Week 10 Post

 

 

The material we covered in this course and the blog site that we were instructed to set up was very helpful in expanding my overall knowledge of internet communication, how it is used, how it is misused, how it has changed over time, and the basic fundamentals of it. Before taking this class the Internet was just a tool that I used for various reasons. Basically I was so used to the fact that the Internet existed and I used it so often that I took it for granted. I never realized how in depth we could analyze human activity and online communication. Until taking this course I did not fully understand how it has changed the world.

            I had somewhat of a limited understanding about the many avenues I could explore in using the Internet for communication. I had a vague idea of what a blog was and other messages boards like the ones talked about in Wood and Smith. Having being forced into creating and maintaining a blog opened my eyes to the vast tools of online communication. I believe that without taking this course I would have never fully understood these sources of communication.

            I very much enjoyed reading the texts from this course. I felt the two books were a great mixture of information and balanced each other well. Postman showed me how to view the Internet and computers from philosophical and social viewpoints. He laid the foundations very thoroughly in his analysis and his concept of our “Technopoly” society. I agreed a great deal with many of the concepts that Postman came up with, especially his idea about the abundance of unbridled, uncontrolled, unstructured information which is now provided to us by the media, internet, and other technologies. I strongly support his view and his cautions in how today, technology has come to run our lives, or in as he states, we have shaped our lives, culture, and society around our technologies to cater to them.

            The Wood and Smith book was a great text to have to support our study of online communication, as Postman takes a macro philosophical approach; Wood and Smith really get to the nuts and bolts of the system. They describe how the internet is used, how it is misused, the way that CMC effects us and how we respond to different types of CMC. Wood and Smith also touch on topics of how online communication has changed over the years, how it began as a networking system for universities and other military uses, to a world wide “space” where anyone can participate in information sharing. They gave examples of how powerful the Internet is, like the lesson the Mexican Government learned when they tried to suppress the Zapatista insurgency. The Zapatistas reached out to the world for help sending email messages and forced the Mexican Government into peace talks due to outside pressure (Wood and Smith P. 192).

            Having the whole class participate in the blog entries was interesting because not only did it teach us how to use blog’s but also we were also able to interact with each other through blog entries. I was able to hear other people’s opinions on the course material and learn about their experiences they had online and with CMC.

            Now after taking this class, I don’t view the Internet as such an enigmatic phenomenon that was taken for granted. I understand the fundamentals of it and I can see how it affects the way we live and communicate. I now see how the Internet and CMC touches everyone of us in someway and how it has drastically changed our world, from the way we work, play, and study.

WEEK 9 BLOG

WEEK 9 BLOG

 

I found an article written in 2006 by the BBC at the web address of: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4655196.stm. This article was titled “US Plans to ‘fight the net’ revealed’”. The article is about three years old but it was very interesting to read. It talked about a recently declassified document called the “Information Operations Roadmap” from the US Military detailing plans of the “Psychological Operations” branch of the military (Psyops) to use technology to have domineering control over the internet and other networks. It details that the US Military should be prepared to control, overthrow, manipulate or destroy “enemy networks” in “electronic warfare”. The article is somewhat alarming in its description of how some of the Psyops propaganda is leaked back into the domestic media. Referring back to our readings throughout this course, it is easy for us to imagine that any propaganda sent through online networks or to the media to other countries whether they be benign or malevolent are going to filter back into our domestic society. In Wood and Smith they speak of the “Discursive Resistance” and creation of spaces within the places that the “dominant power structures” reside (pg. 180). These discursive resistance’s and other “International Communities” are described as being far reaching and widely accessible (because they are on the “WORLD WIDE WEB“), especially, as Psyops plans, when they are broadcast to the mainstream media.

It should occur to whomever is tasked with this “electronic warfare” that any propaganda or attacks that are sent online to “enemy states” are probably going to wind up in the hands on domestic users as well due to the universal accessibility of the internet. For instance anyone can access most foreign news media unless it is fire walled for some reason. The only barrier would be language. Also, how many US citizens are abroad conducting business, studies, on temporarily working and living overseas? These individuals are sure to see these messages as well.

