If Frankenstein was a better father figure, we wouldn't be in this mess!

Heya everyone,

Like Emma, I thought I lucked out of doing this, so you’ve all waited a long time but here’s my summary of Catherine Waldby’s The Instrument of Life: Frankenstein and Cyber Culture which was our reading WAY back in week 4, so forgive me if this is a little scatter-brained. The article talks about the parallels between the Frankenstein monster and the idea of cyborgs.

Waldby’s article focuses on the original story of a cyborg and technology out of control which is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1831). The story is about the loss of origin, which is what a lot of stories involving cyborgs is about. Waldby outlines the story but focuses on how Frankenstein the scientist rejected his creation, thus the loss of origin not only for humans but our creations too.

Here are some of the main points Waldby finds in Frankenstein:

• Technology out of control
• Human-like creation that hates it’s creator
• “… loss of origin securely located in nature” pg 29
• Transformations of organic life
• Human body/sociality owe greater debt to techno scientific and mechanic systems of production/reproduction
• Complex body, tangle of technology and nature

Waldby draws parallels between Harraway’s cyborgs and Shelley’s Frankenstein. Mainly how both look at the ideas of “Human becoming” (pg 36) since both represent two sides stepping towards the next step in evolution, whether that’s through defeating death (in Frankenstein) or accepting our new cybernetic parts from Harraway.

According to the article, Shelley’s story seems to teach the lesson that it’s dangerous for people to try and ignore our new “cybernetic” parts, or we’ll end up destroying ourselves and similarly to Harraway’s Manifesto portrays cyborgs with a more optimistic view. Ultimately, it was Frankenstein’s rejection of his creation that resulted in his demise. The creation’s resentment towards his creator and all humanity develops from his rejection. Waldby then uses the example of Bicentennial Man (1999) as the opposite effect, a robot that wants to become human. It seems to be a common theme in cyborg media that our creations either want to become us or destroy us.

 A theme only touched on in the article is how Frankenstein became interested with the idea of reanimation after the death of his mother. I can’t help but wonder if this was also a loss of origin and if it was his mother Frankenstein wanted to bring back to life, why was his creation male?

Through science fiction we can create the “possible worlds” (pg 37) which are open to ideas such as cyborgs and our relationships to technology. I was going to end with some images from the Frankenstein movies so I typed into google “Frankenstein” and while I found a great picture of the original concept I also found a website about a book called What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly which sounds like an interesting read if you’d like to look further into this topic.

 

Questions:

· How is the Hollywood representation of Frankenstein different to the original story and why is this?

· How would the story of Frankenstein be different if:

The Creation was female?

Victor accepted his creation?

· Is popular culture’s impact on technology detrimental to the development of robotics? ie) showing evil robots

· Frankenstein is described as a reflection of his creation, is this true for other cyborg stories? (Johnny Walker ad, Bicentennial Man, Star Trek etc)

· Sexuality is not part of our bodies? Is there sex in the Frankenstein story? What does it’s presence/absence mean?

· Parallels between cyborgs and the creation?

"Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life" by Danah Boyd

Heyyy, this week I will be presenting on the article "Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life" by Danah Boyd. I thought that this article was an interesting read, opening up my mind, raising a lot of issues and questions I have in relation to social network sites. Even though this article was based on teenager’s involvement with MySpace in the United States, I think that what is presented is relevant to Australia’s society, and also to other sites like Facebook. In my presentation I will focus on the idea that social network profiles are becoming ones “digital body” which Boyd makes reference to numerous times in her article. I also will discuss how the sites change the way today’s society interacts with one another offline and online, the reasons why teenagers get so involved and the positive and negative effects these sites have on teenagers.


Boyd’s main argument is that “social network sites are a type of networked public with four properties that are not typically present in face to face public life: persistence, searchability, exact copyability, and invisible audiences” and that these factors are responsible for complicating the ways people interact “(2). I agree with this proposition, in the way social network sites make it very easy for someone to be searched and found. This can be positive in the way it can connect you to relatives and friends from the past however it can also make it easy for young girls to become victims to online predators.


It can be suggested that a social network profile becomes ones digital body. Boyd states in the article “A MySpace profile can be seen as a form of digital body where individuals must write themselves into being”. I do agree with this idea, as MySpace in particular allows members to have a profile picture, write about themselves, their likes, activities, personal information, hobbies, education, and allows members to change the look of their profiles to make it even more personalised. The quotation from 18 year old Skyler at the beginning of the article “If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist” seems to support the idea that a MySpace profile is a digital body because she believes you are nobody if you don’t have one. This is a powerful quotation because it represents the pressure for teens to be involved in social network sites in order to be cool and fit in with their peers. Boyd does not mention multiple digital bodies in her discussion of MySpace. If a MySpace profile is someone’s digital body, what about the other profiles people have of themselves on different social network sites? Could having multiple profiles be described as having multiple digital bodies?


In terms of the way people interact with one another, I agree with Boyd as social network sites have complicated social interaction. Are the “friends” people have on their profiles really their friends? I am sure some of you have experienced a situation where someone you have nothing to do with has tried to add you as a friend and then ignores you in reality. The Top friends feature also seems to complicate relationships, for example 17 year old Olivia states “I’m sick of the pain and the hurt and the tears and the jealousy and the heartache...I have people complain to me that they are not my number one on my top 8” (14). Boyd then suggests that the reason the top friends feature complicates interaction is because “there are social consequences in publically announcing one’s friends...Feelings are hurt when individuals find that someone that they feel close with does not reciprocate” (14). Social network sites can also cause drama online and offline as people may not be happy if someone posts a photo of them they do not like as well as cyber bullying. These are just a few examples of the ways social network sites complicate things online and offline.


