Final Reflection - Julie

Before I’m going to type my reflection toward the course, I would like to say using this webblog is quite interesting! Since we are exchanging our own opinions and commenting some works from other schoolmates by typing a blog, a very much user friendly way for me, I think the pressure of handing an assignment is reduced. We can just simply click on “New Post” or “Comment” to show our thoughts. I think it’ll be quite an interactive way in a long term basis.

Throughout the whole courses, once again, it reinforced that human being nowadays can’t live without technology, or let say we have no choice to neglect it. There are three topics which raised my interest most: virtual ethics, online communities and technology related games. What have been covered in these topics are closely connected with my daily life. The invention of technology no doubt improved human life a lot, but it may also ruin human beings someday.

Reflection post by Cody

I am not good at computer and the digital technology. I think that digital world is an imaginary world. It is unbelievable, unstable and a non human thing. It was because when the computer suddenly turns down, I will feel upset and worry about the file will lost. It is incredible brain, communication tool and recorder. Moreover, I don’t like to open the computer in the spare time and do not play any computer game. I seem not belong to recent and in digital world.

After I study this course, I find that we cannot live without digital technology. Technology can brings some convenient to us. Even, we are reconstructed by digital technologies, digital media and rely on the digital communication. The interesting point is in the digital world, it also have the online community. It means that technology also can be a warm and human thing for us to communicate and sharing. I discover that nature and technology is not totally binary. If we have a well control in the digital world, it is not the destroyer.

Ivee's Reflective Post

After attending the course, I have a deeper impression between humanity and technologies. It seems that many people in the world had become a cyborg. It is because we need to use this technologies everyday at everywhere. We alwsy communicate with people through the internet. Although we would talk in phone, the main tools for us to contact is the computer. Also, we would write think on the blog and share with people. It really show that we have immersed with the technologies.
Althoguh sciences bring a lot of benefits to us, it may cause some disadvantages. For example, the problem of pornographies and violent online games. We should be careful in the place that full of illusion. It can cause many things that we can't imagine.
I think this course is really very useful since there are so many concepts that i haven't make contact with before.

Annie's reflection post

Before I took this course, I think my knowledge towards digital media is not enough, which is only had a little understanding on it. After finishing Self. Net/ identity in the Digital Age, I got to know more about the cyborg and the relationship between technology and human being.

Also, I think the weblogs is very convenient and useful for us to have a discussion. It makes the class have a better atmosphere that we can communication on the weblogs whatever we want. It is really funny when doing the presentation, searching for the information of video game is not bored as well.

Erica's Reflective Post

Before taking this course, I totally don't understand what this course is about. It's so difficult to understand with the title "Self.Net" and the term "cyborg". However, after this semester, I found that it is interesting to know more about internet and cyborg. There is a big connection between the real and virtual world. Technology brings lots of convenience to us. For example, we can chat with friends and find lots of information easily through internet, enjoy different types of video games to immetate what we can do in the real world. However, there are still lots of problems in virtual world. Youngsters are easily meeting bad guy through internet. A news very noticeable in these days is about a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a poor family and needs to find jobs to help her parents. Unluckily, she met bad guy though internet and said they'd introduce job for her. Finally, she was being killed and they cut apart her dead body. There are lots of such kind of news that aroused the public's concern on internet.

Reflection on the course

This course encourages me to think about the relationships and politics between human and science. As digital culture has totally been permeated into our lives, to the extent that it is “fatal” to us, we seldom consider the problems which caused by that, such as, isolated social relationships, playing online games obsessively, virtual rape, etc. However, the advantage and disadvantage whether science has brought to us are still remain undefined. Science and technologies are insufficient for our imperfections, building us houses to live, giving the infecundity to babies, extending lives and curing diseases, meanwhile, they also create weapons, cause more illness by chemical pollution and threaten the ecological balance.

My reflection of the course

This course is quite difficult to understand during the first few lessons as many theories and new terms that I haven’t listened before, such as the term of “cyborg”. Although I always use computers or new technologies in everyday, those theories and social problem in the virtual world that are neglected by myself, and now I can realize all kinds of people’s practices, include constructing many different identities from a online user in the virtual world are valuable to study.

Indeed, some problems are should be concerned in the Internet, especially pornographies and violent online games, since many young children are knowledgeable enough to play the computer or even surfing online, they may not know how to identify what right or wrong is while getting visualized images of nude body and violence. I think that adults should concern this problem, not just only parents. I hope this problem can be solved by human beings in the reality. Furthermore, I appreciate with Anna’s teaching attitude so much, as she is the first time to teach this course, she is hardworking on finding many sources and prepare many information from those readings for us in every lecture. Many students agree that she is quite hard to understand many new theories in this course before the lecture and she can clearly explain them to us.

Gabriel