Friday November 16

After a while messing around with Hogwarts, there are a few things that I noticed. The first thing that I wanted to know how to do was talk. Thats all I wanted to do at first. Unlike a chatroom, it is necessary to enter a command as well as what you want to say, but the command isn't necessarily obvious. Talking is pretty much your lifeline in a MUD. In case there is a question as to how to do something, somebody else on the MUD is bound to know how to do it. Also, matching up faces and names was a little difficult at first. After a few minutes of "walking" around I think I began to recognize a few people. Of course, there were a few I could match right off the bat just from remembering their names. However it was interesting that some people's characteristics carried over into the MUD. Perhaps the transfer that happens between real and cyberspace doesn't change characterisitcs. But in this case, we already knew each other, so any attempt to change something would be pretty easy to recognize.

Saturday November 17

There was one more thing from yesterday that I wanted to talk about, but I forgot to put it in. There were a few people who suggested that we spend one class day a week on the MUD just discussing the class and whatever else that needed to be discussed. However, I think that it would drastically change the class, mainly that of a space/place nature. We hold class in the same room every day, and there is quite a consistency that we sometimes forget about, but it is still there. Changing to an online format once a week would definitely throw me off, because the flow of conversation would change drastically. In the MUD, there is an order in which things are said. Someone speaks and shows on one line, somebody does something and it shows up on the next line and so on. In class people can talk at the same time and it is possible to gauge reaction by looking at faces and the such. As easy and nice as it sounds, moving to a different space would throw the class off completely.

Monday November 19

Looking ahead a little bit, I decided to look at some different journal sites that I've found randomly. This journal has a distinct purpose and a distinct audience, but some of thse journals seem to pointed to the middle of nowere and aiming at nobody. I don't quite understand why people do it, and in fact I've asked a couple why they think they do it. Some of them, I think do have a select group of people that read them, just to let them know whats going on. Some of them maybe use it as a way to vent and get things out of the way. However, do we really know that this stuff is real or is it just made up? How do we know that there isn't somebody creating their own on-line soap opera for people to drool over? I guess you just have to take everything you see on here with a grain of salt. I agree with the quote from 'Personal Home Pages...' that describes home pages as 'a fan club to one's self.' Some of these people are creating these sites for a specific purpose, but some of them, I think, are simply building monuments to themselves.

Tuesday November 20

Well, I won't post for another few days thanks to the holiday, but I figure I could be productive for one more day. Just as I thought, this paper (Lab IV) is turning out to be pretty difficult. I think the biggest problem I'm having is with the social code aspect of cyberspace. its just a difficult concept to explain. Its hard to imagine that a place with so much "freedom" still has a lot of restrictions. Some of them are technical and others are personal, but there are a lot of them. Again, like I mentioned earlier, it was difficult to figure out how to do things in the MUD. But after I learned how to do some things (although they were simple) I felt as if I belonged there and felt more comfortable about it. When you don't know how to do anything, it becomes real easy to look foolish or inexperienced in front of people who know what they are doing. And I felt kinda stupid when John is doing all of these weird things that I have no clue how to do. Anyway, its difficult to define these social codes because they are almost identical to social codes in real life in purpose, but the way they are applied is completely different. It is easier to recognize these codes in real life, and they are much more difficult to see in cyberspace. Some MUDs and bulletin boards have posted rules, but more have a "learn as you go" approach, which sometimes leads to serious mistakes.

Saturday November 24

I read "Identity and the Cyborg Body" today while eating some left over turkey...blah...and have a pretty weird experience not long after. An old friend of mine from high school instant messaged me and we talked for a few minutes. It has been probably 2 years since I have seen her last, and I took advantage of it. She asked how I was, about my health and such, and I'll just say that I said some things about how my health was that weren't necessarily true. I lied about my weight, told her I had working on building a frame to gain some muscle mass. Now what I said isn't entirely a lie, but it wasn't necessarily true either. I have been working with a program to gain some muscle mass, but I am by no means an Arnold Whatshisname (go ahead and laugh). Still, I didn't feel guilty about making things look better than they actually were, but it made me think. What about other people who had told me things? COuld they have been doing the same thing I was doing? I would say probably so. But I wouldn't necessarily hold it against them, because really everybody does it once or twice.

Monday November 26

Now this whole ecstacy of communication makes a whole lot of sense. I found out how to add neat little things to a website today, and I've been going nuts ever since. Unfortunately, most of them aren't working, but hey that's past of the experience, right? I must admit, I haven't been writing in-depth posts, mainly I think because I'm still a little aprehensive to put some thing sout on the table. Who knows...maybe I'll loosen up before I finish this thing. But it still feels weird to be doing this. I mean, I've built a site before, but never one that served as an on-line journal. It just feels odd having your thoughts out "there" (postmodernism at work...) for everyone (and probably no one) to see. Now I have this overwhelming feeling to keep working on the website and tweaking things so I can get them perfect. Of course, once I finish something, I have another urge to redo it or fix it. You could almost say it was addictive. I haven't gotten to that point yet...yet.

