Social netwroks and the end of the world (as we know it)

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Social networking is the end of the world as we know it. At least that's what I think The New Zealand Herald is trying to tell me.
A July 13 article reports on the results of a Pew Research Centre survey about the internet's predicted influence on social relations over the next ten years. 85% of respondents believed that the internet would improve social relationships.

Doc Searls is part of that 85%:

"Hatred and distrust between groups have caused countless wars and suffering beyond measure," Searls said.

"Anything that helps us bridge our differences and increase understanding is a good thing."

Although Searl is speaking about the internet in general, The Herald lumps his statement in with "Mark Zuckerberg's belief that the internet and social media will bring the world closer".

Searl's quote recalls Vincent Mosco's discussion of the myths of "history-ending technology". Technologies ranging from the radio to the television were proposed to enable better social understanding (and even world peace) by crossing divisions of class, race and geography.

Many discussions about the potential of the internet forget that its technological precursors failed to ultimately transcend these divisions and end history as we know it. This is important to keep in mind, but should not stop us from being optimistic about the internet's ability to increase the civility of our interactions with people we don't know.

Will social networking services turn myth into reality? If social networks are to increase understanding amongst disparate groups, it must first bring these groups together.

Facebook is a largely civil communication environment, but focuses on connecting people who meet outside of Facebook. deviantART connects people for the first time, but these connections are defined by mutual creative interests. Both websites minimise the contact between disparate groups, lowering the opportunity for discussing differences.

Perhaps ten years could make all the difference. By building on Facebook's civil communication environment and letting any user answer questions and rate answers, Facebook Questions could start to increase understanding between differing strangers.

History tells us we should be both wary and optimistic about technological myths. It won't be such a big deal if the social networks myths are wrong - by that time we'll have all moved on to the next myth ;)

Internet pornography

It is no surprise that pornographic sites on the internet in the past few years made pornographic contents widely available to anyone regardless of age with access to the WWW. Because of the high availability and large quantity of online pornography, many parents fear cyberporn will cause greater social harm than traditional forms of pornographic materials such as magazines, DVD and so on. Concerns about explosion of cybersex have given rise to a moral panic (McMurdo 1997). So, it is reasonable to expect that exposure to the highly interactive internet pornography may exert a greater influence upon adolescent and children permissive sexual attitudes and behavior. According to the some experimental research, the influence of exposure to internet pornography was greater than that of exposure to traditional forms of pornographic contents. Indeed, young children and adolescent have to be protected from those harmful pornographic contents.

I guess many people believe that regulation is the only solution to protecting children from cyberporn. But, internet is hard to regulate or control. Moreover, it is unclear to define what the porno is and who is responsible? Some people might think that porno is an art but some do not. For adult entertainment industry, it could be a serious business for them. We need to consider the difference between harmful material such as sexually explicit and illegal material such as child pornography.

In my opinion, so far, the best answer for the censoring internet pornography is the conjunction of self-regulation and new technology such as filtering or censoring software and rating systems. Also, awareness actions for parents and teachers are crucial. From now on, we have to find out something less restrictive ways to protect child without infringing on the rights of adult such as the applications of newly developed illicit content filtering technology.

Mediated Communication and Relationship-Forming: Speed, Brevity, and Consideration

In a recent discussion on whether technology makes relationship-forming easier or harder, views seemed noticeably opposed. On one side of the argument stood the fact that highly mediated communication deprives exchanges of the sense of intimacy which is so important to developing a relationship. On the other stood the fact that mediation allows for more considered communication which, it was argued, can be critical in the preservation of a relationship.

Any communication other than a face-to-face conversation arguably becomes more mediated, and thus deprived of intonation, body language, and other aspects so conducive to intimacy. Such communication, however, also becomes less immediate. This has the important benefit (although some would debate whether this is truly beneficial) of allowing one to consider one's words, and decide on the best course of action before pursuing communication further. This allows for emotions to subside, arguments to be reconsidered, and for more eloquence than may otherwise be possible.

In this respect New Media offers little new. Written language as a from of communication has been with us for a considerably long time. What is perhaps a striking novelty of New Media in this regard, however, is the incessant brevity of mediated communication. Emails are typically shorter than letters, and no other exchange would naturally be confined to one hundred and sixty characters.