Another interesting part of the article that made me think of possible problems with the “Information Operations Roadmap” idea is that of creditability. As Postman states in “The Great Symbol Drain“ chapter, we are already having a tough time with maintaining our ‘historical narrative’ (Symbol drain is both a symptom and a cause of a loss of narrative p. 173) due to the over saturation of our historic, religious, and traditional symbols through mainstream media. Now we have to wonder if what we are watching, observing, or hearing is military propaganda that has found its way back to our domestic sphere. This isn’t like a bomb that destroys a targeted area, the information lingers and spreads. Referring back to Postman again who warns of the nullification of vast quantities of information and symbols, this propaganda will have very negative effects on our overall faith in online communication. Postman attributes “Symbol drain” and loss of narrative to be exacerbated by technopoly:

The constraints are so few that we may call this a form of cultural rape, sanctioned by an ideology that gives boundless supremacy to technological progress and is indifferent to the unraveling of tradition (p. 170)This “Information Operations Roadmap” could have its uses in destroying enemy networks but there should be some serious consideration into the side affects or potential backfire this could have on the online world. There needs to be constraints against destructive forces such as this. Using the internet as a weapon should not be taken lightly, its not like sprinkling pamphlets from an air plane or blasting friendly messages over loudspeakers to the towns folk. Anything distributed online has a worldwide reach, its seeps into our homes and into the minds of everyone, including the unwary or unsuspecting domestic user.

WEEK 8 BLOG

 

 

 

Communicating with my supervisor has been one of the most difficult issues I face using email. Let me just set the stage by explaining the factors involved. I’m a relatively new employee still on probation and I have not had the chance to get to know my superiors well. We work opposite hours and the only communication we have is really for official purposes. As I have stated before, I’m a face-to-face kind of guy. I like to read body language and “feel out” the person I’m speaking with so that I can really get my message across. I don’t like the “cues filter out” approach (Wood and Smith p. 79). My supervisor, consequently is the same way. When I use “immediate communication” as Wood and Smith describe (pg. 6) I will adjust my messages, such as the choice of words, my tone of voice, the length of my messages, and even my responses, and other non-verbal contexts to certain personalities. When I use email and I have to represent my “mediated self” (Wood and Smith pg. 7) which is difficult to establish for me to a superior. I find that I have to carefully construct my messages (which are predominantly email) so they don’t come out wrong. Remember I am communicating with a superior and there is more pressure to not sound out of line. I get frustrated with mediated communication when I don’t know the personality or characteristics of the receiver. Especially when the receiver has power over my job. When I’m not familiar with my receiver, I find myself putting my foot in my mouth more often than not and I have no idea why. I then have to go explain myself to them in person as to the real meaning of my message. Again, I’m not sure why this happens, all I know is that I’m terrible with CMC.

That being said, my current supervisor, as I briefly explained, is like me, he is much better at face-to-face communication. I have written several emails to him and then deleted them all together. I chose not to send them at all and instead use the telephone to get my message across. The main reason is that most of my messages are about how to approach solving a certain issue or problem. In these instances I need immediate feedback. As I mentioned my supervisors and I work opposite hours, and if I don’t get that instant feedback, the issue still remains. The delay would look unprofessional. The conundrum I face here is that I have to phone and get a hold of my supervisor when I’m not supposed to be working (I value my free time) and get the issue resolved, instead of simply sending an email then receiving an answer when I go back to work.

When I thought about writing this assignment I had a hard time trying to find a way to incorporate this weeks reading. Then I thought about our companies email system itself. One of my main complaints about our email system at work is that its totally contained within the office. I cannot access it from outside nor do I have an “email” address. This is somewhat ridiculous although its for security purposes. In reading Wood and Smith and about the issue of “Accessing the Machine” I wonder if the people who designed my email system were thinking ahead about the amount of access to email and to the internet that people would have in the future (I‘m assuming here that our system is old and outdated). I envision the creators of our email system shaped their design back in the 80’s and 90’s when most people seemed to access the internet (if at all) at work for work related purposes. Now in today’s society of “hotspots” and online access at McDonalds (Wood and Smith p. 166) we can be and are at work all the time because of the availability and access to the internet. I would like to think that our work email system is archaic and outdated and I would probably be right. The creators probably didn’t’ realize that the State Governments, like Kentucky, Oregon, Nebraska, and Wisconsin were going to go as far as requiring internet wiring in all state funded housing (Wood and Smith pg. 175). They probably didn’t expect establishments like Starbucks and McDonalds to give their customers free online access. They also probably didn’t realize that as more people got “wired” that we would be able to access our accounts from homes and expect to be able to access our “work” from home as well. As we become more and more connected, other companies expect to be able to communicate via email with your company just as you would with theirs. Just imagine that every time I go to training or meet with someone outside my office I have to tell them that my company has a secure email address which they cannot get an email address for? I had to use my personal email address for most of my work correspondence outside the office. Archaic and obsolete, I rest my case.

