The Way Forward

I know that title is a Bushism, but I couldn't resist it.

I have been dabbling with a few ideas and researching them:
- The sense of belonging to cultural or nation-based communities only
- The use of social software by teachers to impart education and its success
- The use of social software by students to band together for a common cause (e.g. common class) and related outcomes
- Exploring notions of legal responsibilities for end-users and mediators/medium owners in social software (this is the least flushed out idea I have so far)

I have not been able to narrow it down yet to a favorite child. But, I expect to extensive search the Columbia library databases that relate to new media rather than education because it appears that social software is yet to find ready acceptance in education.

At a minimum, I hope to find a gap in research that is worth exploring. Its all very ambiguous right now, but Monday is another day.......to blog.

Thinking back

I had mentioned this in our introductions on the first day of class, and this week's readings about Trinis and Koreans brought things full-circle for me. I wanted to explore why I spend so much time in social networks like Facebook, and to some degree, Orkut. The word "belonging" stuck out like a....excuse the cliche....sore thumb.

However, I am not entirely convinced that the sense of belonging is entirely cultural. Part of it, is simply my comfort with technology and everything it has to offer, rather than easy access to anyone not in a 2-mile radius of me. Instant messaging was my solution for a long time (mostly because it was cheaper than phone calls), but social networking offers the possibility of conversing in the context and company of other friends, something that IM does not offer itself to.

I seriously doubt I am the only one.....but, I SOOOOO TOOTALLYYY have this figured out, dude!

CMC and Identity

I have spent the last two weeks largely not being able to relate to the many issues brought up in class. Though oddly enough, both sessions have now rolled up into a single ball of paper clips in my head.

Firstly, it is somewhat hard for me to my real self and virtual self as part of the same entity. (Disclaimer: This may have something to do with the number of times I have died while playing first-person-shooter games since the days of Wolfenstein 3D in the early 90s.)) The notion of being emotionally vested in my online persona has never come up, because it is more a factor of what I do rather than who I am.

On the same lines, with the exception of playing online multiplayer games where I am made to assume a certain "avatar" (oh, I hate using that word as much as "Web 2.0"), my virtual self is not different from my real self. I have never pretended to behave or react differently from how I normally would, so the notion of being someone else online is a bit of a stretch. I expect that if I ever tried, I would be rather stretched in trying to maintain the personality and traits of someone who I'm not.

Obviously, I don't make for a very good Gemini (we're supposed to be two-faced, you see).

The other idea is that of distancing the real self from the virtual self and viewing them as different individuals. I think that everything I do (at least while I'm awake) is a part of who I am. This includes trying to be someone else (because it is perhaps a manifestation of who I'd like to be). In my online explorations, I would enjoy projecting a BETTER (e.g. leaner) version of my self rather than a DIFFERENT (e.g. Beckham) version of myself. The line between these two may be fine in some places, but it is an important distinction to make. The IMVU experiment we did in class last week proved that for me, when I discovered that I did not want to be or have any of the .....here we go again.....avatars that were offered.

A large number of people I hang out with online are people who I know in real life, rather than complete strangers. Indeed, that probably shapes who I am online, because others expect me to behave in the ways I do in real life. Many of the people I talk to online are fellow countrymen, which then leads into communal expectations of online behavior, which mirror real-life behavior. This also includes people who I am not met since middle-school and have absolutely no idea of what my personality is like today.

I ramble so well, I should add it to my resume!