Discussion Leader’s Questions
The following are questions are intended for members of the Rowan graduate course, Writing for Electronic Communities.
1. In the author’s quest for the “great record”, he virtually prophesies the creation of the internet. Relative to writing for electronic communities, what invention do you propose that would enhance our record of knowledge and our ability to communicate efficiently (your invention can be as crazy or impossible as you like). I propose that we invent a lens with which we can project our ideas onto a medium, and communicate at the speed of thought. In terms of individual achievement, check this video out (dude’s a nerd but he’s awesome). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
2. After a virtual rape, Dr. Bombay’s community scrambles for identity, defined solely by the execution of one of its members, the perpetrator. Just like the author, I have a hard time taking this bollocks seriously (it did take multiple violent rapes for the VR community to become more self-aware). But she does bring up a central point: where lies the theoretical boundary, all but non-existent for non-MOO-users, between RL and VR? Consider this:
Where virtual reality and its conventions would have us believe that legba and Starsinger were brutally raped in their own living room, here was the victim legba scolding Mr. Bungle for a breach of “civility.” Where real life, on the other hand, insists the incident was only an episode in a free-form version of Dungeons and Dragons, confined to the realm of the symbolic and at no point threatening any player’s life, limb, or material well-being… (Dibbell)
3. Within this virtual community (of practice?) psychopaths and newbies are the two types of users who view MOO as a place where they can act without censure. The potential anarchy of MOO is what’s most appealing. The rest of the users, says Dr. Bombay, “tend to make the critical passage from anonymity to pseudonymity, developing the concern for their character’s reputation that marks the attainment of virtual adulthood.” So, answer me this: what’s the point of a virtual existence in which you have unadulterated freedom at your fingertips if all you’re going to do is be as self-conscious and restrained as you are in real life? What’s the point if you are going to employ government and regulate the goings-on of the community?
4. Can you think of problems with an alternate version of your “self” displayed in virtual rooms or in video games? In other words, in generations to come, will a human being’s identity be so fragmented that the self will be utterly indefinable? What would be the consequences of turning ourselves over to the “psychology” of a computer, as Turkle puts it?
5. Kelly says we little notion of what the web really is. Can anyone really define it (for real, this isn’t rhetorical), keeping in mind what it could become by 2015?
