Digital Commmunities

Technology has affected us is through civic engagement. With technology comes the opportunity of making citizens more involved people. The Internet in particular, will play key role in how effective digital citizenship is.

A quote from Pew Internet, a site that reports several different surveys on an array of topics gives some insight on this topic.

“For a variety of reasons, the internet might be expected to raise participation: The interactive capacities of the internet allow certain forms of political activity to be conducted more easily; vast amounts of political information available on the internet could have the effect of lowering the costs of acquiring political knowledge and stimulating political interest; the capacities of the internet facilitate mobilization to take political action.”

This quote leads me to believe that new technology will play an essential role in civic engagement for years to come. People have never been able to have access to so much information so quickly and with so little effort. This allows for citizens to become more involved not only in their country, but the communities they live in.

Another quote from Pew shows how much technology and civic engagement are intertwined.

“Just over one-third of Americans (36%) are involved in a civic or political group, and more than half of these (56%) use digital tools to communicate with other group members.”

As you can see technology is now an essential part of civic engagement. They are now inseparable and it will be interesting to see how innovators in the future use technology to make citizens more engaged and involved in their communities.

Avatar

Take a look at the picture at the bottom of the webpage. This is an avatar that I recently created. You may be wondering if a correct depiction of myself. I hate to break the news to my readers but this looks nothing like me. Below is a picture of myself and then below that is a picture of my avatar

While this may not be a correct image of what I look like, there is a reason behind the way my avatar looks. Step by step you, the reader will see why my avatar is the way it is.

First, one may wonder why my avatar is so shaggy and green. There are a couple of reasons behind this. First and foremost I have always had a liking to the color green. But, I obviously don’t have green hair because my parents would disown me in near seconds. As for the long hair I am projecting what I wish my hair looked like. Both of these choices are what I wish my hair would look like in real life.

Now as we move down the avatar we see that he has a freshly shaved chin hair along with a shirt with a duff beer imprinted on it. I chose chin hair for my avatar because in all honesty I love facial hair. It makes normal people look 20 times cooler that they actually are in my opinion. With these statements one can infer that a person who has beards likes to use facial hair as a mask to hide behind what they really are.

The shirt was the last object on this avatar that had a thought process. To start off, who doesn’t love beer? It shows that I can be an easy-going kid who likes to have a good time. I also choose it to make my avatar to seem like a “cool kid”. Similarly to the chin hair I may be using the beer to try to fit in with what I think to be cool. I’m not making decisions based on my own. I’m letting others dictate what I should wear in order to fit in with the norms of society.

The shoes and the sox however have no real distinct reason for the avatar. I really was in just a rush to get through making my avatar. Also, you can only change the colors of the pants and shoes, which doesn’t allow room for expression. This in turn could represent the struggles I sometimes have to coherently express my self. I struggle with this constantly in class and the shoes and pants in the avatar serve as a reminder of that for me.

After going step by step of the clothing lets take a look at this avatar as a whole. What does he represent for me? The most apparent answer is this avatar is who I wish I could become. To me this is a free-caring person with no problems in his life. His facial hair and his hair exemplify a free-flowing personality. He represents the person I wish I could be if I didn’t care so much about my self-image.

At the same time this man represents counter culture inside of me. Even though I don’t look like it, I would consider myself a hippie or a person of that sort.  I listen to music and hang out with much more people who are not of my race and are primarily white hipsters. Through this avatar I am showing what I feel like on the inside. I may not look like this but at my core this avatar is who I really am.

Another huge difference between the real me and the avatar me is the distinct difference in size in weight. I don’t like to admit this  but I’ll admit I’m a bit on the heavy side. This avatar shows what I hope I could look like one day. One can infer that I am unhappy with the situation weight-wise and this avatar shows what I wished I looked like. This isn’t for sure, but just an idea to why I choose my avatar to look this way.

Also, this avatar not only shows who I wish to be in real life but represents who I am online. This person is somebody who is free caring as well as “hip” and “cool”. While online the way I communicate is very different compared to real life. Through my avatar I communicate this very clearly. From my avatar’s appearance one can infer the person is somebody who is somewhat normal and popular in a sense.

This is precisely what I portray through my avatar. In real life I am in no way similar to my avatar. My avatar represents the digital me. This is a person that can hide behind the computer and not be judged. People don’t need to know what I actually like or who I actually am. It provides a level of freedom to express myself.

What avatars provide for myself and other people are so essential to personal identity in my opinion. It allows people to freely express themselves. People can become whatever they wish to be. In such games such as World of Warcraft or any other MMO’s serve as an example of when avatars can have a positive effect on people.

For example, a study by Constance Steinkuhler gives us some examples of how MMO’s operate as a third place. One concept is called the leveler, in which rank and in real life doesn’t apply to MMO’s. Avatars in MMO’s perpetuate a persons status in real life. This allows for people such as myself to make an avatar that identifies our true online identity.

This idea is central to why my avatar looks the way it does. Without any constraints from the outside world I am able to make an avatar showing my true self. If I was   judged by how my avatar looked it may not correctly define my true online self. That is why my avatar looks the way it does.

Online Communities

The prominence of the Internet is profound. One effect of the Internet is the rise of online communities. Similar to MMO’s (massive multiplayer online) people can create little communities of sorts online. They are completely separate from communities people have outside of the Web. Online communities have been present since emails were first created, but now we are in a golden age of technology. Technology has never had a bigger influence on us and in turn makes online communities so important. It is just one of the many ways that people try to stay constantly connected. The video below is from the program Ted Talks explores the changes to social norms changed by the rise of social communities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhOUNsATofU

Moving forward online communities can be of great help. They can help people solve problems that they couldn’t find out otherwise. They can give people a sense of belonging. With technology continuing to evolve it will be interesting to see how much more of an impact social communities will have in our everyday lives.

Review of Freddie's Restaurant- Yelp

My review of the delicious Freddie's Restaurant
http://www.yelp.com/biz/fabulous-freddies-italian-eatery-chicago#hrid:dA1LHzUS2MAH2MHkQS2aTA

The Term Friends is Evolving

In today’s world the word friends has taken on a new meaning. Thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook,  the word friends is nearly impossible to interpret.

The term friend, in my opinion on social networking sites indicates acquaintances and not friends anymore. The people who are your friends on Facebook come from different parts of your life. They can be people you met at a party or family members. Facebook has changed the way the term friend is used. Below is a a graph from the pew research center that can better explain this phenomenon:

From this graph we can see that 7% of peoples friends are people they never met before. This tells us a lot about the users of social networking sites. The word friend is evolving. If 7% of Facebook friends have never met what do we call this? These people are complete strangers and aren’t friends in any way.

This is my main issue with “friending” as a whole. Most of people’s friends on Facebook aren’t actually friends. How many friends somebody has on Facebook isn’t an indicator of very much. Social networking sites are making it increasingly harder to distinguish between friends and acquaintances.