This article presents so many issues, ideas and arguments relating to social networking sites, and I could go on for ages discussing everything, however I will leave the rest of my thoughts about the article to discuss in tomorrow’s tutorial


Tomorrow I will bring up the following questions in the tutorial:
1.Do you think social network sites alter social dynamics and complicate the ways people interact with one another?
2.Do you think people’s experience of social network sites is influenced by their gender, race or class?
3.Do you think MySpace takes social voyeurism too far? Do people reveal too much of themselves?
4.Do you agree with Boyd’s representation of MySpace profiles being ones digital body?
5. Why do you think social network sites have become so popular in society? Do you think there is a social pressure to have a facebook or MySpace account?
6.In the article there is an example of a young black man from a poor urban community who sent an application to a prestigious college and ended up being turned down because the admissions centre found him on MySpace and didn’t like the hip-hop, urban and gang presentations on his profile. They felt that he contradicted the anti-gang opinions he put forth in his application. Do you think that this is taking social networking too far? Is this unprofessional of the admissions centre to have done this?
7.What do you think the positive and negative aspects of social network sites are?
8.Do you think that social network sites are empowering or oppressive for women in particular? Do these sites offer gender equality?
9.Boyd discusses how some parents of teens ban their children from creating MySpace accounts. If you were a parent, would you feel comfortable letting your children go onto these networking sites? As a teenager were you allowed to go onto social networking sites?

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts about social networking and Danah Boyd’s article.

See you tomorrow

FUTURE SEX....Now that I have your attention:

Sup.

Sorry it took me so long to get his up, I thought I had lucked out because our blogs started week 4 and my presentation was in week 3.

Anyway, my article was Future Sex: Cyborg Bodies and the Politics of Meaning written by Norah Campbell article "...investigates the visual representations of futuristic, technologised bodies in advertisements." (p. 1). She does this to highlight what these advertising images say about society and how they are a projection of humanity's ideologies, fears and fantasies" of and about technology and the future. She focuses on works of feminist writers such as Haraway and Springer who have previously commented on this topic, adding her own research discussing the emerging identity of women being told through technological imagery. (Thankfully, Campbell has a delicious infatuation with sub-headings and examples throughout this article which aid greatly in its comprehension due to the abundance of topics raised and consequent length of the article.)

Campbell starts out first explaining the term cyborg and telling the stories of its origin in the 1960s. It was birthed through the perceived necessity of supplementing the human being warranted by a hypothesis that stated the physiological and psychological inabilities of humans to cope with leaving planet Earth. She also discussed the importance of understanding the representations of 'future' and technology and what that says about us as the creators of such images.

She then goes onto discussing Donna Haraway's essay, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs". She summarises the essay, commenting on the profound effect it had on feminism and technologically integrated human identity. Though Haraway's essay is a very successful feminist text, it was also met with skepticism by other feminist writers who contested the poststrucuralist possibilities of technologies.

Haraway believed that technology is limitless, giving the ability to push past boundaries that hold the reality social structure. However many also see technology simply as a new medium for feminine repression and restructuring. Traditionally, technology is created to be sub-servant to humans. The word robot springs from a Czech word "robota" meaning "forced labour". This is coupled with the idea of women also being servant to the masculine and images such as The Stepford Wives, and Maria from Metropolis are born as mans attempt to create the perfect woman.

Campbell explores how the femaleness is allied to technology in its language. She uses the example of The Matrix, a word which springs from the latin mater meaning womb. Technology is obsessed with nurture and reproduction, presenting itself as a source of anxiety and desire. Technology is predominantly designed as a means of communication and reproduction for the "superior" species, thus likening them further to women.

The essay then goes onto deconstruct six images and texts and discusses them in four headings: i) Having Cyborg Sex,

ii)The Empowered/Enslaved

iii) The Future Anterior and,

iv) The Posthuman in the Human.

Some of the material studied is Bjork's All is Full of Love video, The SVEDKA girl and Johnie Walker 'Human' advertisement. Through these (and other) texts, Campbell researches ideas such as skin, whereby it creates a notion of humanness. Each of her examples lack skin and have replaced it with a mimetic synthetic material which is contradictory to itself as it highlights further the division between skin and 'other'. The research also depicts the 'perfect being' as being bias towards race and age, taut white lean bodies are the preferred in technological human representations.

The idea of 'sheath' or clothing is also explored. Futuristic clothing is built as a second skin but of high-tech synthetics. This idea is ironic as previously discussed, the cyborg is covering mechanism with the closest thing to flesh, and human; flesh with the closest thing to mechanism. Futuristic female forms are coated in tight fitting clothes which emphasise the female form. The best example of this is the Nike Les Jumelles and the line above the breast which it both accentuates and fetishizes.

Black and white technology is also explored, revealing that the human weakness for race-bias in advertising is also present in advertising and technology. Piertse argues that the role of black people in advertising seems permanently tied to chocolate, cocoa and coffee. Backed up by Dyer who points out the predominance of white people in ads for cosmetics, soap etc.