Week 7 BLOG

In my three interviews, I chose my parents and my wife (they covered all the age ranges). The first two, my mother and my wife, were uninteresting interviews and somewhat predictable in there outcome. I am not going to spend any time discussing them based on the fact that they did not have anything interesting to say about their internet usage that surprised me or inspired any thoughts related to our studies.

My father, on the other hand, who was at the top end of the age range, was somewhat of an anomaly. I found his responses interesting and it inspired thoughts and ideas taken from our studies. I say this because his responses to the various questions that I asked him about his internet usage and how it effects his life were different than I would have expected from someone his age. Most people his age that I have spoken with are retired and don’t use the internet for anything but recreation, shopping, and mildly communicative purposes. My father is about 64 years old. He did not grow up with the internet and he conducted a large part of his career without it. He has always worked in a corporate office setting and has done so for about forty years. He is currently employed and an executive level in his corporation and he and his company depends on the internet greatly to conduct business internationally.

During my interview, he described to me that a great deal of the technologies they use are internet based. He has a Blackberry phone which uses internet to send emails and other CMC. He also mentioned that all of the phones at the office are internet based as well. He conducts many conference calls online as well as other activities where he communicates with several people at once. He must do this as part of his job as an executive running an international corporation. Postman describes the management technique employed in today’s corporate world and he takes the model set out by Slyvanus Thayer:

Thayer rejected the traditional leaders role of direct, visible command. He ruled indirectly through the medium of written reports, charts, memos, personnel files, etc. not unlike the way a modern CEO functions (Postman pg. 140).In viewing this model and its components its easy to see on how technologies such as the Blackberry, computers, and the internet help promote this model. They seem to go hand in hand. I believe a great deal of the technologies used today were created with the managerial business model in mind. My father told me that these technologies makes his job easier (although he is now always at work and glued to the Blackberry) because he can deal with problems as they come up. The issues are instantly relayed to him through the “immediacy” of the medium of the internet. He described that before the internet and Blackberry, he had to deal with problems or issues as they “crossed his desk” which meant the problem was transferred and transcribed onto paper, sent through the channels, then arrived on his desk. So by the time he was made aware of any issues or things that needed attention, a great deal of time had already passed and the problem still existed to be dealt with. This was opposed to having instant notification via email, documents sent online, or by cell phone. He is now able to deal with it right then and there without any lag time. All of today’s technologies made this possible.

In Wood and Smith on page 161 they discuss the concept of the “panopticon” and “electronic panopticon” to help with corporate “discipline”. I would take this idea of the “panopticon” a step further and say that the corporate management structure as Postman describes demands this “electronic panopticon” to exist. It helps people at the top level of the management structure get feedback from employees more quickly and as my father described helps them deal with problems instantly as they arise. It improves efficiency. Of course it helps with employee discipline because the visibility is some much greater about what they are doing to promote business. As a society I don’t see the managerial model going anywhere and the companies that invent tools such as the Blackberry are banking on that. I discussed with my father various concepts brought up by Postman on how technology controls us and about “information overload”. My father was firm in his belief that we still have much control over these technologies and they have made a good impact on his life.

