Monday, 19 November 2007
Gender online
Im really intrested in the concept of online gender changes, how people like to represent themselves as the opposit sex whilst on the interenet. I wonder if those who choose to go out in drag stay in in drag. In terms of exploring the concept of identitity i feel this could be a fruitful path to go down. I recently spoke to a friend whos ex boyfriend from New York was performing in his all gay electro group in London this month. This mand made his rent money however not by being in a band but by pretending to be a girl on online 'sexy' chat rooms, talking to straight men who log on wanting female prevocative conversation. This lead me to think about sexuality and how indoviuals represeent themselves online and off. i want to do some academic reading on the subject, starting off with Judith Butler and her work on Queer Theory.
Virtual worlds
We have been discussing in class the concept of virtaul worlds. Nigel has shown us the site Second Life. I found this facinating and almost unbelieveable, how people choose to spend vast amounts of money in online worlds in fantastical realities. I personally would never get involved with such a programme and would think those who do rather odd. However after are group discussion the argument was put that such sites are ideal for those are physically or mentally unable to leave the house or step into physical social situations. These sites enable such indoviduals to live another kind of life communicating with like-minded people or creating identities for themselves which they would never be able to appear as in a physical exsitance outside the internet. I wondered after this lesson if there were othersites similar to Second Life and happily fell apon an article in this saturdays Guardian which highlights the way money is spent on them:
Screen grabbers - crime hits the digital frontier
As a teenager is arrested for stealing pixels, Victor Keegan reports on the rise of the 3-D 'virtual worlds' that could transform the way we work, play, shop and communicate
Victor Keegan The Guardian Saturday November 17 2007 A 17-year-old Dutch teenager was arrested this week on suspicion of stealing furniture worth £2,800 from a hotel room. Four other teenagers were also questioned about the offence. It is believed they moved the stolen furniture into their own hotel rooms. Such a minor incident might not have merited a paragraph in the local paper had it not been for one extraordinary detail of the case: the crime happened not in real life but in a "virtual" hotel in the three-dimensional world Habbo Hotel, a children's game that only exists on the internet.
It was of interest to the police not just because it was the first time it had happened in the Netherlands but because the currency used in the virtual world - Habbo credits - is exchangeable for cash: a real crime had been committed in a virtual world, in this case by hacking into the accounts of other users.
This is not an isolated incident. Virtual worlds are becoming the next big thing as the internet evolves into three dimensions. Some pundits predict they will be as important as the industrial revolution. Entropia Universe, the Swedish virtual world, which had a turnover of $365m last year - and will soon become the first virtual world to be floated on the stock market - already enables users around the world to draw down money earned inside the game at ordinary cash dispensers. It is still a puzzle to many people how virtual goods that have no existence outside the computer code that generates them can be worth real money. But anything has value if people are prepared to pay for it.
I have a link now on my blog which contains the rest of the article....
Screen grabbers - crime hits the digital frontier
As a teenager is arrested for stealing pixels, Victor Keegan reports on the rise of the 3-D 'virtual worlds' that could transform the way we work, play, shop and communicate
Victor Keegan The Guardian Saturday November 17 2007 A 17-year-old Dutch teenager was arrested this week on suspicion of stealing furniture worth £2,800 from a hotel room. Four other teenagers were also questioned about the offence. It is believed they moved the stolen furniture into their own hotel rooms. Such a minor incident might not have merited a paragraph in the local paper had it not been for one extraordinary detail of the case: the crime happened not in real life but in a "virtual" hotel in the three-dimensional world Habbo Hotel, a children's game that only exists on the internet.
It was of interest to the police not just because it was the first time it had happened in the Netherlands but because the currency used in the virtual world - Habbo credits - is exchangeable for cash: a real crime had been committed in a virtual world, in this case by hacking into the accounts of other users.
This is not an isolated incident. Virtual worlds are becoming the next big thing as the internet evolves into three dimensions. Some pundits predict they will be as important as the industrial revolution. Entropia Universe, the Swedish virtual world, which had a turnover of $365m last year - and will soon become the first virtual world to be floated on the stock market - already enables users around the world to draw down money earned inside the game at ordinary cash dispensers. It is still a puzzle to many people how virtual goods that have no existence outside the computer code that generates them can be worth real money. But anything has value if people are prepared to pay for it.
I have a link now on my blog which contains the rest of the article....
Not having the interet at home has lead to a terrible neglet of blogging on m part, I feel very guilty towards it and my project and have now made a solom oath to myself to jump aboard this blogging train and bring some interesting research and reflections to those who fall apun it. I think that im in a very strong group for this project and am desparate not to let the others down by submitting a week blog at the end of the project against what im sure will turn out to be a user-friendly stylish and informative wiki.
