All right, this week is finally the week I will write a real blog! I have carved out the time to give the assignment the attention it deserves, a task I have found impossible utill now. Sorry 
I was very interested by the Karen Evans article this week For some time now, I have been fascinated by the interactions and communities that form in virtual spaces. Largely because I feel no connection to them whatsoever. It is not that I haven’t tried, but there is simply no lure or interest for me. Therefor, I am fascinated by the seemingly deep, personal, and meaningful connections that are made online. This article may have shed some light on it for me, but reading it also allowed me to reflect on my resistance to the trend.
Evans suggests that…
“the internet is heralded as a space where physical barriers can be overcome and where it is possible to reach out to others without divisions of space, culture, race or gender intervening. In cyberspace it is assumed a person will be judged by their ideas alone, revealing only that which they wish to share with others and without fear of being rejected if they do not conform to ‘the ideal’. On the internet, we are often reminded, people can even adopt alternative personas and become whoever they wish to be.”
Hmmm… I understand the appeal of interacting in a space where people can not see who you are, believe me, I do! I wonder, however, if this is truly freeing or if it creates greater opporunity for rejection, exclusion, cruelty, and the like. Evans exlpains that the internet is a limitless space where individuals control the spread and flow of information uninhibited by censors, corporations, etc. communites are “self-selected”, they do not depend on random encounters with strangers, but people are able to seek out those with commonalities. Finally, she points out that “virtual communities grant their members greater freedom because their users are not tied to physical locations”. The argumentt made by the various writers seems to be that the internet is a freeing space, seperated from the judgements and divisions of our physical spaces. My question (for myself) now is: Why is my experience so opposite?
I will draw on my expereince in this particluar community of sorts. I have enjoyed greatly reading other people’s blogs because we all have so much more to say than you would ever know sitting together in a lecture hall. Last week, however, I was sitting behind two girls as they surfed the blogs and ultimately “bashed” a particular entry during break. One proceeded to post a comment calling the author “foolish”, among other things. Now, disagreement is one thing, but the individual was well aware she had crossed aline, expressing her concern that the blogs author would find out who she was and steal her laptop or vandalize her car. The girls laughed and I listened, all the while knowing that it was my post they were discussing. My point here is not that they disagreed with me, but rather that she clearly communicated in a manner that she would not have used face to face. The censoring effects of face to face interaction can be a healthy thing. There are reasons why we don’t say things to each other, and working with children, the lack of social hindrances actually concerns me greatly. I know that girl would never have turned around and made those comments to my face. She had no problem, however, posting them to my blog becasue she thought I didn’t know who she was. The post doesn’t bother me, I just find that the expereince sheds some light on why I am reluctant to enter into such communities.
To get to the point, I find the lack of social conventions and controls concerning rather than freeing or safe. True, individuals control the spread of information, is that so great? If this were a blog I was particularily passionate about or a topic I found sensitive, I really wouldn’t want free and unmoderated ability to reply. I guess I came to the same conclusion as Evans when she said “many of the claims made as to their superior character are overstated. They seem to hold out the promise of safe and inclusive communication but in reality, many of the problems which plague physical community are present in their virtual counterparts”. We are people, we exlude people, say things we shouldn’t, judge on the basis of irrelevant criteria, etc. All I’m saying is that we do these things in an anonymous environment as well. Although we may not judge on skin color, we still judge quickly, and post as hastily as we speak. I really think that the same problems we have in physical spaces will become a part of the virtual spaces we share, possibly even exagerated by anonymity and the lack of social controls.
