CMC

I have been trying to figure out how to best use this blog. This week I decided to put down my scattered thoughts as I was reading each article rather than reading everything and then writing a well digested version of the intermediate thoughts. So here it is.

Second Life

One point that struck me after I watched the CBC news report on Second Life was, that people were building there life and identity in second life so as to escape the problems and constraints of the real life. The avatars as the comentator said were slim and tall (“Slimmer, taller, better equipped versions of us”). Simon could dance in spite of his cerebral palsy. The writer (Tim??) commented that second life allows conquering death and taxes … a commentary on the need to run away from constraints, pain, frustrations of real life. The first thought I had was that they were all running away from reality and pretending something else while the reality actually did not change. If I can run away from painful reality so easily then I would never try to change it, improve it, or accept it. How can that be good for a person’s development as a human being.

I do not have much experience in second life but I wonder if the pretending remains just a fun thing for a short time like we pretended being a king or a brigand or mothers and fathers, when we used to play as kids. Or the virtual identity continues and makes a difference in the real life? Yet again what is ‘real life’ and what is real me. To quote from Indian philosophers ‘This world is Maya’, it is all perception.


CMC – impersonal, interpersonal, hyperpersonal

Among many interesting things in the article one is worth a mention as it relates to the earlier thought process about second life vs real life. When talking about hyperpersonal interaction (on page 28) Walther writes ‘why would people be attracted to such distortion?’ The use of word ‘distortion’ was very interesting. It was how I thought of second life … not reality, distortion. Yet when I think about CMC (except second life kind of virtual world) I feel it allows me to show my real self and avoids distortion. I am not sure why I still stick to the feeling of second life like virtual realities as undesirable running away from reality and CMC generated hyperpersonal communication as good and taking people closer to ‘my’ reality and avoiding distortion. Is this a difference of degree? Quality? Or it is different because of the objective of the participant? I am not sure right now. This definitely gives something to think about/ consciously question about as I participate in both worlds.

A few other things caught my attention.
Firstly, the research studies mentioned in the beginning of the article that looked at task vs social communication. The tone of the studies seemed like task communication is desirable and the social communication was not desirable. Thus CMS being less interpersonal is good for task communication/ getting work done. This view does not take into account the group dynamics theories and the theories of group formation/development (FtF) in organizational context. It is a very industrial view of looking at work and work relationships.
Secondly, I was very excited reading the SIDE model. I was thinking about the implications to client-vendor relations when each is on a different continent. I could very much relate to effects of perception of being a part of the group vs perception of as individual players. I was working with a vendor in India working for clients in US. Clients were always perceived as trouble makers. I am sure vendors were also perceived the same way from the other side. Then the organization positioned itself as a learning consultant rather than a vendor and I positioned my team as a consulting partner rather than an outside / third party vendor. Over the time, how we interacted with each other and how we made sense of what other was saying changed drastically. When I was reading Walther’s comments on SIDE it all makes a lot of sense.

About ‘Real’ me

I was once again thinking about the real me and the virtual me. When reading Bugeja’s thoughts, I wasn’t much thinking about the legal implications to administrators but of implications of violence, harassment etc in second life to me. In the past I would have said that I know it is not real so it wouldn’t bother me. But I know better now. I have observed how racist, threatening and sexually explicit replies to my comments on discussion groups and wikis disturbs me and leaves me shaken to the core. It is very puzzling that physically-removed online interactions affect the real me so much.

When I was reading research findings by Snyder etc (mentioned by Walther) it made me think again about what is ‘real me’. To quote from the article “….When a male believed he was speaking to an attractive partner, it affected his communication; his communication, in turn, affected the female partner’s engagement in the conversation, leading her to, in essence, become more beautiful.” So I am not only what I perceive I am, but I am what others perceive I am and also how I react to that perception and infinite iterations of this process.

I have been observing myself as I write this blog. It is quite interesting that after seeing no comments for any of my blogs and feeling quite comfortable about being alone, unwatched, what I write has changed. As I have a different personality (identity ???) when I am in India, in US, in class, office or home alone, I also have a different personality (identity ???) when I think I am writing for an audience or writing alone unwatched.

Information Society

The readings for this week were very interesting, so were the class discussions. I especially spent time mulling over what Dyson and Webster had to say. I think I am more confused after reading the articles. Or to put it positively, the articles have forced me to think in various directions. Here are some scattered themes going on in my mind.

Market for Lemons
I was quite fascinated by Akerlof’s theory of ‘Market for lemons’. The asymmetry of information causing the market to revise average quality of goods and prices downward.
Now with the explosion of possibilities of getting information in time, with less and less effort one would think that the problem would be cured. But it seems in many examples we have a lot of choice and a lot of information about what choices we have but less and less information to judge the quality of goods/services we purchase.

How did we manage to cure the information asymmetry before? We knew our neighborhood vendor, we knew from our earlier experience the level of quality he provided. We knew brand names that had consistent quality attached to them, based on which we could judge the quality. The regulatory boards of various governments put a stamp saying what the packaging says is what is really inside. If we are thinking about a new free world like Dyson envisions, with decentralized control, end of mass culture, and endless and diverse choice, it increases the information asymmetry as we loose a lot of pegs from where we drew our information.
Are we inventing newer ways of getting information to suit the newfound freedom? Or without information, wanting to take lesser risk pushing the better goods out of the market?

What about ‘information’ as a good? As information is bombarded from everywhere, do we have the information to judge the quality of information we are getting? It is fascinating to think about the consequences of the market for information as a lemons market.

Loud Thinking

I did not attend the initial sessions so instead of commenting about what I got out of the sessions I thought I will just jot down some thoughts that have been wandering in my mind …. what I call ‘loud thinking’.

Thread 1.
I thought I was a digital native but I am not sure anymore. I started blogging and then it fizzled out. I was very excited about Orkut and its capability to connect me to people with similar interests and now I am lukewarm about it. I don’t seem to be getting excited for an extended period about any social networking site, community, forum or wiki. So what motivates other people to actively participate in such interaction, to share information they have, and go to the extent of actively finding information so that it can be provided to some random user they don’t even know. I have done that but not so consistently. So are these sites alive because of spurts of activities from numerous people? Or is it much more a part of a generation’s social life? What makes it so important for them and what is it that I don't see as the priority / necessity in my life.

Thread 2.

I have been observing a community on Orkut almost since its inception. It is interesting to see the group dynamics develop, group objectives getting formulated. I keep wondering, why are these people here? Many are much older than the traditional netGeneration. What makes Orkut so attractive to them in spite of their love-hate relationship with computers?

Orkut calls the space created for their interaction, a ‘community’. Are they really a community? Is online interaction just a precursor of actual traditional interaction or they will continue to flourish in virtual space? I am planning to look at this community and its development with respect to whatever we read, discuss and the conceptual lenses the readings provide.

hmmm... lots of questions. Good place to start.

Blogging again

I started a photo blog named ‘India outside India’ after I came to US. It is amazing how quickly the blogging fever abated. I still take snaps and in my head write a blog, but somehow it never feels safe/politically correct enough to go on the cyber space. I hope this blog turns out to be different. I hope it gives me the strength to be less private.