Jamiesedge’s Blog

Sherry Turkle: “by enabling people to experience what it feels like to be the opposite gender or to have no gender at all, the practice encourages reflection on the way ideas about gender shape our expectations” (77).

My avatar in Second Life was a female, so I did not actually have an avatar in this space that was of the opposite gender than myself. However, in creating my female avatar I can relate to how her being a female influenced and shaped the choices I made. It was without hesitation or even any real consideration that I began to make changes to the avatar to make her more physically like myself, but better. I made the necessary changes to my avatar to make her what I considered to be physically attractive. I increased muscle tone, lowered body fat and even changed the shape of her eyes. There seemed to be no limits to the changes I could possibly make in order to make my avatar as physically attractive as possible. At the time, I was not considering what this possibly said about how her gender shaped my expectations of how I should make her look.

Horsley claims “masculinity is what a culture expects of its men” (69). Does this mean my avatar’s “feminity” is what our culture expects of its women? Did I unknowingly demonstrate that our culture expects not only physical beauty, but physical perfection from its women?

This being said, if I had created a male avatar I believe I would have attempted to make him as physically attractive as possible as well. Does this mean that our culture expects its men to be physically perfect? Ultimately, I don’t think gender would have necessarily would necessarily change my expectations when creating the avatar. Perhaps, however, it would have changed how I interacted within the Second Life world and even how others interacted with me. Because I did not have a male avatar I am not sure if this would have been the case.

What it is, Part One: Mario, The Sims and World of Warcraft

From my experience with Sims 2 so far (which has just been the tutorials), the does seem to very interactive, but I do not think it allows the user to have complete control over the plot of the story. Each avatar has different wants, needs and fears and this seem like they may help to fuel the direction of the game. However, I have not created an avatar yet, so I am not sure if maybe the user can control these wants, needs and fears which would give them more control over the plot of the story. However, if the user is not in control of these aspects of the avatar, the avatar would control the user more than the user controlling the avatar.

What it is, Part Two: The Three White Girls from YouTube

Once again, as my experience is limited I am not completely sure how Sims 2 compares with the examples of the YouTube avatars. The Sims avatars are clearly social within their environment. They have relationships as well as there seems to be a rather complicated weaving of connections between the Sims. However, the game may control these interactions based on wants, needs, fears and aspirations. If a particular Sims goal is to find love, this particular Sims’s social interactions will be different than a Sims who aspires for money and career success.

What it is, Part Three: A Point of View

Sims avatars seem to be the third level of avatar that is described by Meadows. The second-person camera avatar in which it seems that the camera seems to float above the avatars shoulder. Ultimately, you can “drive” the Sims, but you can also see the avatar as you drive it.

What it is, Part Four: A Simple Character

I agree that the core of the avatar comes down to its name, image as well as the social environment it is involved in. However, I feel that is it mainly the social environment that shapes how an avatar changes throughout the game. Based on what I have experienced with Sims, the avatars have very specific wants, needs, etc that much be attended to and it the social environment around these avatars that helps these wants, needs, etc to be met.

I am currently taking a class with Dr. Raley called Sociology of Sexuality. Without even considering the concept of this class in the digital world, it is already quite different from most classes offered at McDaniel. Therefore, I felt that it would be even more interesting to consider this class in the virtual world.

Because this class frequently raises subjects that could be somewhat uncomfortable to discuss in the classroom, especially with a professor present, I felt that students would be more open and honest about some of these topics in the virtual world. While students would still be able to interact with one another as well as with the professor, it would not be “face to face” like the classroom and may seem less threatening to many students. Thus, I think the virtual world would create an environment for students that may get more honest answers to touchy subjects and may allow for more learning on the subject.

It was the concept of the avatar, and the fact that the avatar can easily be altered, that I felt would be most interesting for this particular course. Being able to change the sex of the avatar could play an interesting role if the sex of the individual behind the avatar remains anonymous. Using this feature, the ways in which an individual’s sex influences the way they are viewed for certain comments could be explored. Does a female get judged differently for the same acts as a male would? This particular feature is clearly not at all an option in the classroom and would be an interesting phenomenon to explore in the class.

This class would certainly be different and raise some interesting issues presented in a virtual world opposed to the brick-and-mortar classroom.

Socialtext and TWiki are hosting services that allow users to set up accounts where they can write and edit their own work. Both sites require passwords to selected pages in order to limit the number of collaborators. TWiki is an earlier application than Socialtext.

TWiki aims to look and appear as if it is a regular web page, but with the added feature of an “Edit” link so anyone can change or edit the page. Information can be changed or added by simply using a browser. Text formatting is also simple as it uses the basic formatting rules of email. While editting is simple and easy, editting is easily tracked through email notifications of who changed what. Furthermore, restrictions can be placed on which users and groups are able to not only edit the informatio, but read it as well. Thus, the author maintains control of the site. Other features of TWiki include easy file upload as well as templates and skins.

Like TWiki, Socialtext allows individuals to easily make changes to webpages. Furthermore, Socialtext offers the same features as TWiki including privacy blocks (settings that allow the author to control who can and cannot read or edit information) as well as notifications of changes. In addition to these features, each user is able to create unique filters that match priorities and allow for unique blogging capabilities. Furthermore, these filters can extend into groups and teams allowing for better social networking. Socialtext has made many innovations that are aimed at business individuals and allowing the social networking that is often so crucial in business. Thus, while TWiki and Socialtext are very similar, Socialtext has become more aimed at the business individual as well as the business team and would be a more useful tool for these individuals.

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