Final Blog

After reading Villanueva’s article, “Spic in English!” the term that I felt had the most to do and could be used best to help myself and my group members in our assignments is when he talked about biculturalism. Villanueva states, “Biculturalism does not mean to me an equal ease with two cultures. That is an ideal. Rather, biculturalism means the tensions within, which are caused by being unable to deny the old or the new (Villanueva 39).” Even though when he wrote this she was talking about two different racial cultures, I believe that the term can also be used in our assignments of comparing two different digital communities. When using Villanueva’s term comparing digital communities you can look at the different sites or software and pick out the differences between the sites and see what makes them unique and what they would be willing to change on their site or not be willing to change.

Villanueva, Victor Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. Urbana, IL: NCTE. 34-50.

Questions:

In “Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide” the “Hole in the Wall” experiment was intended to:

A. Be used as an experiment to see what the children would the computer for, such as either for gaming and fun or as an educational tool.

B. Provide the cities children with Internet access and let them teach themselves the basics of computing.

C. To give the children something to do that is not troublesome and is safe for them.

D. All of the above.

T or F:

The children’s parents were all thrilled with inclusion of the computers because it kept their children out of trouble and it allowed them to explore the digital world.

Super Mario Brothers 2

After reading, “Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games,” by Anne-Marie Schleiner, and comparing the various views with the princess from Super Mario Brothers 2, I believe that the creators of the game were not going for the Tomb Raider approach, with sex appeal, but with the approach of just having girls play their game and try to sell the game to both genders. When I compare the two games there is a lot different between how the female characters are seen in the game. Lara Croft is wearing little clothing and her body has been proportioned to a Barbie doll. But with the princess, the only thing that shows that the character is a woman is the dress and the hair. I think that by putting the princess in a big pink dress with blonde hair they were trying to create a character in which younger girls would want to control so they would play the game also. Schleiner states, “the appearance of female heroines in computer games, albeit male constructions of femininity, can be seen as a first step, an invitation for women to play computer games (Schleiner 221-226).” I agree with this statement because when I was younger and playing video games with my little sister, she would only want to play the games with me if there was a girl character or some cute little animal. I also don’t think the when comparing the princess to Mario, Luigi, and Toad that the creators of the game made any real stereotypical statements about women either. The only thing that the princess can do is sort of hover longer then the other characters, which doesn’t seem like a stereotype of women to me. The only real thing in the game that might be somewhat demining to women is the fact that she doesn’t have a name like the other characters; she is just known as the princess.

Works Cited:

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games." MIT Press 34.3 (2001): 221-226. Web. 7 Oct 2010.

Peg Communities

While reading, “Webs as Pegs,” by David Bell, I tended to agree more on Bell’s view of virtual communities then on Bauman’s view that they are peg communities. In the chapter Bell describes peg communities as, “The first is Bauman’s dismissal of many contemporary forms of something-like-community as ‘peg communities’ – as coat pegs on which we choose to temporarily hang parts of our identities (Bell 254).” While reading through the chapter Bell talked about how Bauman believes that even though the user is talking online with other people or playing games, they are still alone somewhere not making actual contact with another human being. I do not agree with this statement because even though the user is alone while they are on this online community, they are still interacting with many individuals from all around the world. To me this has more potential to meet and interact with different kinds of people then RL communities have to offer. I also liked the section of the chapter where Bell talked about if the user is offline are they still part of the community. Bell compared this situation to RL communities saying that the exact situation can occur when a person is not in attendance at the RL community but the person doesn’t lose their status in the group. Bell states, “lack of involvement – just as members of RL communities don’t need to continually doing ‘community work’ in order to sustain their membership (Bell 259).”

Three websites that I would like to study for assignment 2 would be ESPN Fantasy Football page, Operation Sports, which is a forum website where individuals discuss different sport news and sports video gaming, and MLB.com, specifically on the forums and commenting portions of the page. I would like to study these specific pages because they are sites that I regularly visit and they are communities that I am a part of.

http://games.espn.go.com/frontpage

http://www.operationsports.com/

http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp

Works Cited:

Bell, David, and Barbara M. Kennedy. The Cybercultures Reader. Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2000. 254-263. Print.

Changes in Yahoo!

After reading Burnett’s and Marshall’s chapter “The Look of the Web,” in their book, Web Theory: An Introduction, I have found out that Yahoo! has made some significant changes in their web page in just ten years of time. One major change that I noticed right away when I compared the sites homepages is that now Yahoo! uses a lot more images and videos in their site. In the reading Burnett and Marshall say that because images and videos take so long to load onto the user’s interface, by not having any pictures or videos it allows the site to run quicker and more efficiently. The author’s state, “Icons: interestingly, Yahoo! does not produce a great number of images on its homepage. Its hierarchical structure of providing links has mandated the lack of particularity that a photograph connotes for the user. Moreover, photographs slow down the loading of the page and by their elimination, Yahoo!’s industrial strategy of quickly capturing its user base on its first page is achieved (Burnett and Marshall 97).”

