Ninja by day, student by night

Tapscott discusses how to approach the future as a Net Gener, by applying the principles of leadership 2.0. His fourth guideline, “Bring back the family dinner” (pg 311) reminded me about how I’ve been reading that many issues with the American lifestyle is due to families not spending enough time together. A few of the issues, such as a lack of time to bond, and obesity could be solved by spending more time at home and eating a meal together (as well as saving money on expensive outside food).

One reason people don’t eat meals together is because they are so busy with work, hobbies and school that fixing a time to eat can be difficult. Patience is probably the best bet for working with schedules, and being flexible is another Net Gen characteristic that families can use to make spending time together a priority. His seventh guideline advises Net Geners to be patient and his second guideline recommends that they work with the older generations to build collaboration.

Another way to build collaboration is to go to school, which is the first guideline for a new generation. Information can be found through non-traditional resources, but college is another way to learn through traditional methods and by being exposed to new types of information in old traditions (like books, textbooks). The ability to find information will be important, maybe even more important than the ability to memorize, and this is how people become authorities by using your personal experience.

The knowledge that people gain through collaboration and research also works for helping companies internally and externally. It helps companies internally because their in-house experts can benefit from a fresh viewpoint from different people. Externally it keeps companies on task because they are being asked to give feedback to consumers as well as to take the input that people outside the company are giving to the collective.

Overall, the Net Geners have the ability to make significant change because of their collaborative efforts and for using the tools available. Being flexible and learning to work in a social environment will help people work across larger borders such as cultural, and geographical barriers.

Julian Dibbell discusses how an online community and what happens there have repercussions in real life. The game LambdMOO is still running, but it doesn’t have the same type of freedom that early users might have enjoyed (or not enjoyed, which is one point taken in the article).  The article discusses the Bungle Affair, a single transgression that occurred in an online space (a MOO) and how the gamers within that space dealt with the transgression.  The LambdaMOO virtual space was used as a play space, much like console rpgs or a novel come to life, and people treated as a safe place until the Bungle Affair.  A user called Mr. Bungle attacked other users and raped them, virtually as well as forcing other users to do sexual and violent acts to themselves and to others.  The attack only stopped when a user with a stronger weapon managed to lock him away.  After the troll was put away for a time, the users were outraged, but they couldn’t come upon a consensus on what to do with the troll because the way the game didn’t have any constructs to deal with this type of problem.  If left to the people, probably nothing would have happened, but one of the stronger users had the power to turn the user into a construct (a toad in this case).  In class we discussed whether that user should have any repercussions for taking out vigilante justice on another user, although we knew that in this case, the justice was merited.

In a different MUD that I played back in the day, vigilante justice was harder to do because the game had Gamemasters and lower level Gamemasters who could hand out punishment if anyone went crazy.  You could block people or report them for doing wrong, but in this game, there was a filter for all the chat, both whispers and public areas that would bring up phrases that could be an indication that something wasn’t right.  Cybersex was also a no-no, unless you rented a room at the hotel, which made anything you said or did in the room private, so no filter.  However, if a Gamemaster was watching you, your actions would show up even if you were in a private room.  Of course regular people didn’t know that, so it was always interesting finding out who was involved in secret.

Even though regular users didn’t have access to the powers of a Gamemaster, there was some type of vigilante justice for annoying people.  One way was to add someone to your group and then take them to some way out place where a noob might not be able to find their way out, or to take them to an area with super-tough bad guys, and leave the person there to die.  Of course the person wasn’t dead forever, they’d be taken to a hospital and would only suffer some downtime and have to pay some cash.  The powers of the Gamemasters allowed them to ban people from logging onto their account (either forever or for a limited amount of time), or set them in a special area set aside for rule-breakers or trolls.  Typical punishment was writing on a chalkboard, “I will not do <this>” a few hundred times or peeling virtual potatoes.  I got in trouble once for scripting (automating game actions like fighting) and I ended up with a punishment for 3 months of peeling potatoes.  The issue with the Mr. Bungell/Dr. Jest happens in a lot of games, same with the one I played.  When I was in trouble, I just logged in as a new user with a new account and I logged in just fine.  However, I knew about people who were blatant about being who they are, maybe their name was Joe Black, and then their new account might be Jooe Black, which was pretty obvious, and typically those accounts got banned as well.

The articles goes on to discuss the real life effects that the attack had on users, and Dibbell said specifically that people must take themselves out of the typical thought process, like judging whether something is valuable if it isn’t “real”.  The people who were attacked felt like they were attacked, and had the same types of reactions a person would have if it happened to them in real life.  One of the interesting parts about the article was how the users decided that keeping the punishment in-game was adequate, rather than calling authorities or trying to track down the person and taking it to another level, even though the people involved felt real emotions about the incident.