With this brevity comes also an increased speed of communication; text messages, for example, can be sent back and forward at a rate which gives the illusion (if not the reality) of a fluent conversation. This speed of exchange leads one to question whether communication technology is truly being used to its full potential (or any potential) of allowing for more considered communication. It may simply be the case that while communication technology affords us the opportunity to consider our communication, the social expectations that are concomitant with this technology demand a faster and faster rate of communication, leading to messages being sent with little thought. Who, after all, thinks as much when sending a text message as when sending a letter?

"Think of the Children!"

There is no doubt about how the internet has altered the way in which relationships are formed and how we interact with each other, yet it seems that the general consensus is that the mass distribution of internet porn is purely bad for you. Negative terms like ‘addiction’ and ‘epidemic’ are frequently used to describe the attitude towards internet pornography. Dr. Phil’s free online relationship advice says that users of internet pornography reflect behavior that is “perverse and ridiculous intrusion…it is an insult, it is disloyal and it is cheating”, which is very much the typical conservative view that is regularly reinforced in popular media. Aside from the raging conservatives who claim pornography is ruining adult relationships, the major concerns are related to the vast accessibility and distribution of child pornography as well as the readily available explicit material to anyone at any age material that many critics argue to be corrupting society’s morale. It is easy to blame the internet when increasingly younger digital natives are exposed to such content that feminists against often argue perpetuate the objectification of women and create unrealistic expectations and standards of beauty.

Pornographic materials are merely illusions; fantasies that temporarily fulfill human sexual urges by the repeated act of downloading, watching and fornication. How is this any different from women or men fantasizing about other women or men during sexual intercourse with their partners? Perhaps for some, oblivion is bliss. Despite the allegations against pornography, there are couples who watch porn together to maintain a healthy sexual relationship and marriages that have been saved by allowing mutual playful experimentation. Recent findings by Milton Diamond regarding the correlation between the use of pornography and the reduction in sex-related crimes have also sparked many enthusiasts. Through research on jailed rapists and non-rapists, Diamond discusses relationship between the widespread of pornography and decrease in sex crimes that suggests that recreational users of pornography in its entirety allows for harmless diversion; no STDs, no infidelity and no ‘morning after’ scares. The studies found that many high sex offenders were the ones who had a strict and repressive religious up-bringing, whereby the surveyed rapists and child molesters were found to have consumed significantly less porn than the control group of normal males. Maybe easy access to porn isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Racism in Suicide girls

A site which features soft-core photos and profiles of young women of gothic and punk style who are known as Suicide girls.

The article from the suicide girls mentions the issue of racism which is present within the site; it seemed interesting enough to see how women of different racial groups were commented differently from those of Caucasian groups which were commented just as strong and feisty.

Women of Asian identity are described as exotic and doll like figure while women of African identity are described as the ones with soulful eyes and full lips.

Lisa Nakamura argues in her article 'erasing @race she says that the default ethnicity is set to white on most MUDs. This can be applied to the fact that women’s other than those of Caucasian racial groups seems to be alienated and perceived differently by the users within the suicide girl’s community, and the fact that racist comments made by the members are largely ignored.

This site shows dominance of the whiteness and how in a world of 21^st century there are still racism occurring and how it has transferred from physical world to online world seems

surprising, and the acceptance of the equality of race still have a long path to travel in both offline and online world.

Youth culture and Porn.

I think what worries me most about these images all over the internet, is how they are effecting the psyche of the digital natives. It seems these days that hyper sexualized images and youth culture go hand in hand. Now don't get me wrong, I am not denying that when I was 13 I was worried about what boys thought of me, but I wasn't plagued with all this pressure to compete for boys attention with sluts on the internet.

If I did anything stupid to get their attention, like wear a way to revealing top (lets face it I would have) at least no one had a camera at the party to take a photo of me and post it around the internet. There wasn't facebook, or bebo, or even myspace.

These days it seems like teenage girls think in order to get boys to look at their pages they have to live up to the rest of the content on the internet. The amount of young girls who are posting 'slutty' pictures of themselves on the internet is getting creepy. Its like these girls have the if you can't beat 'em join 'em mentality, what these girls aren't being reminded of is how these images of themselves can backfire. Once upon a time you did something stupid as a teen, and eventually people would forget about it... These days once its on the internet it is impossible to know what has happened to that information, has some else copy and pasted it? when will it come back to bite you in arse?