Tuesday November 27

Earlier in the semester we were talking about the fact that we define ourselves from what we buy. In cyberspace, we define ourselves through our home pages, which uses stuff we steal from somebody else's "identity." Bricolage seems like a simple concept at first, but then it becomes really complicated. So somebody steals a picture and uses it on their own website...no big deal, right? Actually, it is. That person's (the one who stole) identity is simply a copy of the other. It is an image of an image of an image. Not too confusing. Of course, once you take an image out of one context and place it in another, it takes on a whole new meaning. So what the "theif" took and now uses no longer carries its same value. Then a repeating pattern occurs as the theif finds better pictures to use and so on. But hey, its gotten the Internet this far, and if it ain't broke...

Wednesday November 28

Well, I decided to reorganize the site. The way tripod keeps things in order is a little too spread out for me, so I've tried to consolidate the site into a few pages. Of course, there is probably a better way to do it, but I haven't found it yet. But if and when I do, I'll probably redo the whole thing again. There are quite a few unwritten rules when building a site. Of course, I'm just a novice, so I just haven't found ways around those barriers yet. As simple as using tripod is, its nowhere near the capability of the technology when building a site from scratch. There are so few options, it seems, at least in comparison to some sites that i've seen before. I tried to get music to play in the background, but it didn't work the way I wanted to. Like I said, I'll probably figure it out later. I've been hearing a lot of people say that their afraid of building a site mainly because they've never done it before. I almost expected that fear, and I have that same fear myself. When you're told to build a website, what do you do with it? There are so many decisions to be made, and its impossible to have it exactly as you want it. You've probably realized by now that I'm not into the whole pictures thing. If you're gonna build a site, give me some content (see: words). I mean, sometimes pictures do serve a purpose, but sometimes I'd rather read. HOpe I didn't offend anybody. If you want to see some pictures, email them to me and I'll put 'em up. Otherwise, just read and be happy.

Thursday November 29

The more I enter my thoughts in this journal, I wonder what other people think (or will think) when they see it. My main question is: will they actually belivee this is the real me? Somebody else in class is aparently building a site about some character that he made up (a monkey) and he's writing all kinds of made up things about it. Well, in that case you actually know what's real and what isn't. In the case of a web journal or a web site even, if it is not actually said, what is more real: the persona the person creates in real life or the persona created on the Internet? In class we talked about people actually creating new characters online and what kind of experiences they are having. Why these people do it I don't know, but I think that they do it because they are somewhat insecure about something of themselves, or perhaps are afraid to reveal something a bout themselves that the wouldn't want to reveal in real life.

Friday November 30

For some reason, the site doesn't seem to be working right now. Does this mean that online persona has "died?" Perhaps. This website, and consequently on the Internet, is the only place where this persona exists. All the stuff about real/hyperreal and identity and community all fall to pieces when the damn thing doesn't work. There are so many technological things that we take for granted on the INternet, because we are so used to being able to do things without problems. I thought today about what would happen if all this stuff jsut disappeared. Would somebody try to rebuild it? I wouldn't doubt it. And what would happen to those people who present differnt personas online? They, since their persona has "died," will probably have a hard time adapting, because they have had an outlet to express some things that they wouldn't have in real life. Some, however, wouldn't be able to adapt at all. Obviously we depend a lot on this technology, even more so when it doesn't work.

Monday December 3

There are a few websites that i look at on a pretty regular basis, some several times a day, and they all illustrate the postmodern concept we discussed in class this semester. No matter what page you're on, there's links to every other page on that site. Even my site, although it is awfully simple, carries some postmodern characteristics. I can manipulate the site from pretty much anywhere that has access to the Internet, so there are no location restrictions to the site. Also, there is really no specific place where the website exists. It jsut one small brick in a pile that adds up to cyberspace. Considering the size of the network, thats a pretty small brick. After these concepts sit for a while, you start to see them in just about anything. This website is a good example of that.

Tuesday December 4

Well, I think this will be the last post I'll write for this website. Icould probably go on forever about this stuff. As the culture, and consequently cyberspace, continues to change, our generations will be responsible for redefining things that we have known for so long. When the telephone was first invented, everyone was clueless as to what to do with it. Eventually, we figured it out. When televisionw as first introduced, it consisted of two maybe three channels in black and white. And then cable came along. The same, I think, will happen with cyberspace. It has been a dominant form of communication for only a few years now, so we are only witnessing its infancy. People will find new uses and new technizques to harness the technology it possess. Yet there will be instances where we as rhetoricians will have to question everything about these new technologies and techniques. We are responsible because we possess the knowledge to understand these concepts. I hope we do a good job.