Just reading the article brought back a lot of memories of playing MUDs, the good and bad. If you have read any of Turkle’s articles, she discusses how people perceive authenticity in robots, and software constructs.  I remember playing a lot because I had my group of friends and it felt real to me, so it was real to me.  I spent many hours sitting in a line waiting for a merchant to open a list so I could order a custom item for my avatar or I’d explore areas looking for secret areas.  It wasn’t that different from playing say, WoW, or an rpg on a console, but the ability to run across the people you knew (whether you liked them or not) made the game interesting and made it worth coming back, even when drama was occurring due to real life interactions between players.

One example was when a game user gathered all the real life photos of current and past users and posted them to a website without permission.  Luckily for me, I didn’t really get any backlash since my character was pretty similar to the way I looked and acted, but some people were torn to shreds because they didn’t match up to what they were playing in the game.  Some didn’t come back.

Games are more intrusive now, it’s easier to look around for similar game names, or use an e-mail to find someone on facebook, so the line between being anonymous is thinner, if not grey.  If I had an account and there was an issue, there might be a chance that an e-mail or a phone call might be made to the credit card user, or the account owner, although in larger scenarios, that doesn’t happen often anymore, there’s just not enough staff to manage the bots, the trolls and gold sellers.  One thing I found is that there isn’t any solution for the problems that happen in virtual space, it’s too easy to get another account, that is if you get caught.  Most people don’t, and the worst stuff doesn’t have any repercussions, they don’t have enough time to get rid of the big annoyances like spam on the chat areas of games, much less smaller (although presumably worse) events like player against player violence.

Well, we went and got it done, haha. The engagement ceremony went well, and everyone involved as family was there.

I’m still thinking about it, wondering what to say. It’s sort of hard to explain how difficult it was to get engaged without sounding negative, but I’m really glad that Gus and I managed to make things work out.

I admit, the best part about being engaged was the next day when Gus’ father gave me a real hug for the first time. I still get a little teary-eyed over it, I really missed having a dad around.

I definitely need to make a full post about the whole process, it was very interesting and probably something that an outsider might never learn about.

Nakamura discusses how racial groups use the internet, and how the differences are portrayed for public view.  Researchers split the internet into four categories, and then measured how often each category was used when a person was online.  The results were calculated by separating the users by race and then calculating the participation of each group (Hispanics, Asians, African Americans and whites).  The categories were Fun, Information Seeking, Major Life Activities and Transactions, where fun might be going online and looking at random websites, information seeking might be reading about a new car, major life activities might be house-hunting or looking for a job, and transactions are most likely about banking related activities or paying your bills online.

The researchers found that minorities used the internet in a different way then whites did, and in some cases, all three groups participated in certain areas more than whites, like doing things we as students do on a regular basis, like messaging friends, playing games, listening to music, downloading information and browsing for fun.  In comparison, white users preferred to use the Internet for information seeking (checking the weather), major life activities (researching for big transactions) and transactions (banking or paying bills online).

So which way is better?  More people (whites) doing something on the internet or less people (minorities) doing a lot more things on the internet?  Does it matter?  And does it matter what they are doing?  Nakamura says it shouldn’t, but in many cases it is reassuring to the majority (whites) that they are still on top.

Does it matter what we are doing online?  I’m not sure it does, but Nakamura mentions that the reason minorities are spending more time with popular culture online is because that is where they can find themselves online.  I think that media doesn’t show the whole picture of who is out there, and they are catering to the ones they think are buying, and who they think is important.  The thing is, it feels really good when you can watch tv or a movie and see yourself.  If you see who you want to be in the media, then great, but I know that I probably won’t ever see anyone that is like me and that sucks.  But online, that’s another matter.  I feel at home there because I don’t have to fit into physical restrictions, I can fit in with my interests, what I like to listen to, and what I like to watch (not limited by what I get from my cable company).  So in a way it makes sense, people go to what they find familiar but since we are dealing with a mediated space, we are still working with the same issues.  I get a little rude when I’m watching tv because I keep seeing these stereotypes…so I watch less tv, watch more online (no stereotypical commercials) or use On Demand.  That’s what it has come to, at least for me.

Turkle’s article,  Always-On/Always-On-You: The Tethered Self discusses how ubiquitous technology has changed the way we we behave when we are connected (and unconnected) to the Internet. The article discusses wearable technology, how our lives are virtually tethered to digital devices, how people are reacting to being connected, what happens when we become disconnected, and how all this technology is changing our behavior.

