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

Carrie Yu's reflective post

After the course, I had come up a question: Are we become as a cyborg now? I think the answer is yes; we had become as a cyborg , as Cyborg is an integrated entity of machine and human. In nowadays technology can be found in everywhere, even on your body such as your mobile, i-pod, electronic watch, etc. Moreover, in the medical point of view, technology can replace the lost functions of human’s body such as robotic legs. It can replace the human legs which had lost in the accident. Therefore, we are relying on the technology very much and it seems we can’t still alive without technology. It can’t separate the human and the technology, as it seems we had integrated together. Because of that, it may cause the problem as technology may become too powerful and over control. As we are fears towards technology because of the well developing of the technology in nowadays, that is a contradiction to take a balance between them.

Jessie's reflective post

The use of weblogs for learning purposes is very effective. Through the weblogs, we can share the assignments with peers; discuss the unit topics and readings; respond or comment classmates' opinions. It is very convenient that we just sit in front of the computer and thus can gain a lot of knowledge and information.

I think I'm a cyborg. In fact, I prefer face-to-face communication rather than CMC. However, as the rapid developments of technology and people have lesser time to see each other, we have to communicate with people through technology and it is the only way to keep contact with our friends. I'm not sure it is good or bad. I'm quite contradictory to this.

I think the course is interesting. It helps me think deeper about the relationship between humanity and technology, as I have never thought this kind of issue before. However, some of the readings are quite difficult to understand.

Daisy's Reflective Post

After attending the course, I realized that I have become a cyborg unconsciously. Technology has become part of my life. The first day I do is to press the “on” button of my computer. I spend more than ten hours in the Internet, to read the newspaper, bid the things I like on ebay and get the information I want. You can see that many people are using their i-phone to connect to the Internet or communicating with others in the MTR. I can’t imagine how the world would be if we cannot connect to the Internet one day, especially when the due date of essays is coming, I think the consequence would be horrible. All the things, including the banking system, stock market, and the whole economy of the society will be lose control. We should think about are we relying too much on the technology? Is it a time to pull out myself from the virtual world?

Although there are some topics very difficult, some are still very interesting such as video games and online communities. There are many stereotypes embed into our daily life as well as in video games. I understand human and technology is inseparable nowadays and we should be aware of the side effects. Or one day we could do nothing without the help of technology.

Most of us own a weblog and it is becoming more common. Through using the weblogs on the Internet, we could exchange comments and understanding what my classmates are thinking about. Their responses are very useful for me to learn. Also we can have more interaction besides posting our homework. When I have difficulties in one of the topics, I can go to read the weblogs as some of my classmates can give clearer explanation through their post after presentation. As a result, the weblogs is effective for helping me to learn.

Eileen's Reflective Post

From the subject name “Self. Net”, it seemed to be a very difficult things. But after twelve weeks lectures and tutorials, I think that it is not as difficult as imagined. It is just talked about the technology around us everyday such as video games, culture jamming and virtual community. It helps us to understand more about the negative and positive impact on technology which we may not know before.

Writing weblog become more popular today. I think it is very convenient for us to know others response, feeling and information about a specific event. Also, it functioned as dairy. We can get some interesting story and information about other people. But in this course, weblog become a tool for us to exchange our knowledge. For example, all of us post our webliography on the weblog, we can see that each of us have different perspective although we may do the same question. To a certain extent, it helps us to widen our horizon.

I believe that I am a cyborg. It's so hard for me to exclude technology in my life. Technology invaded our lives from different aspects. Undoubtedly, technology gives us so many advantages, such as easier to communicate with others. However, it made human depend on it. After doing the webliography of Frankenstein, I know more about the relationship between technology and humanity. I think that we are still need to work hard on keeping harmony or equality between technology and humanity.

I really enjoy this course. Through the lectures, different classmates' presentations and discussions, I learn more about how the technology affects our lives. And although I rarely play video game, after my presentation, I got a deeper understanding about the issues of video games. Undoubtedly, technology helped us a lot when we did our assignments for this course.

Refection of the course

Before I take this course, I am just a “normal” internet user and think that internet is part of my daily life and help us to connect the outside world. However, this course let me know that new cyber community and cyborg not only brings the convenience, but also brings the side effect to the society. Some scholars mention in the course worry about the harmful of cyber community. Therefore, when I am using the cyber community, some key concepts I learnt in the lecture will come out in my mind. When I visit the cyber community, such as facebook or some discussion broad, I will try to think deeper in it.

In addition, I think the webliography is a interesting task. As other courses will not accept us to is many internet sources as academic references, and we have to find a “real book”. However, this course provide us to take a chance to search some academic sources online, I think this opportunity let us to observe a different side of internet but not only the leisure part of it.

Anthea's reflective post

Before I attend to this course, I don't know any ideas of relationship between technology and human. I think the weblogs work for me. It is because it reminds me what people talks about in the tutorials. Although we discuss the question and give any comment or ideas in the tutorials, we will forget important points or ideas. The weblogs help us easy to find out what the topic is and help us to do our essay. And we read our classmates' webiogarphy to see other ideas and learn more.

I believe that I'm cyborg. I always play online games and video games. Sometime, I read the forum and talk with my friends in msn or Facebook. So, I'm in the virtual communities. In the past, I could not separate my real life and virtual life. Just played game when I was at home, and stop it when I sleep.

The readings that we discussed in the lesson are useful. I think the topic of culture jamming is difficult. After I read those reading and listen our classmates' presentation, I get what it is. All the topic is helping us to learn more our society.

Reflection on the course

After finishing all the lessons, I found that I have learned more about what cyborg and cybercommunity are. Besides, I discovered many side-effects and the bad impacts of digital technologies, digital media and online communication. Before taking this course, I think technology is really good for us and our daily lives although it helps us a lot. However, people become rely on it. It is not a good phenomenon and we are facing the crisis that technology takes over human.

Moreover, I think the assignments help me a lot, especially the webliography. We have to search our information online. It seems to allow us to experience the searching journey on the internet which relates to our course. Also, we post our works on the blog is another way that to have opportunity to reach the cybercommunity and have online communication. We can learn during doing the assignments.

Adelaide's reflective post on this course

Before attending to this course, I had no idea about cyborg and believe that technology is positive to human being. However, after twelve-week lectures of this course, I have learned the concepts of cyborg and cyberculture in different perspectives. Technology not only brings us convenience in our daily lives, it also blurring the boundaries between gender and class as Haraway mentions. At the same time, some scholars worry that technology may harm human being like Frankenstein's monster. In fact, when I come across this course, I found that I have already become a cyborg unconsciously! Since technology has invaded as an important part of our lives, machines such as computer, mobile phone as well as television are associated with us. The issue of virtual identities and communities interests me a lot because it is closed to our real lives. Surfing on the internet and form communities in cyberspace like facebook and online forums becomes our daily activity, and I believe that it would be interesting to see how people construct their virtual identities after going through this topic. Although some concepts like cyberpunk and postmodernism are abstract and quite difficult to me, the weblog helps me to learn effectively. As we share what we have learnt as well as our opinions on particular topics, we can learn from each other and even have a in-depth understanding.