WEEK 6 BLOG

WEEK 6 BLOG To preface this blog entry I want to refer to some points made by Wood and Smith in Chapter 6. Wood and Smith discuss Qualities of Virtual Communities and go on to define certain aspects which attracts people to an online community (p. 127). The last factor in what gives people the “sense” of community is “the characteristics of the group and its members”. Further elaboration into the last factor details that the level of participation and “gemeinschaft” one has is not solely based on whether they were engaged with the topic or have the means to communicate about it, but it may be due to how much one “enjoys CMC”, or in my case don’t enjoy it (p. 131). I found that the only CMC I enjoy is with people I already know IRL. Otherwise I have absolutely no interest in communicating with anyone online. I am a very outgoing person and I thrive on face to face interaction, without that everything just seems fake, like trying to get a scent from a plastic rose. None the less I followed the instructions of the assignment. I joined three separate online communities. The first was a Google group called “Minds Eye” which was a message board (BBS) where someone would post a topic and others would respond to it. The topics were wide ranging and included anything from politics, to Shakespeare, to gun control in England. The responses from people were very in depth and well written, which surprised me because most online banter I see is shallow and heavily opinionated. It looked like some of the responses were researched thoroughly and I decided I had little time to spend reading all the responses (they were very long and in depth) to one topic let alone doing my own research just to participate. The next one I tried was a Yahoo group called “Feed Your Head” which was an advice column. I read a couple posts on this and felt like I was back in Junior High. First of all it was very impersonal and had a lot of participants. The topics for discussion were pointless and mind numbing such as “What should I get my boyfriend for Valentines Day?” and other useless information (as Postman has described has proliferated the internet). So I decided not to participate in that BBS either since I couldn’t stomach it. The final BBS group I chose was a local newspaper. It was much more interesting because I got to talk about current events in my community (I felt a little more like a real person talking with real people). I found the BBS to have strict “Netizenship” rules (as described by Wood and Smith p. 134) that included not saying anything that could be considered defamation, prejudiced, unduly biased, or representing yourself as someone else. They had a filtering system where all comments had to be reviewed before being posted which took a considerable amount of time (from several hours up to a day) so the temporal sense of this CMC was a put off (I want instant gratification!). By the time my comments were approved the message thread was “old news” or gone and replaced with another. Any feedback or responses from others was lost forever and it lost any commitment. In today’s society, the sense of community one gets from CMC greatly depends, in my opinion, on the person. Wood and Smith explain how people who are moving farther away from their communities, participating less in civic organizations, and grow more and more detached from their geographic communities, need reach out to online sources to fulfill the sense of “inclusion”. Online communities offers this and in a great verity. The individual may be one such as described in Wood and Smith who does very well in CMC, likes the cues filtered out approach and gets a strong sense of community from these groups. On the other hand, people like me, do not get the same sense of belonging and need face to face interaction, I actually feel more alone for some reason. If I were to participate in online communities I would be in the 62% of people mentioned in Frank Weinreich survey (Wood and Smith p. 138) who would meet other users. I would have to in order to keep up any sense of a meaningful relationship, otherwise any further CMC is just pointless empty banter to me, I need to put a face to the voice.

WEEK 5 BLOG

 

A topic I could see myself writing an academic paper on is “How does US culture effect its consumption levels as compared with the rest of the world?” I have done some research into this topic already and I find it fascinating. Fist off, the topic is very current and dynamic. When I need to find research information about current issues I always start online.. This would be as opposed to a history paper where the only use for the internet I would really need is how to find historical texts in a library. To back up the thesis or hypothesis that I would base my research around I would start with some factual information and current trends. I would start with my favorite search engine, www.Google.com and I would type in key words such as US Culture, Consumption, Global Consumption, etc. I would even throw in some key words about population growth and stress because it directly effects consumption levels.

What Google found for me were several federal websites such as www.eia.doe.gov, (which is the US web site for the Energy Information Administration), www.globalissues.org, and various United Nations online web sources for topics about water supply and other population issues. The first and last web sources I would feel very comfortable using because they are from already credited sources (The United Nations should not need much introduction nor should the US Government). Now to show that I had done research that was not influenced solely by governmental soucres I would consider information from websites such as www.globalissues.org, which is written by a somewhat non governmental and independent source. I chose the global issues site because of the wide verity of topics and the fact the author established himself well as a creditable source (mainly just an independent source).

As far as establishing the sources to a professor and my evaluation of the creditability of them, I would use some of the advice from Wood and Smith where they described the cautions one needs to take when consulting an online source such as; reading the websites “About” and “Investor Information” links and reviewing the credentials of the author (p. 115). Now I know Wood and Smith were referring to taking precautions about seeking therapeutic advice online but this “dotCOMsense” advice can and should be used carefully evaluate any source found online.