Wearable Tech

Her article starts out by introducing us to some of the early adopters of wearable technology, and how they prided themselves for always being connected to the Internet.  It’s a little funny to think of a group of grown men wearing so much equipment that they called themselves cyborgs, but at the same time, I carry the equivalent of everything they wore in my pocket.  That’s not including the other stuff I like to carry for classes, such as my laptop, my digital camera and even my digital SLR at times.  I can consider myself even more connected now because I finally broke down and paid to add internet connectivity to my smart phone (for work purposes of course). I needed to test a mobile website project that I’m working on and I can’t do it without a phone with internet access.

Who’s the geek now?

Our So-Called Tethered Life

So now that we know we are connected, so what? According to Turkle, being tethered means people are always connected, either through digital devices like our cell phones, our wireless-enabled laptops all while listening to your playlist on your mp3 player.  It also means that we are always waiting for something to happen, and we check for things to happen by checking each device and through each device, each subcategory like checking our online mail, checking our twitter, logging into a game for a few moments to check if your item sold, checking your regular e-mail on your laptop and tossing a few messages out to your friends on facebook.  Or you can call it cycling-through, like Turkle does.

I have a bad habit of checking my mail almost every time I have access to the internet.  I don’t really have a good reason to check it so frequently, I’m sure nothing terrible would happen if I checked it once a day.  The reason I check is because I’m waiting for something to happen, maybe someone will comment on my blog, maybe some Google Buzz will show up, or maybe someone might have a question about the engagement ceremony.  And when something is there for me, I feel validated, happy even.  And like Turkle, I have special ring tones for certain people (along with a snapshot from my camera phone), so I know whether to freak out if my mother calls.

Being Elsewhere Makes Us Important

How important are you? If you don’t think you are an important person, then I can give you the quick and dirty way to seem important, which is almost as important as being important.  I think it’s the kitty cat or model syndrome.  Think of the last time you were in a public area and someone got a call and answered it.  A few years ago, people would be a little embarrassed to be listening in to another person’s conversation, but now we are learning to tune out, both as the cell conversationalist and the accidental eavesdropper.  The trend is to create a bubble around yourself while in public spaces and treat it as a private area, by having conversations with faraway people, by disappearing into your web browser.

Parallel Lives

The disconnect between people in the same area can be disconcerting if you aren’t used to it, but then there is the idea of escape by connecting to a virtual area, filled with people you have never met in real life.  Some people use this virtual area to expand his or her universe, and use their imagination to become someone else or to be somewhere else.  Turkle mentions that using tools like Second Life or similar gaming environments allow people to understand themselves better.  A gamer can create a new identify, create a fantasy or explore real life issues through playing, which gives people practice on doing things they might want to do in real life.

Tethering and Development

Validation Dependency

Continuous Partial Attention

Did you realize that nobody pays attention anymore? Think of the last time you were talking with someone and didn’t answer your cell phone when it rang. How about the last time you were talking and didn’t even look at your phone until you finished your conversation? Answering the call might have been rude a few years back, but now it’s typical behavior. There’s a similar reaction to doing things like waiting in line, where people don’t feel comfortable taking a time out from being connected. The next time you are in line at the grocery store or in line to get movie tickets, you might see someone pull out their cell to text someone or start checking their e-mail until it is their turn, it is almost like a dependency because people get anxious if they don’t get their check-in fix.

Turkle also talks about how these dependencies change the way teens deal with their life. Internet, cell phones and in general, connectivity makes our world a little smaller, and it means that there is a generation of people who don’t know what it is like to be completely disconnected. Turkle uses her daughter as example as a person who can travel internationally, and have the ability to update friends on her travels if she wanted to, but in reality, even being international didn’t change her life very much.

I’ve traveled a little and the majority of the places I’ve visited had some connection, either through my cell phone or through a wireless connection, even when we went camping. The last time I remember being completely disconnected was when I visited relatives in Mexico, and their big technology was a shared phone booth for the whole village. Technically I could have plugged in my laptop and used it, but there was no wireless, and there definitely wasn’t any cell service out there, but that was a long time ago. I’m sure if I went back now, there probably would be cell service at minimum.

In the end, being connected starts a strange relationship between ourselves and the devices that tether us. The time we used to take for ourselves is going away and we are filling it up with connectivity instead. However, we are not connecting with the people around us and building bonds with them, but with our devices instead.

Bibliography

Turkle, Sherry. (2008). Always-0n/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self. In James E. Katz. (Ed.) Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies (pp. 121-137) . Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.

Tapscott lists seven parenting guidelines that will help people to transition from the baby boomer parenting style to a Net Gen family scheme.

