Tuesday, 2nd of August 8:02am I arise from my slumber with a checklist of things to do, these include: check my updates on Twitter, verify that I've won my bid on Ebay, check my SOLS mail, email my father who lives 6 hours away and do my readings for DIGC202. I complete all of the previously mentioned tasks, get myself ready for university for the day and walk to the bus. All without a single moment of human contact with another, though I don't for one moment feel alone. I mean after all, I've emailed my dad. I've gotten contact from a lecturer and I've received a notification from an Ebay bidder- but I havn't taken part in a single real- life conversation or encounter.
It seems that with the growth in popularity of online presence, we no longer visit friends- we Skype, we don't make trips to see our bank clerk- we use e-banking and we don't even need to physically interact with others in order to play a game- we log onto an online gaming site.
Sterling's article states that we use the internet for four reasons: "mail, discussion groups, long-distance
computing, and file transfers" (Sterling, 1993). However it seems as though we rely on the internet for so much more than this, thus blurring the lines between reality and life online. An example bought up within this week's tutorial was the World of Warcraft Funeral Raid. The main itopic of concern bought upon by this raid is the fact that no person would ever do this at a real funeral, so is it acceptable for an individual to raid a funeral online, under an alias? There are many ethical implications which need to be considered, including the fact that the funeral, though online was for a girl who had just died in real life. It is difficult to draw the line of right and wrong in this instance, and many others. Falder's article 'The Nature of Networks' explains that for networking to take place, it must consist of both a node and a flow. With the World of Warcraft Raid in mind, there would have been no online raid without human activity taking place.
And so the debate continues into whether what we say and do online should impact on the person we are in reality, whether or not creating an 'alias' is really a justification for saying or doing things out-of-character or unethical online?
Good post, sometimes i get up in the morning, and with 7 other people living in the house, i'd prefer not to have any contact. And i don't think there's anything wrong with creating an alias, look at second life, for some people it's just a form of personal expression. But i suppose with everything in life, there'll be people who will exploit it.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly seems that the online world is becoming more dominant each day. It's kind of scary really. I can't even begin to imagine what life online will be like 10 or 20 years from now. By the way, great post!
ReplyDeleteI don't even think we have a choice with how much we rely on the internet anymore, take for example this subject: to complete it, we must familiarize ourselves with Twitter, Blogger and Delicious- add those to our pre- existing social networking accounts and you've got yourself a social networking catastrophe!
ReplyDeleteNot to mention all the email addresses, passwords, usernames, blogs etc etc
ReplyDeleteWe have all become immersed in this cyberspace reality.
I also agree with nate, as some people create alias' to escape from reality, it's just what they DO with their alias' that is a concern.