dolfinwisperer

Raven

My name is Raven, I am in my late 30's, Living the SJP Sex and the city life, I am a free spirit who likes to dance and laugh, I like to wear things that sparkle and have fun

meezpscyberspace

Hello, I'm PScyberspace!
I am 25 and enjoy friends, alcohol and chat - usually simultaneously and regularly.
My musical tastes are broad but Prince features heavily. I watch films regularly and particularly seek out foreign cinema. Sporting activities include pole dancing and martial arts.

Hayleebob

This is Hayleebob, shes 20 and she is a little bit punk and loves her indie bands. she dresses a little bit emo, but insists that she isnt one :p she loves going to the cinemas and loves to rave! Shes dating ajkiwi88 and he sometimes pops in to visit. Hayleebob loves the great outdoors and is athletic, she loves climbing, bmxing and playing at parks. All in all shes one cool, popular and care free girl!

Me Meez (Part Deux)

Me...or rather my Second Life character (part Deux) in Meez. How much is me? Well.....We'll discuss that. :)

If you're uploading your character image to this blog (you'll have to be a member of the blog to be able to do that, remember), upload it via the Meez Export page (see handout) then email me some text describing her / him. His or her name, interests, personality, etc....whatever you want to include to describe the online character, based (or not) on you, that you've created. I'll add it to your image. Remember to tell me the name of the Meez character you've posted on here!

If you DON'T have membership here, you can download the image to My Pictures on your My Docs uni account and email it to me along with your description. I'll then create a 'gallery' of your Meez people on the WebCT site.

'Self'-worth

How much is an online identity worth? $9500 apparently :

http://www.destructoid.com/geek-sells-warcraft-account-for-9-500-idiot-buys-warcraft-account-for-9-500-45135.phtml ...and this is purported to be a pic of him.

The BBC website also has a decent article on it. http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44130000/jpg/_44130914_worow-blizzard203.jpg&imgrefurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/7007026.stm&usg=__0nzkKRnLdYnLk-y69HoZd_fiAUM=&h=152&w=203&sz=14&hl=en&start=7&tbnid=0mI_YlXU7MJVFM:&tbnh=79&tbnw=105&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dzeuzo%2Bworld%2Bof%2Bwarcraft%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GGLR_enGB311GB315

What price your online cyber-identity? What does this say about ownership and 'authenticity' of those characters that we create online, invested with 'self'? I guess the power of the mighty buck outweighs all....

The Limits of Technological Determinism

The topic of yesterday's lecture may have left the impression that, due to the affordances of the technology we currently have, online communication is pretty much a negative experience in 'human terms', i.e. we're destined to communicate and perceive the communictions of others (and our co-communicators) online rather negatively. "The message is salient but the person isn't"...."Lack of social context clues leads to present-focused, self-absorbed, de-regulated possibly de-individuated behaviour", etc, etc, but I hope that, by the end, you concluded that these early models, those that essentially took the 'human' out of the human, computer-mediated, communicative process, were only really nibbling at the tip of the iceberg. They were somewhat, perhaps necessarily given the pioneering nature of them, simplistic and totally failed to consider the influence of individual personality on the noted 'affordance effects'.

Given that a lot of this early theory and some of the later, (as you'll see), hinges on the possibility of de-individuation and group influence, I thought it might be a good point at which to have you revisit the classic studyof de-individuation, i.e. Stanford Prison Expt. You can read about Zimbardo's study here http://www.prisonexp.org/ and see a short Youtube clip on it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxGEmfNl-xM. In the 'Discussion Questions' page of the prison experiment website, it asks the following question...What prevented "good guards" from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards? This cuts to the essence of de-individuation....and brings us back to the impact of individual personality traits on group influence in both real life (like Stanford) and online. Those 'good guards' in Stanford who DIDN'T object to the orders of bad guards simply didn't have the psychological profile to resist de-individuation and assimilation of group identity. I'm reckoning that if they'd tested enough people as gaurds, they would have encountered those that did. They certainly found a prisoner who refused to de-individuate into a 'prisoner role' (Prisoner 416).

So what about online? Isn't it the same? There are those who are inherently incapable of resisting the de-individuation that the medium encourages whereas others are armed with an arsenal of attributes to deflect the draw of de-individuation. Spend some time considering the types of traits and abilities that would make one naturally resilient.....do you possess them? Furthermore are the technological determinants of online behaviour situationally dependent?