Postman makes a clever analogy comparing societies defenses against too much information as acting like a biological immune system does:

“All societies have institutions and techniques that function as does a biological immune system. Their purpose is to maintain a balance between the old and the new, between novelty and tradition, between meaning and conceptual disorder, and the do so by “destroying” unwanted information” (p. 73)

To further add to that biological analogy, the internet, at the rate of growth and complexity it has ascended to and the amount of useless and bogus information available, has become the bubonic plague to our societies “immune system”. As a society, as professors, and especially as academic and professional researchers we need to tackle the information provided online with literal HAZ MAT suits. We need to take extra precautions and protect ourselves from this plagued information. We must do this not only for ourselves, to save us the embarrassment and loss of creditability, but for the growth and preservation of the academic community. We must do this to uphold the high standards of academic achievement. If we carelessly let this plagued information seep into our research it diminishes the quality of our knowledge, the creditability of ourselves and our institution and makes our efforts senseless.

 

SOURCES FOR PURPOSED RESEARCH PAPER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EIA – Short-Term Energy Outlook 

 

http://www.globalissues.org/issue/235/consumption-and-consumerism

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29797&Cr=&Cr1

WEEK 4 BLOG POST

WEEK 4 Assignment

BLOG POST

The two people that I chose to write were my mother and father. I did this because I couldn’t think of anyone else who would have taken me seriously or thought it was some kind of joke (in the past I have been known for practical jokes and I make fun of almost everything that I possibly can).  I wrote to my mother in long hand and wrote to my father via email. I decided to write to my mother in long hand because of time constraints. A letter written to my father would take much longer to send since he lives in another country.

One thing that I noticed right off the bat was that writing my long hand letter to my mother was a much more time consuming process. I really had to think about what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it, the stamp I picked out for the envelope, the color of the pen I wrote with, the type of pen, and even the stationary that I wanted to write the letter on (I made several drafts)! Now the email was done in less than ten minutes, I just cranked it out. The major difference I noticed was the intimacy of each form of communication. I feel this was in direct line with the Social Presence Theory where “The degree of the connection is based on the amount of substance to an interaction. The degree of the connection is based on the amount of nonverbal information available to the receiver through any particular channel” (Wood and Smith p. 80). To elaborate, the long hand letter had many “Non-verbal” information and “cues” (Wood and Smith p. 79). For example, the complications I just mentioned I had encountered while writing the letter (pen color, stationary, stamps etc) to me were all forms of non-verbal communication. The social presence that my mother perhaps felt was much more powerful, she can see that not only did a lot of sincere thought go into the letter, but careful planning on its creation as well.  I used very soft and fine paper and it looked very nice and well put together, just like its content. How would she have responded to the same letter written in crayon on a bar napkin? Not the same right? It’s the same message; it just doesn’t have the non-verbal flavor or aesthetic beauty.

Now, about the email. I fall into the “Impersonal” category when it comes to about 99.9% of my CMC. I don’t like using the internet for communication because I favor face to face interaction. I don’t like the ambiguity of the “cues-filtered-out approach” (Wood and Smith p. 79). When I write emails they are short, to the point and a very seldom misinterpreted because I intend them to be crystal clear. So my father received a pretty dry and business like email. Do to the relationship my father and I have I told him to give me a call at the end of my email so I could explain that “No, this isn’t a joke and no I’m not dying or something”.

Both my messages were immediately followed up with a phone call from both parents. I explained to them it was part of a school assignment and not to be alarmed, once again, I had to explain I wasn’t going to die or something. Maybe I should write more letters like that…….

Anyway, I thought about the implications my experience had in reference to society as a whole. We all view long hand letters to be more intimate and meaningful just for the reasons I described. You can really make someone’s day by sending them a letter. It’s this physical tangible “package”. You can really send a lot of non-verbal cues by adding some of the things I described, nice handwriting is especially important because it makes your message aesthetically pleasing as well (it’s hard to make an email into something you want to save for later or put on display for aesthetic reasons). For society we most all have this point of view, that long hand letters are more intimate than emails, which has to do with “social context cues” (Wood and Smith p. 81) Just to give you another example of an experience I recently had, a friend of mine was injured in a random senseless act of violence last week. He was presently in the hospital under stable conditions. I was deeply shocked and hurt by the incident and I felt terrible.  I decided to send him a “Get Well” letter wishing him a full recovery. My whole family signed the card. Could you imagine if I sent him an email? “Hey there, I heard about what happened. That sucks. Get well. Sincerely, JustinJ”.  Not the same thing is it?