Perhaps this could be blamed on the parents and schooling systems? If children were told at school how these images could be used, would it make a difference? I find it terrifying to think of the way that these kids and girls especially seem to think that in order to show how mature you are you need to post a picture of them posing suggestively. I'm just grateful that the internet didn't offer a platform for me to represent myself as a 13 yo because who knows what would be lingering out there, waiting for the right time to embarrass me on a huge scale.

I was watching 20/20 a few weeks ago and there was a story on a famous New Zealand sexologist.She mentioned that 1 in 25 New Zealanders are not comfortable approaching a boy or a girl without being under the influence of alcohol and have never slept with someone while they were sober. While this is sad it made me think how easy it would be for those people to go online and find love. Like Luke mentioned in class the computer screen is a somewhat shield for people who have low self esteem and don't have the confidence to get out and be themselves infront of the opposite or same sex.
There are so many different kids of love/chat websites today that everyone can find their other half, or someone for a shorter amount of time to be happy with. There are different blogs, chatrooms and websites for every fetish you can possibly think of such as 'gothic love' and a whole lot more. Lets face it theres a lot of wierd stuff in todays world.
I came across a website when I did a little bit of research on chat rooms and found one where you can pick brides from Russia and Ukraine to marry. You can pick her pay for her visa and ticket to New Zealand (or any other counrty)and marry her. Sort of like internet shopping. in the website it says that Russian women over 30 have a hard time finding a husband and this is their only way of finding love and someone stable to be with and spend the rest of their life with. The cost to keep your profile on the website sort of looks like the setting (way of payment) like trademe, depending on how long you want your profile on there for or until someone buys one for marrige. For some men this might be ideal and an easy way to find a women to spend his life with. But at the end of the day could you really spend the rest of your life with someone you bought online or with someone who bought you online? do those marriges succeed or fail ?

http://lovelybrides.w-ru.com

Excuse me, are you a Cyborg?

Wearable Keyboard

Are we all cyborg nowadays?

Or the question should be alter to : What makes us to be defined as cyborg?

Does carrying gadgets make me a cyborg?

or does using new media technology makes me a cyborg?

Those are the questions that generated in my mind when the term cyborg hit my mind.

But the core question that i am really trying to answer is still : what makes us to be defined as cyborg.

Here's my general definition of cyborg to begin with:

cyborg as a discourse of technology that is developed to help with human's deficiency and limitation.

In my opinion, being a 'cyborg' does not carry any negative connotations, e.g: geek, techno-crazy etc. Having multiple gadgets and technology assistance in your life doesn't make you a cyborg either. What really define us as a cyborg rely on the discursive discourses that are behind it. For example, the humanism discourse supporter will claim that they are not cyborgs because they believe in the notion of human-nature, where human should celebrate what they are born and given with, but not trying too hard to invent something that is outside of the scope of human nature.

What i am trying to argue is that, by enjoying the conveniences and benefits that the new media technology brought us does not make us a cyborg; rather, is the way how we are using it to reconstruct our capability as human. I would suggest that new media technologies, especially those ones that extent our limitation and provide a remedy for human deficiency, could be considered in the notion of cyborg. This is because technologies like such, have shifted away from what our human nature can do, by extending or providing a remedy to our limitation and deficiency. For instance, the article by Kingsley Dennis talk about how neuro-technology is going to be the new trend, where thoughts and ideas of the citizen might be surveilled with the introduction of neuro-technology. This is what i regarded as extended human limitation or deficiency, where new media technology achieve something where human body are not capable of.

Cyborg to me, is more like a notion than a physical being, e.g: those robotic monster-like creature that we always get in the sci-fi movie genre. What define us as a cyborg is our relationship with new media technology, but not with all the gadgets that we owned or equipped.

In turn, the notion of cyborg is rather contested. We have all these gadgets that we use on a daily basis that serves the purpose of extending our human capability to do something that is outside of what our body can normally achieve. For example: Cellphones that enable us to talk to someone that is miles away from us and so on. In my perspective, the fact of how we uses it to achieve incredible result that our normal body will not be able to is the part that associate us with the notion of cyborg.