Identity

  In the Turkle reading she speaks about Identity and how it can easily become blurred on the internet. She speaks about the different places (such as MUDs) where identity is so easily changed and manipulated that it is impossible to know who someone really is. The internet provides a place where people can recreate themselves. The socially lost and forgotten can become popular in their own online community, and physical appearance has absolutely no effect on a persons appearance on the screen. This blurring and shaping of identity can be a very good thing for people such as the boy who was able to start expressing his true self online and work on bringing out different parts of himself through his online avatar. He said that he was able to work on certain withdrawn characteristics of himself on the internet, then apply what he learned in the real world. In this way he was able to shape who he really was in the anonymous world of an online community. This is one way that internet forums and MUDs can be useful, but there are other more sinister ways the internet can effect people as well. For better or for worse, one guy was able to get out all of his anger and frustrations he accumulated in the real world by harassing and even cyber raping people on the internet. Due to the anonymity of chat rooms and MUDs, he could relieve his anger by taking it out on people he didnt know on the internet. He thinks it is beneficial because it does not actually hurt anyone physically, but this is uncertain. For someone who invests much of their time in their online avatar, to the point where the line between their online selves and real selves becomes hard to define, having their internet personae raped could be incredibly harmful psychologically. Turkle touches on this subject, but also moves on to other topics such as internet relationships. One man began talking with a person on the internet in a MUD and eventually they grew so attached that they decided to get married in the MUD. This not only effected the online world, but real people also "living" in the MUD got together at the server computer's location and physically celebrated. This is an odd concept, because while someone could be honestly portraying themselves in their online avatar, they could just as easily be a very motivated actor and be someone completely different. Without physically meeting someone it is nearly impossible to gain a complete and full understanding of them. And even meeting someone in real life doesnt allow you to know exactly who they are at first, if ever. Identity is a very strange thing when looked at through the lens of a researcher on the internet. Turkle talks about how someone can spend so many hours on an internet MUD that it can take over their real life, becoming more important to the person than the real world thats happening around them. As computers developed and advanced, people became able to leave their MUD online while they were at work and even sleeping, in this way people would never leave their online world, and their online character would practically take over their real life. While identity changing and being able to recreate one's self can prove beneficial in forging online relationships, it can be used in different ways as well.

          One example that comes to mind when I think of identity and the molding and shaping of it is Neil Patrick Harris' character on "How I Met your Mother". This is a great show and the character, "Barney", is hilarious. The reason I think of this show and Barney in particular is that Barney's main goal in life is to sleep with women, and he goes about this by creating insane stories about himself and essentially new "characters" whenever he is at a bar trying to meet a girl. He is all about sleeping with women and never speaking to them again, and he does this by rarely revealing his true identity. In one episode he pretends to be an astronaut going to space the next day, which makes a girl want to go home with him, since being an astronaut is pretty impressive I suppose. The point is, he recreates his identity each time as a way of staying anonymous in the real world, so that he does not gain too much of a reputation for his shenanigans. This relates directly to what Turkle talks about because essentially Barney does what people on these internet chat rooms and MUDs do all the time, make someone up, and become them to satisfy some sort of personal gain or desire. The experience does definitely change between being online and being in person, but if you are anonymous, as Barney is to the girls he meets, than you are able to do the same thing regardless of if its online or not. This last assignment we did on AIM was also an eye opener and brought up some new questions of identity. I was speaking with two people and I had no idea if who I was talking to was portraying their true selves or they were just putting on an act. It really made me question the honesty of the person I was speaking with, because while they were very cordial and nice on the chat, they could have been messing with me. My experience with this project was fairly low-key because I only chatted with my people a totally of about 5 times, but it was not too crazy of an experience.

          The main thing I realized through studying Turkle's readings and experiencing anonymous chat myself is that trust is the main thing that is distorted when dealing with virtual identities. It is impossible to trust somebody who you cannot see because reading someone's body language and hearing their tone is very important to forging a relationship. You can much better judge someone's validity when you are with them than when the only connection you have is text on a screen. It allows people to recreate themselves to be whomever they want. This can allow unsavory characters to trick unsuspecting MUD users or just chat room users into thinking they're someone nice when really they're devious and misleading. In this way, I believe MUDs can be either a good thing or a bad thing. They can either allow people to express their true selves without the binds of physical appearance or social reputation, or they can allow people to gain the trust of other internet users and then betray that trust in terrible ways like cyber rape or bullying.  But the internet still continues to grow, and though the days of MUDs are over, the future of the internet is social networking, so new dangers caused by identity uncertainty will just continue.