The next section of the essay explores the sexualisation of technology in the contemporary west and the consequent questions pertaining to sexuality and fantasy desire of the human being. There is a mention of the movie 'Crash' where car crashes are used as sexual stimulants. Campbell again addresses the objectification of women giving a feeling that women had to fight for their natural body rights, and are now having to fight for their virtual ones. However there are examples of empowerment of female technologised bodies (see Bjork previously mentioned) but they are still imbued with feminine qualities, highlighting sensuality, nuturing and careful. Bjork's video is controversial yet fascinating rather than insulting, antagonistic and degrading.

One of the last points raised is the lack of personality and humanness many of female cyborgs present in advertising media. They are seen as sexual objects only. The Heineken girl is one of the examples used as it highlights her integration with technology and the fantasied creation of the female android.

Linda Scott is mentioned and runs through the contradictory practices of many feminist writers and how many are elitist telling women how they should 'correctly' act. Which she vehemently argues.

In the last paragraph there is mention of the hymen which I think is silly and far-fetched.

To conclude, advertisements that depict the future are a representation of current human desires, fears, hopes and social development. Technology can be both liberatory and repressive especially for women as they are subjected to the most re-invention and scrutiny though technology.

I know this 'summary' is really long but so is the damn article with many great points raised. If you haven't read it, seriously you should. God I hope someone is reading this.

PEACE OUT.

Em.

The Third Eye...

In light of the discussion of cyborgs, JenniCAM and the like, I thought you all might find this piece by Japanese artist Takehito Etani interesting. It is called 'The Third Eye Project'. Takehito created a video device that is mounted to the user's head that enables them to see themselves from the third person perspective.

There are some great videos on there of Takehito walking around Times Square and trying to cook. It is definitely worth having a look at.

Another piece that I think will be of interest is Domestic Tension by an Iraqi American artist called Wafaa Bilal. Bilal set himself up in a gallery for 30 days with a webcam hooked up to a paintball gun. People could log in from home and control the gun to shoot him anytime day or night. To me this is the next step from JenniCAM (obviously Bilal has a political motive behind his work rather than trying to redevelop JenniCAM). Here the viewer is able to actively engage with what they are watching on their computer instead of just passively observing. Something interesting to note about this piece is that a whole bunch of people tried to hack the system to make the gun fire faster/etc in order to inflict more pain upon Bilal and another group tried to hack the system in order to stop people from hurting Bilal.

Anyway, just some art for thought.

your departing comments Week 5

• i find that twitter is just the textual equivalent to JenniCAM (or constant FB status updates for that matter too)
• Michelle Phan - youtube celebrity but on facebook. Would JenniCAM be different with FB?
• i love Freud
• found the second article [Jimroglou] utterly infuriating - so contradictory & disagreed with its conclusions. Also someone tell the author most psychologists dont follow Freud anymore!
• Arnold Schwarzenegger's bike & gun as an extension of his body, not separate
• i think maybe "private" may be defined as anything that someone else must consciously attempt to see, whether you keep it hidden or not
• are we all cyborgs on the internet?
• i think the idea of identity and its transmission and sometimes mutations throught the medium of the internet was fascinating - loved the discussion!
• Wafaa Bilal - domestic tension

Real life cyborgs

You guys see this? A film-maker uses footage from his literal "point of view".

While Haraway thinks everyone affected by technology qualifies as a cyborg, this and the USB finger guy are interesting because it's not just a matter of technology supplementing human-ness, they have replaced their missing human parts with technology. Boring functionless prosthetics are available, but here are people that thought beyond appearance and are experimenting with what science has to offer. Way cool.

Hey guys, sorry for the late post!! I got this unit confused for one of my other units and thought I didn't have to post my presentation notes until after my presentation...lucky i checked the unit outline!!

So tomorrow I a presenting on the article "Ruminations n cyber-race" by Jerry Kang.
This article looks at the concept of race and the idea of humans overcoming racial stereotypes and discrimination through the medium of the internet. In particular, Kang wants to know what happens when a social construction (race) develops within another social construction (the internet), and how our online conceptions of race could impact those of the real world.
Kang states that the cyberspace changes social interactions (changes the ground rules). While it depends on what type of online interaction you are engaging in (ie. email vs chatrooms) cyber interactions can be "more" than those in real life as they are not limited by geographical boundries, but "less" than those in real life because they can be clouded in "anonymity and pseudonymity".
He offers a range of 'tactics' (for lack of a better word) for challenging racism through the internet:
*Abolition: ie. relations be based on text content only. This is naive because just because race is not signaled does not mean that is ceases to be an issue, it will continue to influence the content of the communications. Also, text does fall for racial mapping, particularly if the person chooses to be explicit (eg. "I am black"). Also could harm people in racial minorities because not only does race tend to be a large part of their identity but because they often need to organise their politics around their race to stop racial discrimination, making to need for racial disclosure imminent.
*Interaction: ie reforming social interaction. Cyberspace could provide the perfect conditions for fighting prejudice. The conditions Kang states are:
i) social contact unravelling firmly held stereotypes
ii) interaction in an equal social status
iii) socioeconomic disparity can be overcome (this is tied to geography)
iv) co-operation towards a joint goal (common project/interest rather than a common racial identity)
*transmutation: because in cyberspace race is a voluntary choice, almost like the banner you choose to wear to display your cyber identity, as opposed to in the real world where your race is viewed as something natural and hereditary, might prompt people to look at race as less fixed. However I tend to agree with his criticism of this:- that by attempting too act as an individual of another race I may be enforcing racial stereotypes rather than destroying it, as my knowledge of the social characteristics pf someone of another race come primarily from mass media, who are some of the primary creators of such stereotypes.
In conclusion, Kang offers that the different tactics shoudl be used in different 'zones' of the internet- the example he gives is using abolition in economic and the 'market place' areas of the net and integration in the social areas of the internet.

