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. .