Flickr, the World Biggest and Most Intuitive Photo Album

Flickr is a prominent social networking website in cyberspace that allows users to share photos with friends, family, and other users. Recently, a storyboard was posted on Flickr mimicking major themes and features of the Grand Theft Auto video game series, however, the storyboard was photographed in Appleton Wisconsin as opposed to “San Andreas”.  The story begins with a picture of a girl sitting on a couch playing Xbox. The next few shots have an identical interface to the Grand Theft Auto series but the pictures aren’t computer generated. The photos depict a man taking another man out of his car, beating him, stealing seventy-five dollars, taking his car, and throwing the passenger out of the door. Afterwards, the man walks into the bank with two empty bags and a gun in the weapons logo. The next scene shows him walking out of the bank with two full bags and millions of dollars. The story ends with a girl walking away from the couch with an Xbox controller in the foreground. The story has numerous metaphors, such as anonymity in cyberspace as depicted by the girl becoming the man in the game.

            Flickr is an extremely user friendly website. Moreover, Flickr, is more than a website, its an online tool. Flickr has essentially become a massive online photo album. Personally, I have found it extraordinarily easy to use. Uploading photos, tagging, creating and editing sets all seems intuitive on Flickr, as if the late Steve Jobs played a role in its development. The Grand Theft Auto idea came from groupthink. The crew responsible for “Grand Theft Auto: Midwest City” wanted to photograph a story that parallels the progression of cyberspace, and the idea of having numerous personalities. Developments such as these can be seen in the idea of the story itself. It is a group of kids, rewriting a scene of Grand Theft auto, putting a unique spin on it, and sharing it with the world.

            PBS journalist Jennifer Woodward Maderazo came to similar conclusions about Flickr in her article “Flickr Changes Lives, Launches Photog Careers”.  She describes Flickr as a place where “bad photographers get schooled, mediocre ones get better and some even rise to the top as stars, all supported by an immense, and sometimes intimate, international community”. Maderazo also believes Flickr is more than a social networking site where friends can share pictures. The storyboard “Grand Theft Auto: Midwest City” is simply the tip of the iceberg. Akin to Maderazo’s beliefs, Flickr is a place for experimentation and an online destination for artists to develop their talents.

"Grand Theft Auto: Midwest City" can be found here.

Jennifer Woodward Maderazo's article here.

Suffering of artist

This week we watched a PBS documentary called  “Copyright Criminal” and it was one of the most interesting documentaries, I have watched and it was based on privacy and how individual takes the work of others without permission. This isn’t a surprise to us because we all do it intentional or unintentionally. In this documentary we heard many mixed music that are more interesting then the original music itself. Music has changed ever since the late 90s and it has been evolving with new music such as Hip Hop. Many hip-hop albums depended on samples to provide their rhythmic backbone. Artist and people who listen to music that aren’t sampled view sampling as cheap theft and would sue these individual for copyright. Technologies have advanced so much in our century that we can make great things. We can take a sound and make it into something that is great than what it was before. Artists are using these technologies to become a greater artist than they are and but when they are not careful. They become the victims of plagiarism.

One of my favorite Hip Hop artists is G-dragon (Kwon Ji Yong). He is a member of a Korean group called Big Bang and in August 18 2009 he released a solo album called Heartbreaker after few days he was questioned for plagiarism of the song. G-dragon’s heartbreaker sounded similar to Flo Rida’s ‘Right Round’ and G-dragon was going to be sued for copyright issue. The issue was resolved when the company in Korea that holds 50% to the copyright of the song ‘Right Round’ stated that the song Heartbreaker in whole does not sound like it was plagiarized.  The person in charged stated “We do not know if there is a part to the rap which sounds similar, and the climax and highlight to the song is different also. Also the melody to both songs is different.” Though this issue was resolved it became a big deal to the Korean community concerning copyright issue especially when another country is pointing the finger at them.  http://minsarang.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/news-plagiarism-by-gdragons-‘heartbreaker’-confirmed/.  When I personally listened to both the songs they sound nothing similar. This is one of the many cases out there which all artist face. Like they say everything come with a price and artist are one of the career field where they have to deal with plagiarism.

             In conclusion sampling shouldn't be illegal and artist in the hip hop world should be given the freedom to create new music out of the old ones and copyright issue should not rise every time one music sounds similar to another because if this keeps happening artists will be afraid to create new music and the hip hop world will slowly fade away due to fear. Here are the two videos that I have talked about in my example and you can judge for yourself if it was plagiarism or not.