A few things for discussion tomorrow: to what extent do you believe race relations online affect race relations and stereotypes in real life? Do you believe that the ability of people to 'cloak' their race online will affect people ideas of race on cyber space, and how will this in turn affect their ideas of race in real life? To what extent do you agree with the 'tactics' offered by Kang and to what extend do you think they could be effective? Do you agree with Kang's notion that different 'tactics' should be used in different zones of the internet?

Also, there are two books I read as sort of background for this topic.
Virtual Ethnicity: Race, Resistance and the World Wide Web by Linda Leung
Cyber Types: Race, Ethnicity and Identity on the Internet by Lisa Nakamura
If this topic interests you i strongly suggest these books- they offer some very good observations regarding this topic.

Also, I went online looking for some examples of racism and identity online, and one example I found is a blog posted through a neo-nazi site called Stormfront. While this is not an example of an individual attempting transmutation or experimenting with racial identities online, it is an example of how the internet has allowed racist sentiments to overcome geographical barriers, on addition to showing Kang's idea of real world and cyber ideas of race interacting.

I'll see you all in the tute tomorrow!

Sci-Fi survival guide!

Heya,

I kept talking about this in the workshop today so I thought I should share it here. The Nostalgia Chick, I talked about in my first post, recently did a video about science, specifically cyborgs, in movies. 

It's mostly a survival guide for sci-fi movies and done for fun but I think she brings up some good points about how science is portrayed in the media. Which brings up the point of why is science often portrayed as a bad thing?

Just thought you'd might enjoy.

Sally

Week 5 - Identity Futures. Krissi Limroglou, 'A camera with a view'

Hi Everyone

Sorry for the late posting. Had problems with my computer and logging onto the Internet.

In class this week I will be discussing the reading by Krissi Limroglou, A camera with a view.

Essentially, Krissi thesis focuses on gender identity, gender roles and what happens when the traditional western view of gender is challenged by using technology. Her article begins with explaining JenniCAM - a freelance writer who has a digital camera connected to her computer which films her apartment 24 hours a day. By doing this Jennifer is challenging the idea that the position of controller, traditionally masculine orientated, is taking on the role of object, traditionally feminine role, at the same time.

In rethinking binary oppositions of male/female and body/machine:

• Do you think the computer has becme part of her physical body?
• If the camera only ever showed her on the computer and she called it CAM instead of JenniCAM, do you think people would still havethe same interest?
• Is she objectifying her feminine body?

The filming only ever shows her inside her apartment, the camera never goes outside. By exposing her private world to the public, the internet, everyone can see inside.

• How do we now define what private and public is? e.g. Is private simply only what people can't see except for yourself?
• Is she challenging us by showing the private sphere of the feminine or just conforming to cultural norms by only showing us her inside the apartment not outside?
• Is she being "unwomanly" at all? Who has the right to determein what is and is not "womanly"?

I personally am not challenged by this because modern society has become saturated with reality shows like Big Brother and internet websites exposing all parts of their personal life. Facebook can be an example when taken to the extreme - people posting all day the activities they are doing and taking personal photos and posting it up online.

• Why do you think we have become desensitized with such images/filming that completly exposes every part of a persons life? e.g. like people having sex. (I just think that is gross - for me that is going a bit far but maybe I am just a prude).

Finally, Krissi explains that there is a web page dedicated to fragmente parts of Jennifers body. As she posts pictures she adds a message explaining the image which does not reveal her gender at all. Just for discussion, lets change her name to AlexCAM (a boy and girls name, gender neutral). What gender would you associate with the webpage now with no other indication of her gender other than AlexCAM?

Hopefully my discussion is not confusing. Please post questions on the blog for me to clarify anything that does make sense. I would love any constructive criticism to help with my presentation.

Thanks

Tess

Just 'like' in the real world!!

Sup.

Looking on failbook.com as is my want, I came across this video. It's an extreme cross over between facebook and RL(real life).

In summer Coca-cola set up a kinda of festival/village for 3 days that "integrate music, friends, and fun". At this years event, it was shown on facebook to promote exposure or something.

Anyway they set up a system where every teen gets a wrist band that they can scan and it will show up on their own facebook page that they 'like' certain activities. It also works to upload pictures too.

I thought it was really interesting and kinda cool but is it going too far in integrating technology into real life? I understand the strong marketing campaign behind the idea but is it really necessary? I also really dig the novelty of it but... it's facebook. Really guys? Shouldn't you be there with your friends anyway? I don't think my Aunty needs to know right then and there that I 'like' free soft drinks and lying in the sun.

I thought it was an interesting vid and relevant enough to share :@

Em

Hello!

I'm Hannah, and I'm from Singapore. I'm in my 2nd year of Communications, and planning to major in Women Studies! If you're interested at all, my favourite text so far is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Love it.

Anyway, seeing as I don't have a car, nor do I club, I'm pretty much a homebody here (total opposite when I'm in Singapore). The only time I get out is when I go visit vintage markets, go to the city for bubble tea and more shopping (which includes groceries) ... and to the gym. So I'm using this as an excuse for my constant presence on the Internet.