1. Have a family visision
2. Interact
3. Customize your parenting
4. Consciously design your family to balance work and personal lives
5. Collaborate in parenting
6. Let kids be kids
7. Play

Since I am getting married soon, and thinking about planning for a family, I am starting to think about what kind of family I want, and how I want to deal with my technology in my family’s life. This thought pattern is the first step towards creating a family vision. Tapscott recommends that families work on having a dynamic family, where adults and children can share information and become an authority based on who has the knowledge.

The second recommendation is about family interaction, and how to use your time to have quality family time. This also means that parents (and kids) have to work at prioritizing their time so other important duties are not ignored (like work or school). I remember reading about how people actually have less time to do things because they are always connected online (such as texting, facebook, e-mail).

A dynamic family means that parents should be flexible about how to handle parenting duties. One way to be flexible is to take advantage of ways that children can differentiate themselves from their family, such as interests and hobbies.  Every person has their own mix of skills so understanding what they are will make each member of the family feel like there is support for their interests. His recommendation is that parents should include their community as part of their parenting plan. For me, I plan to include my future Punjabi inlaws as my cultural base for my children. I hope they will help instill Punjabi traditions and help me learn the Sikh religion so I can help my family stay somewhat traditional. I will also share my Mexican traditions with my children so they will know about their background, even though they might feel closer to their Punjabi roots.

The last two recommendations are related to kids and how they spend their time. Out of all the recommendations, this is the one that I know I’ll be able to do without any problems. Tapscott talks about how families should use their children as an example and to spend time playing together because it creates a bond between the family and expands the horizons of the family unit.

The point of playing is not just to have fun, but to take time to learn a new hobby or get experience trying new things. As I get more life experience, I realize that the old style of learning is greatly outdated, where being afraid to fail will limit my personal experiences and keep me from learning to deal with failure. The idea of a failure is typically a negative one from my own family, but I’m learning that failure can mean more than not doing something right. For me I’ve learned that some solutions don’t work and if they don’t, I know this and can apply my new knowledge to a different situation. Failing also means that a person learns to deal with situations that aren’t perfect or won’t have a happy conclusion, which happens a lot in life. I think that is useful for a child to learn at an early age, and an important life skill.

Waiting for my turn

I’m too warm for my sweater

Rustling my guide

3 topics to go

Babbling, incomplete mess

I am so hungry

Found it on ONTD, and wanted to share. It’s all about gaming ladies, one of my favorite topics.

Also, taking Turkle’s Always On article.  I like her style it seems.

A person’s identity really makes a difference when you are born, at least when it comes to societal culture, and even more with digital culture (and its accompanying technology).  According to Tapscott, I am a part of Generation X, as opposed to my boyfriend, who is is a Net Gen guy.  We are however, on the cusp of both ranges, so I see some part of me that behaves more like a Net Gen type, and some of his behaviors as Gen X.

Tapscott mentions some of the characteristics of a typical Net Gener, such as ubiquitous computing, and assuming that technology like the internet is always there.  Cell phones have improved since the first time I’ve owned one, which was a freebie model with “texting ability”.  I didn’t text at all and resented that people could get in touch me at all time.  Now I get a little annoyed because I can’t call out at WSU Tri-Cities.

Another difference is how I watch tv.  In the past, I’ve been careful to not miss my favorite shows, but I’d either have to record it using a vcr or wait for a rerun.  Now I just click on my remote to access On Demand so I can watch my favorite shows (sometimes even commercial-free) when I have the time.

Everything is based off the Internet now, at least for me.  I watch movies through Netflix, research my papers through online articles, and order the majority of my Christmas gifts online so I don’t have to go to the mall.  Now that my accounts, bills and notices are paperless, I can also feel good about saving a few trees and automating my life.  Even my alarm clock is my cell phone, which is almost always with me.  When I need to invite friends to a party, I facebook them with an invite, and I can even control if my uninvited guests can see the event or note.

If a hotel happened to not have wireless in my room, I wouldn’t book a room with them.  That’s how serious I am about staying connected, without having to question it.  When I travel, I use Google Maps to keep me going in the right direction.  In the past, I’d depend on writing out directions, and when online directions first came online, I used to print out a map and directions.

Much like the Net Geners, I would choose Internet over tv any day.  There’s no question that I need my information, it’s my personal crack.

Don't be mad that you worked so hard to be Niobe

Nakamura discusses the lack of women-of-color hackers in movies like The Matrix, which focus on the war between two factions (a typical sci-fi or action movie scenario) on page 105.  The argument discusses how women (even in movies like the Matrix, who include more minorities than I’ve seen in a mixed cast for a while) still take a secondary role to the males (not just the leads).