Week three blog post

For this assignment I was already way ahead. I have both a Facebook and a Myspace page! I first started off creating a Myspace page years earlier since it was better known to me first. I noticed some stark differences when I got into Facebook though and I found that I enjoyed Facebook much more. First of all, Myspace has some odd information that you can put on your page, some I found a little too awkward to answer, especially about income levels and body type. On Myspace there is just about every question you could hope to ask someone, such as favorite movies, songs, hero’s etc. and it fell into the realm for me of TMI (too much information). I declined to answer all the questions. I just kept it basic, I answered my age (I distorted my birthday for security reasons) my gender, my hometown, my marital status, and that’s about it. I didn’t feel I needed to share anything else because the only people I communicate with on Myspace are people I know “in real life”. Adding the other information just made me feel like I was advertising myself to them or someone else that I was apparently trying to impress. Another part of Myspace that really put me off was being able to put your own background wallpaper and song to your Myspace webpage, along with all kinds of little sparkles and useless bells and whistles. Facebook, on the other hand, I found doesn’t give you the option of putting music to your page, wallpaper, or random moving in-your-face graphics. Facebook keeps it simple because they operate on the premise that you will be networking with known friends (it was initially created to be used among college students only), not advertising yourself to everyone online like on Myspace. Also I got tired of opening people’s Myspace pages and having my computer freeze because they had too much activity going on at once on their page.

Wood and Smith described the concept of our identity (a complex personal and social construct, consisting in part of who we think ourselves to be, how we wish others to perceive us, and how they actually perceive us…pg 52) and self-presentation (how we set forth an image we want others to perceive pg. 52) which is applicable to Myspace and Facebook users. There is an interesting difference between these two sites and how we represent our “Avatar”, “our representation of oneself in a virtual environment”, online (Wood and Smith pg. 60). Since Myspace gives you more options you can develop more fully  your online identity to those you never have met in real life. It gives you more tools to portray “an image you want others to perceive” on the page and express it more flamboyantly to the visitor. You have the ability to put on more of a “show” for all who visit your page. You can get your “fifteen megabytes of fame” (Wood and Smith pg. 53) on Mysapce. I found that this allowance greater self expression makes it more of an effort for me to represent myself. If I have a boring page, some people might think I’m hiding something or am afraid to come out of my shell. If my page is too flamboyant some of my friends would surely poke fun at me and other would think I was self righteous.  

I also noticed that Myspace seems to attract a younger crowd who has become confused, greatly involved or obsessed with self-presentation, as most of us were to some extent when we were younger. Facebook sidesteps a lot of the flamboyance of Myspace. Facebook has less going on with the pages and somewhat forces people to be “real”. For instance, in the setup they discourage using pseudonyms or silly names like “Pimp of the year” for your page title. They encourage you to use your real name. Most of the icons an photos are smaller and there is no disco music available for your page. Facebook draws a pretty straight forward group who really just has an interest in keeping in touch with one another and not so much putting on a show. It emphasizes staying in friend circles and groups that have some relation to each other, like graduating high school classes and other organizations. It also emphasizes networking, which sounds more sophisticated than the random searching that can occur online.  I am able to convince a great deal more of my peers to get on board with Facebook than I could with Myspace. Even people who laughed at me for having a Myspace page did not object to Facebook. I think that most of the Facebook users feel as I did; it’s too much of an effort to keep up our online “face-work” on Myspace  (pun intented and used put a twist on Goffman’s term, pg. 58) and Myspace seemed to showy and juvenile.

WEEK TWO BLOG POST

 

In the movie, “You’ve Got Mail”, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan engage in a very dynamic relationship that takes on several forms. In “Real life”, (IRL, as Wood and Smith describe it) they are bitter rivals, with Tom Hank’s character, Joe Fox, opening a large bookstore that is part of a large chain, and Meg Ryan’s character Kathleen Kelly, who owns a small children’s bookstore which will inevitably be run out of business by Joe Fox’s bookstore. The two meet IRL and are very hostile toward each other, especially when Kathleen finds out that Joe was trying to hide his identity from her during their first meeting at her store. The movie has a strange twist because the two “meet” again online. While online they agree to not be specific with each other and begin and entertaining dialog through Internet Relay Chat.  The movie demonstrates the very peculiarities of online and IRL relationships. For starters, Joe and Kathleen are allies online, with Joe advising her to “Go to the mattresses” and “Be bold and brave” in the face of her dilemma, all the while not knowing he is encouraging her to do battle with him. This movie reminded me of how Wood and Smith described an encounter that Ellen Ullman had with a co-worker and how online they spoke freely and openly with each other, but the next day, when they found they felt awkward in trying to communicate at work (p.3).  Wood and Smith later go on to explain that Ullman was experiencing the “blurring of immediate and mediated communication” (p. 4). They found they communicated differently in the mediated fashion than they did during the immediate.  