I like reading fashion blogs such as Fashion Zen, Karla's Closet and Miss Pandora. Hmm, but come to think of it these are leaning towards photologs more than anything else. Another one I really like is ColorMeKatie. Awesome stuff. I think you can judge from here that I prefer visuals to texts though ironically, I tend to ramble when I blog. Uhoh.

Other than vintage markets, shopping, eating, and spending endless amount of time on the Internet, I also like watching dvds at home! I think I'm building my very own JB Hifi here. The last one I caught was Pretty Women (wasn't allowed to watch it when I was younger) and am also very much hooked onto The Office (US version).

Okay. That shall be all.

See you all next Tuesday! (:

hello fellow bloggers!

Hey guys, my name is Isha, and this is my first time blogging.

Im a second year Comm student majoring in English, and loving my courses.

I cant honestly say that I'm a 'web-surfer' unless I'm extremely bored or find something interesting. Main sites I visit is F.b, and pretty much the rest of the time on the Net I'm researching.

Looking forward to this unit - its very different and relevant to our day and age (which is awesome), besides Uni and now blogging, I recently took up Kitesurfing, which I love!

Looking forward to seeing you all next tues, for another good discussion!

Ciao

Hi hi

Hey guys

My name is Emily W and this is the first time I have even read or written in a blog so I'm hoping I do it right... was contemplating writing this in webdings font but decided it probably wasn't the best start.
I too spend many hours on "the net"... usually using too many gigabytes up on youtube.
But one of my favourite sites is SixThousand. They have one for every state, each (quite obviously) go by post code. A friend of mine snaps photos for them, but I like some of their quirky reviews and they were a huge help when I was in melbourne looking for things to do/see.
You should check it out if only to see their freaky every-changing banner photos.

Seeee ya'll Tuesday!

the fifth decade of the internet

I've been recommending this lecture at Murdoch to the other blogs, but it's on at your tutorial time. just thought I'd let you know anyway,
alison

aloha

Hey guys, my names Hayley.

I'm second year communications, also majoring in linguistics. Which means I'm graduating next year! - where has the time gone?

Websites i like to visit include fremantle dockers homepage since I am an active dockers member, and so along with that I also visit the AFL site to get all the footy news.

Don't really know what else to say in a post, but I'm sure you'll learn more from me in the tutes!

Heyy!! I'm Liz :)

I am in my second year of my arts degree majoring in English, and have done womens studies units before and found that they have been really interesting.

I have never read or written a blog before, so this blogging world is all new to me, and i find this suprising since i spend 2183293 hours of the day on the internet. When i am online i usually just go on facebook, which i am addicted to and check whenever i can throughout the day haha. I also have myspace, twitter, piczo and bebo accounts that i should really delete since i don't use them anymore.

In the tutorial today i felt as if i disagreed with some of the comments that facebook takes away the physical face to face part of friendships like going to your friends house to show them photos, i believe that the internet is a great medium to keep in contact with friends and family members all over the world and for them to know what your up to and that you can decide how much information you reveal about yourself and who to share it with.

I am very interested in fashion and shopping so i tend to look at fashion websites when i am online such as wheelsanddollbaby.com and look at music sites like channel v to find good music to download. Now that i am more familiar with blogs i think i will start to read some of interest to me and learn more about them. I don't really have any examples of blogs that are relevant to the course but once i start reading blogs hopefully i will come across some.

I am really looking forward to this unit, so far it has been really interesting

See you all next week :)

Liz

Teehee, Facebook conspiracy theory I thought you would find interesting.

Facebook - The CIA Conspiracy

Perhaps we are all neatly profiled and categorised for easy access....

Thoughts?

I have a couple of articles I have found on the smh website that I think might be of interest, especially in light of today's discussions:
Google and privacy issues
Foursquare and stalking

Anyway, here is a contemporary reinterpretation (from 2006) of Richard Serra's iconic video art work from 1973 'Television Delivers People' (the original is available here) that you might find interesting (well, I did at least). It's entitled 'YouTube Delivers You'. Persevere with the elevator muzak and check it out:

Steve, don't eat it!

PS. Steve, don't eat it! is a hilarious, disgusting blog where a dude eats a bunch of really gross stuff and analyses it, posting a heap of pictures for your viewing pleasure. Go on, you know you want to...

Hi, I'm Jorgia.

I am fairly rubbish at writing these little synopses' about myself, so I'm not going to. Everyone has heard it all before anyway (I like reading, writing, knitting, rollerskating etc)...

Onward and upward to the 'net! While I should spend more time perusing the more news-oriented sites on the world wide web (à la Tess) I tend to frequent sites that make me laugh.

One of these is XKCD "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language." This is a slightly skewed, completely random take on anything from the Lord of the Rings to totally bizarre science concepts which elude me completely (being a free spirited Arts student). Also in this style is Toothpaste for Dinner which is comprised with terrible drawings - one which has always entertained me and is vaguely related to this unit's preoccupation with cyborgs is this one.

Another site I frequent is a very sweet, sometimes sad, window into the lives of anonymous strangers on onesentence where people post thoughts, experiences, revelations or anything, but only in one sentence. A Softer World is a slightly sweet, slightly startling, often bemusing take on the world through blurry, captioned photographs.