How to Flickr

My Flickr Project
Flickr is an online photo organizer and media sharing application. The outline of the class project was for a group  to create a story, taking five to ten pictures telling that story, and then uploading those pictures onto Flickr.  The preparation was a simple task except for the ever changing schedules of college students. Once my group members and I got together we brainstormed ideas of what story should outline our pictures. The group that I was in was pretty easy going about what idea should be used so we came up with a suspenseful abduction. Taking the photos of the story was the next step in line. The pictures we ended up taking turned out pretty good, but now came the part of uploading these pictures onto Flickr.

                As I logged onto Flickr using the class account I had a generally bad feeling about the difficulty of uploading the photos  onto this site. To my disbelief I was terribly wrong. Once logged into Flickr they had a huge “upload picture button,” to the right of the screen. From there I clicked on the button which led me to the next page where I uploaded my photos in a blink of an eye. The process of uploading my pictures onto Flickr was easier than I thought. In all my photos I tagged the people within my group. I did this because it shows ownership of the picture and who is all present in the picture itself. Another reason why someone might tag a person in a picture would be so that person could be notified to look at the picture.

                Flickr is an effective tool in creating user-generated content along with the ability to quickly share with others. The use of Flickr has unlimited options starting with having your own content uploaded on the internet in one space. Flickr gives  upcoming artists and photographers the starting point they need to being their careers. As people look at their photos these viewers can comment on them and give feedback, to what could be better or to simply compliment the artist. The second tool that Flickr allows is the ability to share a person’s photos  with  anyone. Take for example a son who just took off for college and wanted to show his parents what he was up to. Well by uploading pictures to Flickr the two parties can view and share photos with each other almost instantly.  The many directions Flickr gives to a user is the reason why this website is an up an coming tool in many households.

Flickr Fun – Attack of the Purple Dragon

Plot

The story took place on October 13^th, 2011, when four students, Alex, Erik, Evan and He, were walking around the haunted campus. They should have noticed that there was much less people on campus than usual, but they did not. The group dropped He at the grill since he felt extremely hungry. On the same evening, in front of the Science Hall, one student found a bike that was violently smashed to the ground. It was clear that the person who was riding the bike was missing in an unnatural manner.

Suddenly, everything was dark for just one second. A student who was accidentally observing the moon saw a huge dark shadow. It looked enormous, and we never know where that student went.

Alex, Erik and Evan were laughing loudly, until they saw a huge shadow charging towards them. Panic and fear, confusion and worry, shock and awe, dead or alive. The three guys ran for their lives, but unfortunately, Evan was caught by the monster.

He, not knowing what had happened, was walked down to Main Hall, hoping to make some copies of his worksheet. He accidentally picked up a wand, and realized that the Purple Dragon was sitting on top of Main Hall and glancing at him. His wizardry finally helped him and, after a deadly battle, He defeated the dragon. Purple Dragon silently yet violently flew around the sky and disappeared in the night sky.

Next day, the Lawrentian reported He’s action as “heroic” and Lawrence was saved from the threat of Purple Dragon. Whether it is still planning to come out of Twitter again is unclear.

For the photo slide show, click here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68302494@N06/sets/72157627747755145/show/

In her article “Flickr changes lives, launches photog careers”, Jennifer W. Maderazo states that Flickr is “a sandbox for experimentation”. Some describe Flickr as a new “toy”, probably due to its flexibility. Flickr, in this sense, is a conventional signal since it allows everyone to make a story by simply uploading few pictures.

Descriptions were used to facilitate the viewers’ understanding about the storyline. Tagging was also thought-provoking since it challenged our creativity in making connection between our pictures and words that we encounter in daily life. For instance, we tagged the fighting scene with the word “Lawrence Vikings”, just to make a connection that it was a fight for the entire College, not for self-interest. Also, we tagged Evan’s “cast”, which explicitly shows the sacrifice and the absurdity that a belonging becomes ones’ identity after their death.

Although it took a little time to figure out how to organize the sets, the use of Flickr was straight forward. However, what caught my attention was that it does not provide any editing tools or filters that allow the uploaders to manipulate their images. All editing had to be done before uploading the image. It sounds a little illogical that a tool that evokes the concept of public journalism has no editing tool in it.