Although there are some significant changes in the way Yahoo! presents its information, the articles two main focus points of the Yahoo! homepage are still intact. The first component of the page is the personalization of the page. The user can customize their homepage to display what they want to have on their screen and take out what they may not like or care about so they will not have to sift through all of the unwanted material. The second major component of the Yahoo! homepage that remains intact is the use of hypertext. In both versions of Yahoo! homepages the user can click on any sentence or word and be directed to the article or whatever that hypertext is intended to direct the user to.

Works Cited:

Burnett, Robert, and P. David Marshall. Web Theory: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003. 81-101. eBook.

Digital Divide

The digital divide is the term that is used to describe the difference between people who know how to use or have access to computers and the internet, and those who do not. There are multiple aspects to the digital divide. In class we discussed that the divide is made up of two main parts, Techno-Literacy and Cultural Literacy. Techno Literacy is that the user knows how to use the program and understands its purpose or function. Cultural Literacy is understanding how the different groups or individuals use this technology and how they represent themselves. In “Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide,” by Mark Warschauer, he goes into great detail on what the cultural differences are in different parts of the world. Warschauer gives an example where a computer system that was connected to the internet was put into one of the poorest slums in Delhi and how the children came over and taught themselves how to use the computer system. Although they were able to figure out how to use the computers, they brought up new issues for the children and their parents that they had not ever encountered before. Warschauer says, “Some parents even complained that the kiosk was harmful to their children. As one parent stated, ‘My son used to be doing very well in school, he used to concentrate

on his homework, but now he spends all his free time playing computer games at the kiosk and his schoolwork is suffering.’ In short, parents and the community came to realize that "minimally invasive education" was, in practice, minimally effective education (Warschauer 1).”

There are many different metaphors or examples to help us under what exactly is the digital divide. On very common one is when a Mac user is trying to switch over to a Windows system, or vice versa. I do not think that this the best example

of the digital divide because even though that these are two completely different systems, both are complex computer networks and I believe that it is easier to learn any type of computer when you already have knowledge of a different system. I think that a better example of representing the digital divide today is the changes in television. It used to be, and in a lot of places still is, that watching television was just having a TV and a controller and scrolling through the channels until the viewer found something that they wanted to watch. Now, however, there has been so much more added to it and so many different ways it can be viewed it has become quite complex to use a TV system to its fullest potential. With the addition of DVR you can record anything on TV automatically and you can even program the DVR

to record every single episode of a show that you can watch back later. Also the addition on internet TV a viewer can basically go online to sites like Netflix or Hulu and watch any show that they want to. To me, switching from basic cable to a high performance DVR would be a more complex transition then switching from a Mac to a PC.

Works Cited:

Warschauer, Mark. "Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide." First Monday 7.7 (2002): 1. Web. 2 Sep 2010. .

View on Rhetoric

The “Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric” defines rhetoric as, “the human use of symbols to communicate (1)”. Foss, Foss, and Trap stated in this reading that this is a broad enough interpretation of the definition the successfully cover all aspects of what is considered rhetoric. In the reading in clarifies each main part of the three key words, or parts, of the definition to help us fully understand what the definition means. The three key words to the definition are humans, symbols and communicate. When explain the human aspect of the definition the reading states that humans are the only species on the planet that communicates through symbols. The writers state that, “some people debate that symbol use is a characteristic that distinguishes humans from all other species of animals, (1)”. The second part to the definition, symbols, I believe is the most important part of the definition. Symbols are the tools that we as humans use to communicate. We associate items with words, which are symbols, to help us communicate what we are telling another individual. Symbols can also be more than just words. The reading gives an example of a tree decorated with lights inside of a house is a symbol that it is Christmas time. The final part to the definition is communicate. The reading says that rhetoric is just another term for communication but in emphasis in using these symbols to do so.

I myself participate in various different aspects of digital culture. Playing video games and communicating though the various ways that I can on my IPhone are all examples of digital culture. An example of digital culture that I participate in that I know uses rhetoric is texting with my friends of family. Not only does texting use rhetoric by just the symbols of words and phrases, but it has developed its own sort of symbols to communicate that is unique to texting, or instant messaging, itself. The two main ways that I have noticed are emoticons and shortened words.

Emoticons are small images that look like a face that one can type out on a regular keyboard. Although these are not real word, these serve as powerful symbols that can portray emotion the person receiving the message. The second type of symbols that has been developed are shortened words. These are words such as “thnx “or “whtevr”. We read and understand these symbols even though they are not part of any official language, but they do provide us with a symbol that we can understand.

Works Cited:

Foss, Sonja, Karen Foss, and Robert Trapp. Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric. Third. Waveland Press, Inc., 1-15. Print.