Apart from that I am a confessed facebook user (lamebook also has its moments), though myspace is in the past (I think it got stuck back in 2004) and twitter never had a look in (apart from Wil Anderson's controversial Logie postings).

So that's about it for me!

jorgia.

CoUNTesses blog

Here is my artefactual contribution for the week... (thanks Benjamin)

http://countesses.blogspot.com/

Possible TL;DR

Hi. I’m Roni. Welcome to my Internet. Let me show you around.

I spend a fair amount of time here. A lot of places I find by drifting from link to link, clicking through a kind of passive choose your own adventure of information. I rarely remember to bookmark the interesting pages I find, but I do recognise that the same pages keep popping up that are of interest to me. Here are some.

At the moment, I am obsessed with Hyperbole and a Half. It is a hilarious blog with deliberately badly drawn pictures that I relate to incredibly. While the content doesn’t have much to do with the unit per se, I thought it worth mentioning that the author was recently offered a chance to be filmed, a kind of reality show based on her blog. She put it to her readership and a significant number of people said she should not do it because to them she is a squiggly stick figure girl in a pink dress, and a real person representation might interfere with the way the stories are perceived. Very interesting example of the relationship between bodies and “cyberspace”.

Jezebel – it is nice to know that such shallow and trivial things as “celebrity, sex, fashion” can be reported on with a critical female viewpoint. An indulgent alternative to the tripe of mainstream media and it’s barely concealed white heteronormative patriarchy.

Racialicious – according to their about blurb, “Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture.” It is also the home of the now famous and oft-quoted article The Not-Rape Epidemic.

XKCD – another webcomic I like. Hard to describe, although they say it is about “romance, sarcasm, math and language”. Bring your brain.

There’s more, so much more. I have been blogging since about 2002 and have come across so much witty, funny, terrifying and thought-provoking stuff that I could spend every day for the rest of the year in here and not get bored. You all probably have lives though, so I’ll leave it at that.

Hi,
Introducing yourself over the internet to people you'll shortly be talking to in person seems a bit obscure to me (as it can be so easy to accidentally mislead people over the internet) so this will probably be pretty short! I'm also pretty rubbish at getting-to-know-you things because I can never sum anything up in three words let alone tell you my favorite animal or food starting with the first letter of my name. I'm a third year arts/law student which either tells you that I really, really enjoy libraries and doing a lot of late night reading, or that I make silly decisions.
Like most other people in our tute, I haven't done a lot of blogging. I'm more of what you'd call a 'lurker', who reads around without commenting. One blog I check out fairly regularly since I read a great book by Jessica Valenti is Feministing. I also really enjoyed following the Seventeen Magazine Project.
That's all from me...

Hi Everyone

I must confess that I am news website addict. Yes, I must admit I have given into the influence of the all powerful media corporation of News.com and the government website the ABC. It comes from my journalism days at Murdoch University. The lecturers from day one were testing us what was in the news on the web, newspaper and radio every single day. www.news.com.au and www.abc.net.au/news are the sites I normally check out.

Oh, I use to play tennis. So I guess that is something I have in common with you Kim. I still love watching the game. If I was offered passes to the Australian Open 2011 I would be in Tennis Heaven.

I must stop myself before I become one of the "women blogger" stereotypes who just go off on a tangent with a "girly chit-chat" disposition as cited in this weeks reading Posting With Passion: Blogs and the Politics of Gender. I must say it is terribly hard to get out of bad habits when I am use to the msn messaging casual tone. In the end, this "chit-chat" style or serious political blogging is not particular to one gender group. As the reading suggested, many of the blogging programs created for the web were in partnership with couples - men and women together were creating the whole blogging system. So I don't think there really is such a huge gender divide.

Hopefully I will make more sense of this tomorrow in class.

Tess

Reading Outline

Hey I am facilitating the debate tomorrow on "Posting with Passion: Blogs and the Politics of Gender" by Melissa Gregg.

I did not particularly enjoy this article as I feel it lacked substance and made some rather general assumptions. However, aside from this it did raise some interesting points.

In short, this article is largely concerned with the difference between male and female bloggers, in terms of the content of their blogs and they way in which these blogs are perceived.

Gregg offers two main reasons as to why she belives women do not "politically" blog as men do.
The primary reason being that women "do not have as much time-political blogging requires a lack of interruption from off-line demands" and that they may not have received the previous edication and encouragement to be politically minded. To me, these reasons seem very shallow and presumptous, men aren't as "busy" as women...really? Women haven't been encouraged to political? These explanations did not resonate with me. I would like to discuss this point in the tutorial so if anyone has any original ideas on this point...

When the internet was a burgeoning phenomenon, people naively believed that the internet would be a "gender-free zone". It seems logical to me that gender will transpire from offline to online and that, try as we might, we can never escape the confines of gender. Is a "gender free" internet a future prospect?

Such open expressions of intimate personal lives, especially on live journals, are bound to have repercussions. What might they be? The future of privacy is ambiguous...could our supposedly "anoymous" blogs come back to bite us?

Looking forward to discussing this article in the tutorial.

The Joys of UWA

Hey my name is Bec.