Although I have not been online I have however been collecting bits and bobs here and there that I felt would be intresting in terms of my blog and the project in general. in class we have been discussing our themes of identity and community, much focus has been on online social networks such as facebook and myspace.
The Observer newspaper each Sunday include section of The New York Time to give British readers an idea of what news and debate is being discussed on the other side of the
pond. On Sunday the 4th 2007 the headline for this supliment was ‘Fame Game, Now in Flux’. The dialogue is on a 26 year old Tila Tequila who has 1,771,920 friends on MySpace and is the subject of a reality TV show despite lacking any any discernible talent. “because of new technologies we get to see now what happens when people have the option of making up their own celebrity…we have gone from ‘OH my God, thery’re so much better than I am’ to ‘ Oh my God they’re so good at making themselves up’” .
The article argues that its routine to dismiss such people as Tequila and complain about ow much culture has sunk, Tequila is a caricature, an almost imagined identity. Such a persona will be interesting for my group to look at as part of our project is going to be focusing on online personalities and identity's in a postmodern context. Tequila i think we can say is very postmodern. Such identities are ripe foe academic study and comprehension.
Although I have not been online I have however been collecting bits and bobs here and there that I felt would be intresting in terms of my blog and the project in general. in class we have been discussing our themes of identity and community, much focus has been on online social networks such as facebook and myspace.
The Observer newspaper each Sunday include section of The New York Time to give British readers an idea of what news and debate is being discussed on the other side of the
pond. On Sunday the 4th 2007 the headline for this supliment was ‘Fame Game, Now in Flux’. The dialogue is on a 26 year old Tila Tequila who has 1,771,920 friends on MySpace and is the subject of a reality TV show despite lacking any any discernible talent. “because of new technologies we get to see now what happens when people have the option of making up their own celebrity…we have gone from ‘OH my God, thery’re so much better than I am’ to ‘ Oh my God they’re so good at making themselves up’” .
The article argues that its routine to dismiss such people as Tequila and complain about ow much culture has sunk, Tequila is a caricature, an almost imagined identity. Such a persona will be interesting for my group to look at as part of our project is going to be focusing on online personalities and identity's in a postmodern context. Tequila i think we can say is very postmodern. Such identities are ripe foe academic study and comprehension.
Not having the interet at home has lead to a terrible neglet of blogging on m part, I feel very guilty towards it and my project and have now made a solom oath to myself to jump aboard this blogging train and bring some interesting research and reflections to those who fall apun it. I think that im in a very strong group for this project and am desparate not to let the others down by submitting a week blog at the end of the project against what im sure will turn out to be a user-friendly stylish and informative wiki.
Although I have not been online I have however been collecting bits and bobs here and there that I felt would be intresting in terms of my blog and the project in general. in class we have been discussing our themes of identity and community, much focus has been on online social networks such as facebook and myspace.
The Observer newspaper each Sunday include section of The New York Time to give British readers an idea of what news and debate is being discussed on the other side of the
pond. On Sunday the 4th 2007 the headline for this supliment was ‘Fame Game, Now in Flux’. The dialogue is on a 26 year old Tila Tequila who has 1,771,920 friends on MySpace and is the subject of a reality TV show despite lacking any any discernible talent. “because of new technologies we get to see now what happens when people have the option of making up their own celebrity…we have gone from ‘OH my God, thery’re so much better than I am’ to ‘ Oh my God they’re so good at making themselves up’” .
The article argues that its routine to dismiss such people as Tequila and complain about ow much culture has sunk, Tequila is a caricature, an almost imagined identity. Such a persona will be interesting for my group to look at as part of our project is going to be focusing on online personalities and identity's in a postmodern context. Tequila i think we can say is very postmodern. Such identities are ripe foe academic study and comprehension.
Although I have not been online I have however been collecting bits and bobs here and there that I felt would be intresting in terms of my blog and the project in general. in class we have been discussing our themes of identity and community, much focus has been on online social networks such as facebook and myspace.
The Observer newspaper each Sunday include section of The New York Time to give British readers an idea of what news and debate is being discussed on the other side of the
pond. On Sunday the 4th 2007 the headline for this supliment was ‘Fame Game, Now in Flux’. The dialogue is on a 26 year old Tila Tequila who has 1,771,920 friends on MySpace and is the subject of a reality TV show despite lacking any any discernible talent. “because of new technologies we get to see now what happens when people have the option of making up their own celebrity…we have gone from ‘OH my God, thery’re so much better than I am’ to ‘ Oh my God they’re so good at making themselves up’” .
The article argues that its routine to dismiss such people as Tequila and complain about ow much culture has sunk, Tequila is a caricature, an almost imagined identity. Such a persona will be interesting for my group to look at as part of our project is going to be focusing on online personalities and identity's in a postmodern context. Tequila i think we can say is very postmodern. Such identities are ripe foe academic study and comprehension.
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