In the movie, Joe and Kathleen were able to be anonymous to each other (until Joe found out who she was during the café scene), thus they were able to create a “Mediated Self” identity without the baggage of being business rivalries.  Joe and Kathleen purposefully keep each other on non specific terms so that they can share with each other their personal secrets and other personal issues in their lives.  After the Café meeting Joe makes an important decision to continue online dialog with Kathleen and even offers encouragement to her after she personally insulted him IRL. He discovers that online he has been able to cast aside the conflicts that he and Kathleen have IRL and he falls in love with her. He believes he can have the same kind of relationship with Kathleen IRL if he plays his cards right. In mediated society today, as Wood and Smith describe, it’s a challenge to “Sustain a coherent sense of personal identity” (p. 7).  In the movie, Joe, after he makes the decision that he wants to continue dialog with Kathleen, spins this by keeping his online identity secret and then talking about his mediated self to Kathleen IRL. The fact that Joe knows Kathleen’s true identity gives him an advantage in manipulating their relationship to make her fall in love with him, if she hadn’t already.                

The end of the movie shows the collision of two worlds, the mediated self and the self IRL and we see the immediate communication and the mediated communication come together. But unlike Ullman, the meeting is not so awkward because the two characters had been conversing with each other in both forms and Joe gave lots of “hints” to his online identity during their immediate dialog.                                            

 The movie is very attractive to audiences because with all the online communication that we do, this is something that people can imagine is possible. The circumstances under which Joe and Kathleen came together is very improbable, but similar meetings I would assume could and probably take place.

First weeks blog assignment

Abstinence from the internet for 24 hours was easy. Although, any longer than that would cause a major breakdown in my life! I need the Internet. I use it for work and it plays a large part in my social life. I recently moved out of an area where I lived for about thirty years and I don’t want to lose touch with the people I’ve known.  I need the Internet to keep in touch with my friends and family.  The Internet is much cheaper than using a cell phone, mail, or land line and much more effective to send photographs and video. I believe if it wasn’t for the Internet I would lose touch with a lot of people and I would not be as close to the ones I did stay in touch with.

Enough about how great the Internet is, let’s talk about life without it for a day. First of all, to set the scene, I have two small children. They are both under the age of three. In trying to keep up them years could pass by and I would hardly notice what happened. So not using the Internet for a day was easy. Although, during my day without the Internet, I found I was constantly thinking about what I had missed “online”. During my “free time” I usually frequently go online to check the news and check my “Facebook” page to see what’s going on. To substitute for my “online” time and to keep up with current events I went to the next closest and immediate medium…TELEVISION.  I watched the evening news and CNN. This way I felt a little bit better and not so out of touch.

To keep in touch with people I usually communicate with online I used my cell phone. Funny thing is I didn’t call anyone. I sent text messages. I wondered why I did this. I thought about it for a while then I figured it out. Speaking on the phone is tiring! First of all you had to get a hold of the person you want to talk to, then you have to remember what was so darn important you had to say to them without sounding like an idiot. Also, you have to hold the phone up to your head and it’s much harder to multi-task while trying to carry on a conversation.  Using my cell phone instead of the Internet was time consuming and exhausting. I wanted to just send my text message to let my friend know “What’s up” and move on to the next thing. It sounds ridiculous but sadly it’s true. It’s true for all of us, communicating online or through text is just easier. You don’t have to speak or change your tone of voice. You don’t have to pause to let the person know your done talking and then listen to them speak. That’s right, listening takes effort to. When I send a text I don’t have to worry about the traditional guidelines for conversation.  It’s not so awkward. This one day without internet did make me realize one thing though; spending time with family and the people around you should come first. The internet won’t miss me and it doesn’t care about me. Being on the internet during my free time is purely for selfish reasons.

-Justin Smith