I am a second year arts student doing a doube major in psychology. I was doing business last year, but the combination of the walk down to the business school (and the rejection of my appeals for a shuttle bus) and the concerning fact that i hate maths has brought me to the other side of UWA...arts. On this note of the rivalry between faculties at UWA and stereotypes associated with the different institutions and university itself, reminded me of a website I stumbled across whilst facebook stalking. It's called "You know you're at UWA when...". A few that particularly appealed to me include:

"You can tell what faculty someone is by the way they dress"
"You spend an average of 20 minutes per day queing for a computer in Reid"
"Your alcohol tolerance has increased tenfold"
"You were traumatised after O camp but you never looked back"
"You know every 5th person (it is Perth after all)"
"The graffiti in the bathroom is more interesting and socially-stimulating than many of the social science lectures"
"You realise the tutorer that is assessing you on participation doesn't even know your name"

As you have probably gathered finding meaningless facebook pages is a particular talent of mine. Hence why this unit should be beneficial as I can perhaps look at more intelligentally written blogs?

Looking forward to it :) See you in the tute.

Live Long and Prosper!

Heya all,

I'm not very savvy with technology, so I've spent the last good hour trying to log in. As you can probably tell, I've never written a blog before either.

As for a favourite site, I'd have to say that guy with the glasses . It's a fun website of people reviewing old movies and video games. I highly suggest looking at the Nostalgia Chick's Smurfette Principle when you have some free time. Or when you're procrastinating.

I like to think that I'm more charming in person, so I look forward to talking to you all face-to-face!

Sally.

And you shall know me, and it will be good.

Sup.

Introductory post huh? Well I've never been one to write down my thoughts. I'm funnier in person. Talk to me and find out okay?

My favorite website is a bit NSFW (not safe for work) but it's good for a laugh. It's called failblog.org and many people may already have heard of it. This websites and it's affiliates are horrible fantastic time-wasters so I apologise for providing another tool of procrastination but only a little bit because it is really funny.

I guess that's about it. Let's hope I get a better hang of this Blog business instead of boring any future readers to tears.

Em.

intro

Hello everyone

So being a keen diary/journal writer, I've considered starting a blog for a really long time now... so this is going to be good practice! Normally I prefer to write by pen to paper...something about writing on a keyboard makes it more difficult to be honest and express my thoughts and feelings...maybe theres a possibility for that to change.

So I went to see the Patricia Piccinini exhibition that Alison has meantioned a few times on the weekend, would definately recommend it, even just to experience the shocked faces and gasps of other visitors! We got so involved with the exhibition the 10 or so security gaurds working at the art gallery had to escort us out at closing time....cmon Perth- cant you keep the gallery open past 5pm on a Friday eve?

Anyway, I've included a photo of my favorite piece, I automatically assumed the figures to be male and female, while my friend understood them to be mother and child..its interesting we decided they had gender at all.

If you go to the website of Patricia Piccinini you can see some of the exhibition and view this video that was showing there, called 'the gathering' which was totally wierd...

Ok ill leave it there, c ya in class!
carlie:)

Hi All,
This is not actually my first blogging experience - a unit I did last semester also required us to use a blog like this one. However, it was kinda lame to be honest. Everyone only posted their tutorial presentations, and that was it. There was no discussion or anything like that, so the blog did not serve much of a purpose. I am certain though that this blog will be more effective. It will be great to get some discussions and stuff happening on here to make it an interactive space and an extension of the tutorials.

Anyway, I always seem to find myself on Texts From Last Night when I have work to do. For those of you who don't know it, tt is along the same lines as FML, but instead of people writing in with lame things that have happened to them, people post funny text messages they have received from drunk and/or stoned friends. It really makes for enjoyable reading.

See you all tomorrow in the tutorial.

Stefan

Hey guys,

I see the general trend is short introductions, but I thought I might ramble a little bit more...

I'm Kate, and am halfway through my Arts degree, doubly majoring in Psychology. I like to draw a lot, and have recently started experimenting with digital drawing with a graphics tablet. I mostly tend to draw pictures of people but have lately started translating that into Manga styled art. I have only seen a few Animes and read one or two Mangas, but my favourites so far are Vampire Knight, Death Note, Tenjho Tenge and Speed Grapher. One day I hope to make a comic of my own, but I think that will be a long way away...

This unit attracted me because I've always found identity construction on the internet to be such a peculiar thing. Smack a picture of a pretty girl on your Facebook, add a few pictures of your "BFFLs", and it's a rare person that is going to pick up on the fact that you are actually a forty year old man, sitting in his lounge room in his underwear.

Not only can identity be entirely disguised, people can live entire social lives on the internet. With social networks so accessible, there is little need for some people to spend face to face time with anyone. The online gaming sensation World of Warcraft has created a huge amount of problems surrounding users addiction, and its consumption of them into it's online world. I have heard of one man who became divorced from his wife, after spending his life savings on a sword for his character in the game. This sword was not a material object, it was a data set for insertion into the online world which he had built a life around. Sadly, unless he cared a lot about his relationship with his wife, I don't know if he would have bettered himself from the situation. I found this website for World of Warcraft addicts, similar to that you might find for those recovering from substance abuse. WoW Detox: The Detox Centre for your World of Warcraft Addiction!
Some of the testimonies are quite interesting.

Peace :) Kate

Hey everyone!
Hope I figured out how to do this right... Anyway a website that I always find myself procrastinating with is Lookbook. It's sort of like a fashion blog, and there are just pages and pages of people from all over the world displaying their own style. I could flip through it for ages.
See you all in class on Tuesday!

Hi Everyone,

So this is my first blog as well and Im a little nervous haha.