Trinity is the strong white woman, independent, not looking for a lover and more than capable of taking care of herself in the Matrix when we first meet her.  After she meets Neo, she begins that inevitable slide downward, where she starts to take care of Neo, nurturing him to be “The One”, keeping him safe from the agents and helping him when his choices get Morpheus in a bind.  As the series continue, her toughness is never questioned, but her role as an active participant to free everyone from the Matrix begins to decrease, and she begins her new role as a support to the team.  In the last film, she hits the bottom where she realizes that she must die in order for Neo to fulfill his plans.  And not to be a spoiler, but seriously?  Why does she have to die?  Of course Neo saves her ass in his own way, which makes me wonder why women have to die in order to get anything done in a movie?  And this is the woman who on normal terms would have much more privilege than a woman of color.  What happens to them?

Wardrobe saved the cleavage from suffocation by using an emergency surgical technique.

You could say that Niobe and the rest of the women of color crew got off easy since they only lost friends and/or crew, but those deaths were permanent.  And no matter how much Jada Pinkett-Smith worked her butt off to have those amazing guns, it was Monica Bellucci that caught the men’s eyes (and my eyes too I confess).  And what did they do anyway?  Niobe had her scenes, but I felt like all the things she was doing was prep-work, keep the bad guys busy, make sure everyone is distracted, let the main guys do the important stuff.

I have watched a lot of technology-based sci-fi and action movies such as Bladerunner, Terminator, Total Recall, Hackers, The Net and of course the Matrix trilogy and the Minority Report (mentioned frequently in Nakamura’s chapter on “The Social Optics of Race”.  I’m not sure why it is so hard to have two compelling, strong characters in an action movie, where one is a female (and maybe not portrayed as white).  In the discussion in class, the guys seemed to believe that there had to be a feminine male in order to have a strong female, or that men wouldn’t want to watch something with a strong female.  I was disappointed.  I believe that both can exist and even coexist without it becoming a fight about who can make another person look dumb and I want to see that more in movies.  I’m trying to think of a movie offhand, but I can’t think of a clear-cut case.

Despite all that, I realized that my biggest link to movies and specifically,  women hackers (of color or not) was in animated films or in animated television series.  My favorite “classic” anime was Ghost in the Shell, a television series about a group of fighting/hacking/working beings in a Japan that has integrated cyberspace into almost everyone’s lives.    I say beings, because the majority of the group have implants to improve their skills as a search and rescue secret organization for the Japanese government.  Their leader, “The Major” uses an artificial body and basically can hack into things with her mad hacker skills and the help of her team.

I always liked this show because it’s one of the few anime that doesn’t make their female lead into a complete idiot, but at the same time I cannot completely say she is a good example, but it’s the closest. Even though she’s intelligent and respected enough to run a team of guys, she still answers to an older male figure, almost a father figure to the whole team.  And that’s not even touching upon her sexuality, which is never directly talked about, but conveyed by conversations with her female roommate and her bond with her male teammate.

Yeps, that's a thong she's wearing

In the show, one of the things that is mentioned that is she is able to move from body to body, but prefers the one they see her use frequently, which has fair skin, and a body to kill for, with full breasts, slim waist, curvy hips and long legs.  I realize that the audience is young males, probably tween to teen at the time, but is it really that hard to create a show that was compelling without all the distractions?  The stories were amazing, and I liked that they didn’t make The Major become some whiny, crying girl at any point, even when dealing with psychological and physical stress.  Her great skills were her hacking skills, and her abilities to manage her team in difficult times.

Here’s a  random guy’s perspective on the top 10 (but only had of the most beautiful hackers in movies.  Not surprisingly, they are all white (and beautiful).  But still…8?  I tried looking for links about female hackers in general, and that didn’t give much either.  I know they are out there, maybe hiding under pseudonyms, do they hide because of who they are or just what they are?

I think it was Smiley that was complaining about how white men were portrayed as idiots in commercials with smart women telling what they are doing wrong.  He seemed so upset about it, and I think the guys in the group understood it in a way, they nodded, but they didn’t show that they felt that strongly about it.  I don’t like those commercials either, putting down a gender to make another gender look better isn’t an improvement.  It weakens the male identity, and makes women look petty.

Confusion must be a basis for these arguments, because I’m still confused about how I feel about the movies I watch and the shows I watch on a regular basis.  Am I perpetuating stereotypes by not avoiding these films (essentially giving them money) and only questioning them?  I’m not sure, but I hope that I can try to open my mind more, and try to understand why men want to keep those roles for themselves, and how it affects their identity when it doesn’t.