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.

Reflection of the presentation (Playing Games, Simulating Worlds & Having Divine Powers!)

In the presentation, we have proven that heterosexuality is portrayed as norm in both virtual world and reality. For example, in the Japanese game Neon Genesis Evangelion: Ayanami Ikusei Keikaku (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン 綾波育成計画), the image of female character are being portaryed at submissive and having good body shape. The duty of the player is to protect the girls. Althought there are more and more homosexual elements inserted into some new games, such as Sims and Boys Love, the culture is not very popular. There are still some restrictions on these games such as gay couples cannot get marry and having babies, they could only live together and could not enjoy the same treatment as heterosexual couples.

During the discussion part, students agree that although there are homosexual characters in the games, heterosexuality is still the norm. On the other hand, the games of portable games such as PSP are target at male players, while the games of NDSL are target at female players. Is there a change in the male-dominated game world? No. We can see the answer in the games of NDSL. For example, the most popular games such as cooking mama and Nintendo dogs, stereotype the representation of women as patient and mild. I think it still need some time for changing the role of sexuality.

Reflection of the presentation (Playing Games, Simulating Worlds & Having Divine Powers!)

We used a Japanese game, Neon Genesis Evangelion: Ayanami Ikusei Keikaku as an example to examine the sexuality in the game. It showed that heterosexuality is portrayed as norm in the game just like traditional media text. Also, we have gave out the example of The Sims and Japan BL game (Boy Love game) to show LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) characters in video game have increased after the company find out that the dominant group of players who are young white heterosexual male are willing to play a strong and powerful female character, e.g. Tomb Raider and Resident Evil.

From the discussion, we discussed about the nowadays trend of homosexual element in the video games and the example of Japan BL game. In fact, the companies want to earn pink dollars. So, they start to design and promote homosexual element in the game. But, it is not popular among the dominant trend. From The Sims, we can see that there are discriminations about homosexual pairing. They cannot marry and cannot have a baby. Also, for the example of Japan BL game, it is not really a game about homosexual. Because these games are mainly targeted at female players and the male characters in the games are always have feminine-looking, it is hard to distinguish the gender of the characters. So, female players can get involved into the central characters and easy to identify with the character.

Actually, different subject position can be challenged the sexuality in the video games such as female players acted as male central characters in the game and homosexual players. Nowadays, NDS, PSP and Wii become more popular which change the trend that young white heterosexual male dominated the game market. There are different games which targeted at different players. So, there are still have a lot of spaces to explore the role of sexuality played in the video games.