  He compares relationships on these sites to the marriage contract.  These relationships are only continued as long as they satisfy the participants (p. 258). 

Having a weak relationship with the people I debate on the forum is helpful because debates are less personal.  It is more comfortable to logically destroy some stranger on the Internet than to it is to shoot down the arguments of people you know personally face to face.  I find that most conversations in real life consist of small talk and can be compared to Bauman's analogy of pegs.  In small talk, topics come and go and people discuss their personal matters and other transient things.  Small talk is worth participating in because it is interesting, fun, and connects you with people.  Small talk is just as appropriate on the web as it is in real life and this is why I take the side of Bell on the issue of peg communities on the web.

In assignment #2, I will be discussing http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.ebay.com/, and http://www.half.ebay.com/.  Because they are great resources to buy and sell.  I compare these sites to buy textbook and have gotten myself wonderful deals.  They have slight differences and it will be informative and fun to compare and analyse them. 

Bell, D. 2007. Webs as Pegs. In D. Bell and B. M. Kennedy (Ed.), The Cybercultures Reader (2nd Ed.) (pp. 254-263). London and New York: Routeledge

Yahoo! Unchanged

Yahoo is worse than a drug. It is so harmful because it is so convenient and fun. I have wasted hundreds perhaps thousands of hour surfing the Internet, reading news stories about things that don't matter at all, and playing stupid games on the pestilence that is Yahoo!. Yahoo! also hasn't changed much and continues to be the addicting time waster that it has always been. Web theory: an introduction by Robert Burnett and P. David Marshall analyses the web and uses Yahoo! as a case study. Their analysis was first published in 2003 about seven years ago (p. iv), but their summary of Yahoo! is just as correct now as it was then. They claim that Yahoo! is dominated by text and these text are meant to categorize (p. 97). To this extend they are correct. They also claim that Yahoo! has a grey background (p. 97). This is incorrect today because Yahoo! now has a white background.

Burnett and Marshall claim that Yahoo! tries to promote a spirit of freedom and enthusiasm (p. 96), and this is obviously true especially when you look at the image to the left. These authors also claim that Yahoo! is a site dominated by hyperlinks which lead the user to other pages (p. 97). This is true because Yahoo! is not only covered by blue text that carries the user from news to games to e-mail and to searches, but there are even icons we users can click to get these same options.

In my mind I tried to compare Yahoo! to something that is digital but this is so difficult because Yahoo! does so much. It is like a newspaper, a dictionary, a telephone, and a game room. The visual themes of Yahoo! may have changed a little but it is pretty much the same and is just as addictive.

1. Burnett, Robert and P. David Marshall. Web Theory: an introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.