This reading was complex yet very interesting. The many points and aspects of what we take from our experiences using the computer are much more than checking mail or signing on to a social media website. This reading starts of by concentrating on the Macintosh users. It explained that at first these “computers” were difficult to use and in order to install you had to “fiddle with things”, yet now these things are completely transparent and visible to the user. For example, it is less difficult to figure out how they operate.
MUD known as Multi-User-Dungeons or Muti-User-Domains is a software network where people can join online communities. MUDing is ” the creation and projection of a personae into a virtual space.” For example you create your own character, give and them a gender and physical attributes and characteristics. All the characters created by the user can “have casual and romantic sex, hold jobs, attend rituals and celebrations, fall in love, and get married.”
If your interested in an example of MUDding http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com/ is a game that is quite popular with online gamers, which has the same aspects which Turkle discusses.
The then author continued explains that MUDding causes the user to be alive virtually and in reality, she uses the computer term “windows” to further elaborate. For example, if you are synching music to your iPod on iTunes and watching a video on Youtube at the same time, you are channeling back and forth from two different windows. While someone is MUDing they are channeling back and forth from their virtual character and who they are in real life. These are two windows, when you pause your Youtube video to go on iTunes, the Youtube browsers still exists. Just like when you are being who you are in real life your virtual personae does not stop it is just on pause.
If you’re website was a virtual character, what would be its personae? (gender, physical attributes and personality traits)
Turkle then dwells into the aspect of virtual aliveness. This idea is introduced by discussing the natural habits of children when having toys. Children are so interested in how these toys work that they deconstruct them and find certain things like; batteries,wires, etc. In a way, our Web Workshop class looks at webpages as toys. When we were asked to find sites which had creative effects, we were also asked to think about how these effects were coded into javascript. We deconstructed sites to find codes just like we as children deconstructed toys to figure out how they worked.
Turkle interviewed hundreds of children and asked them about their experiences online. One of those interviewed was Holly, an eleven year old girl who discussed the aliveness of robots. She says “Its like Pinocchio… first Pinocchio was a puppet. He was not alive at all. Then he was an alive puppet. Then he was an alive boy. A real boy.” Then Holly finalizes by saying that “They [the robots] are sort of alive.” In other words, because the robot exist, Holly believes that they are alive. Turkle connects this idea to the fact that there is some type of blur between the boundaries from being completely mechanical to being completely human.
How alive and in-synched with reality is your website? (What would Holly say about your website?)
Good luck with your webpages, code with swag!
-Ramshah and Reimy