            Not only for photo footage, Flickr can be used as a photo ‘bank’, since the pictures uploaded can be only shown to the uploader. In this way, people who think their camera already has too many pictures in it can store their pictures online. Similarly, description section can transform photos into visual diaries. On the other hand, the tagging tool enables some to become trolls because they can tag some irrelevant images with widely used tags. Thus, just like any online tool, Flickr should be used with etiquette and consciousness.

The Threat of "The Noble Amateur"

             In his writing The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen insists on the danger of “the noble amateur” and argues that these amateurs are “killing our culture”.

As an antonym to “the dictatorship of expertise”, the noble amateurs are those who are valued for their contribution and knowledge in a particular field even if they have received no formal training. It is an incarnation of democracy on the Internet.

However, Keen strongly opposes to the establishment of the concept of the noble amateur. He suggests that “a radically democratic culture is hardly conductive to scholarship of to the creation of wisdom”, and we are living “in a highly specialized society”. He proposes the absurdity of so-called democracy in which amateurs’ spontaneous opinions can surpass experts’ logical analyses. Thus, he sees the amateurism would liquidize our culture and wisdom and eventually destroy them.

Keen raised examples such as Wikipedia, citizen journalism and disappearance of books to explain how these elements threaten our culture. The Japanese mobile phone novel, (keitai shosetsu) “Koizora” (Love of Sky), which brought a huge discussion on the internet, is no exception. Written by an ‘amateur’ novelist Mika, Koizora depicts complexly intertwined human relationships and social taboos including rape, unexpected pregnancy, miscarriage and fatal diseases. As the novel became more famous among the young female, some mass media started to pick up its idiosyncrasy. Mika’s amateurism as a novelist brought a lot of controversies, such as her use of language, which was very simple and sometimes perceived as uneducated. Her lack of knowledge about miscarriage and cancer was also subject to disparagement.

Yet, millions of readers were drawn to Koizora, which indicates that it was a cultural movement. More ‘amateur’ novelists, thinking that they can follow the same path as Mika did, would produce tons of works that somewhat resemble Koizora. With more readers, mobile phone novels can be misleading and they can provide wrong image of how a society is like. For instance, recently, mass media put more focus on sexual crimes in Japan, and Koizora also depicts many incidents of raping, as if these can happen in reality. However, according to the survey conducted by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC), the number of incidents for rape is actually dropping in the years of 2003 to 2008. (Refer to: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-statistics/Sexual_violence_sv_against_children_and_rape.xls) In addition, Koizora is described as a fiction that is based on a real life story, which can exacerbate its extent of fabrication.

In conclusion, the noble amateurs can direct the general opinion away from the truth and, as Keen’s apprehension suggests, destroy our wisdom. As the noble amateurs are celebrated, we have to be more cautious about any conventional signals that they send out.

Culture of "Simulation" - interraction and adaptation

In her writing Life On The Screen, Sherry Turkle continuously reminds us the concept of computer being a culture of “simulation”. She contrasts the word “calculation” to “simulation” (19), and she describes how the computer was first thought to be a recessive “machine” but now, with all desktop interfaces, is an “organism” that can create “fluidity” and “interaction”.

It is certainly an argument with supportive evidences. Computers were first designed as a huge apparatus that can only solve somewhat complicated mathematical equations. They were not expected to deviate from providing the correct answer and their responses were absolute and rigid. How about now? Computers are constantly generating something unexpected. The internet was first planned to be an emergent system for governmental use when the nuclear war break out. But instead it turned its back against the government by slowly replacing the politically affiliated mass media such as televisions and newspapers.

We can even further argue that computer is sometimes uncontrollable due to its ability to generate unpredictable results. We make robots. Robots need a set of programming done in order to function properly. While ‘robot’ is a word often used to describe someone doing repetitive works without thinking, how do we actually know that robots would not generate any unexpectedness? A Youtube video posted by Cornell Creative Machine Lab caught my attention recently:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is programmed by humans. In this video, the two AIs started to lie to the opponent and even used some irony to attack the opponent's comments. The bots are, therefore, so advanced now that they can (or at least attempt to) deceive each other. Did the programmers expect this? It clearly says in the uploader’s comment that programmers “certainly never expected this...”, which confirms Sherry Turkle’s expectation that intelligence emerges “from the interactions of small subprograms” (20).

As one of the comments say, the two AIs are “ADAPTING”. Adaptation means changes, not amorphous, and evolution. Sherry Turkle’s view of computer being a culture of “simulation” is, thus, confirmed by a recent real life demonstration.