Anyways in terms of another website that is of interest to me, I regularly check Perez Hilton's Blog for all my celebrity goss haha. I mainly enjoy it when he makes fun of people lol. I guess it also relates to this unit (in a very small way) because it is a blog.

Anyways Im looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say and learning what its like to be a blogger!

Jade

Hi

Just checking to see if my blog works. I will post my profile blog later today.

PLEASE READ Presentations/Facilitated Discussions

Hi all

have been thinking a bit about your reading discussions. Try not to do a summary of the reading. One of the things we do as academics/researchers is "critical reflection" ie we read something and then ask questions about the ideas presented...(study smarter critical thinking). There are all sorts of questions you can ask and these vary depending on disciplines etc.

What i would like you to do is start to think critically about the reading that you are doing and particularly the reading you are presenting on. So assume that we have read the article and can summarise for ourselves. For your presentation I would like you to choose one idea you think the author is presenting and question it. Some questions you could ask are:

• do you agree with the idea? why? do you disagree with it? why?
• how are gender/race/sexuality/age represented? does the author assume a gender/race/sexuality/age of the reader? are there other identities which are assumed/excluded? who is not referred to?
• how does the author describe our relationships with technology? does the author assume/describe technology as exploitative and oppressive or as liberatory and subversive or as something else? how does the author examine power dynamics inherent in access to technologies, in technology/knowledge production?
• Who is the author? what is their gender/race/sexuality/age and does this influence their assumptions/argument? When/where was the article written and does this influence the authors assumptions/argument?
• be self-reflexive...what is your response to the idea? What assumptions are you making that influence your reading?
  

These are just suggestions and there are heaps more you could ask. You dont have to ask all of them and I am happy for you to ask others of the reading and of us.

For example: Shalmalee suggested that in "M. Butterfly" Renee did not know that Song was "male-bodied" despite having a 20 year sexual relationship. How was this possible? what assumptions about race, gender and/or race-gender did Renee make that made this possible? what physical/sexual behaviours did they engage in that made this possible? how did these behaviours intersect with the race-gender assumptions that Renee made? What assumptions do we make about physical/sexual encounters between men & women, between men & men and between women & women that make it difficult for us to understand how Renee did not know that Song was "male-bodied"?

Looking forward to your discussions - also have fun!

Hello everyone!

Wow this is the first blog I've ever written, or read for that matter, so i hope it's ok! In terms of my favourite website, aside from my obligatory and highly addictive facebook page, that I visit with any regularity would be the Tennis Australia website.

I have played tennis for years and coach became a qualified tennis coach in 2007 so i find this site useful for information regarding my tennis league and tips and tactics I can implement into my lesson plans.

Kim

Week

Here are some of your comments after week 3

the difference between a male cyborg being something to be feared because of the fear of their wrath, whereas female is feared b/c she is seductively powerful		the tendency (for cyborgs) to be represented in male OR female form, never a combination of the two
will Hollywood's depiction of cyborgs/robots be detrimental to the advancement of technology??		we are the borg! Borg from Star Trek still have human faces, Cybermen from Dr Who are fully robot (why is there no sex in Frankenstein? sexy robots have no sexual organs)
technology is essential to our lives. but it depends if it is in our public or private lives if we find it oppressive or not		why is the disembodied "10 seconds to self-destruct" voice always female?
Eagle Eye: The need for humans to compete with technology & out smart it - in a way to prove that we are still superior & can out smart our creations Also seen in films like Terminator

Your expectations

Here are some of your hopes for the unit

a broader understanding of how technology is effecting our lives, especially in relation to women		a better understanding of technology's effect on the "organic self" - but also from an artistic point of view
a better understanding of why people blog		connect themes of the unit to feminist theories & principles, where appropriate
6 points		why that guy said the internet was a series of tubes
i hope to learn more about feminism		better knowledge about pop culture
fun learning environment		gain more confidence in expression esp. in blog
to increase my understanding of week 1s reading! currently it doesnt make sense... and as the reader says by the end of the unit it may become clearer!		deeper sense of the relationship between body technology and self and how one impacts/changes the other
dissecting films (and other forms of media) through gendered perspectives		the fine line between human, robot, cyborg & avatar
understanding the gendered relationships presented in media and how this effects cyber space and our everyday lives		i would like to gain more confidence in discussing my own ideas about the course material and about women's and gender studies in general

Presentations/Facilitated Discussions

• 5 minutes
• Provide some key points
• compose 2/3 questions for class discussion
• Dont forget to post a summary on the blog by Monday of the week you are presenting
  

Week	Reading	Presenter
3	Waldby	Sally
	Campbell	Emma
4	Blood	Libby
	Gregg	Rebecca
5	Jimroglou	Tess	Sock Puppets
	Kang	Kim
6	Boyd	Elizabeth
	Long	Emily
7	Reading Week
8	Adam	Kate & Bonnie
	Albury	Liberty
9	Harold	Stefan & Jorgia
	Adbusters	Jade
10	Dibbell	Emily
	Rheingold	Isha
11	Jenkins	Carlie
	Gregg	Hannah
12	Hayles	Hayley
	Haraway	Ronni

Tute Guidelines

As discussed here are our tute guidelines in no particular order:

• sock puppets - week 5
  
• punctuality
• prepare for class
• ask questions
• respect others opinions
• relate to other media
• keep an open mind
• have some classes outside
• clock in room
  

Welcome!

So great to meet you all and am looking forward to some fascinating and stimulating discussions