Netiquette p.47 “if you
wish to be part of a civilized digital culture, treat it as you would
any other civilized realm, and maintain the same standards that govern
decent interactions between people – who, whether the space they are
interacting within is virtual or physical, themselves remain real.”
DAMHIKIJKOK p.57 “don’t
ask me how I know, I just know ok” I’ve not come across this one before!
Mashups p.113
Lolcat Bible: “In teh beginz is teh meow,
and teh meow sez ‘Oh hai Ceiling Cat and teh meow iz teh Ceiling Cat’” –
www.lolcatbible.com
Culture Jamming “is
‘jamming’ in the same sense that one side might attempt to disrupt radio
communications during a conflict: it aims to disrupt and subvert
mainstream cultural messages, often for satirical or political ends.
Given the ease with which digital media can be manipulated, culture
jamming broadly describes whole swathes of online activity and an
‘alternative’ scene that has itself become sufficiently established to
merit further satire and subversion.” p.116
This is a topic I find particularly
interesting. I do believe we are all controlled, some more so than
others. Controlled through advertising which encourages us to buy things
we don’t need, buying into pointless products and pointless technology.
Controlled through the media to believe certain things or to see the
world from a certain perspective, most notably during conflict.
Controlled through entertainment which portrays certain lifestyles,
causing us to aspire to them because we are lead to believe what we see
is the norm. And the reason for this control? On a basic level it is
just money – material wealth by the controllers, the ones at the top. On
a deeper level, maybe non-material.
Going viral “The most
followed people on social networks are actors, musicians and
celebrities… This reflects not so much the loss of internet subcultures
the loss of the internet as a subculture.” p.171 It’s a shame isn’t it?
Virtual worlds “are…
self-contained unreal places that people can ‘visit’, interact within
and use to experiment with different ways of being… In the last few
decades, they have moved with remarkable speed from being mere
imaginative experiments to both powerful artistic and experimental
arenas…” p.172
“Anyone
who is worried about the effects of virtual worlds on social interaction
should direct their concern at television long, long before they look at
virtual worlds” – Richard Bartle, “British writer, professor and
game researcher, best known for being the co-creator of MUD1 and the
author of the seminal Designing Virtual Worlds.” –
wikipedia
“…virtual worlds have continued to grow
in influence. In 2003, American company Linden Lab launched Second Life,
an online space in which players were given an unprecedented degree of
freedom to live out virtual lives through their avatars, buying virtual
land and consuming virtual goods from a variety of real-world companies
with a virtual presence within Second Life.”
“…it is primarily a social space, and one
for indulging in the fantastical delights of building everything from
virtual places to factories, but it has featured as a virtual venue for
everything from business meetings to artistic collaborations and
teaching… some people refer to [it] as the ‘three dimensional
internet.’”
“The migration of attention towards
virtual worlds brings with it many concerns, some of which centre on the
neglect of real life… exceptional cases will always exist [such as
wives] who leave their husbands. But studies do suggest that those
predisposed to addictive behaviour should exercise caution around the
extraordinarily compelling experiences some game worlds can offer.”
Avatars p.177 “How does
the way someone looks in the virtual world change the way they and
others behave? Perhaps unsurprisingly, experiments using different kinds
of avatars have found that people tend to be more confident and willing
to engage others when they are using more attractive and more
appealing-looking avatars. More interestingly, though, research suggests
that these effects can coss over in a limited way into the real world,
and that after using attractive avatars and behaving confidently online,
people may for a short period of time be more confident in the real
world.” |