In the article by Andy Carvin he discusses the digital divide and how it basically is a matter of having or not having. Do you have access to the internet and technology or do you not have the access? The digital divide goes way beyond just having access to the interent though. Mark Warschauer makes a good point in his articles saying that content, language, literacy, education, community, and institutional structures must all be taken into account if meaningfual access to new technologies is to be provided. This is very similiar to the 4 things that Carvin said are needed to help solve the digital divide puzzle.

One of the most important things I think is that sense of community and social interactions. This reminded me of the Chicano article that we read by Pena. It is not a matter of access to the internet, but the want to use it. In the Chicano article Pena says that Mexicans are social people and the internet takes them away from that social interaction, and that is one reason why they do not use the internet as often as others. In Carvin's article he says that it is paramount for people using the internet to have opportunitites to join communities where they can join together with others of similiar interest. I do not disagree with this, because for some people this may be an excellent way for them to interact, but I think that this sense of "community" that Carvin is talking about does take away from the social interactions of everyday life and people can "lose" themselves in the internet. For example: Myspace and Facebook are hugely popular right now, but I personally don't have either for the sheer fact that I would rather call a person up or meet with them face to face rather than having an "online" relationship with them.

In the Warschauer article he gives us those examples of the communitites that recieved millions of dollars enabling them to build their perfect "Information Age Town". Three years later the town that won had little to show for all the money that had been spent, in comparison to the runner ups who made better use of the money. One reason why the winner was not as successful was because it took away from their social interactions with others. An example of this was the unemployed who were required to use the internet instead of physically going down to the unemployment offices. The people were not instructed on how to use the internet properly, therefore they just sold there computers which defeats the purpose of the project. Others simply did not want to use the internet becasue it deprived them of their social opportunity of going down the office and interacting with others who were also there.

Another reason why the winners were not successful was becasue they were given all this money and new technology, but nobody new what to do with it or how to use it. That is where knowledge comes into this whole equation . Whether someone has access or not does not make a difference if they do not know how to use a computer or navigate the internet. That is really what it all boils down to. We need to start at the bottom and focus on other issues such as literacy before we can tackle the digital divide. If people do not have the proper tools in the first place, then what good is the internet at all?

Cyborg Manifesto

Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto is a social feminist anyalsis of women in the post modern technological world. She uses the metaphor of the cyborg to discuss the relationships of science, technology, and socialist feminism. She describes a cyborg as a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. We can no longer think of ourselves in terms of male/female, truth/illusion, self/other, but as cyborgs. A mixture of human and machine where the biological and mechanical side are so intertwined that they can not be separated.

This piece I felt was very difficult to read, but I know that alot of what she is writing about deals with the feminist movement during the 70's and 80's, and what I kept on thinking about while reading this article was how far we have come in they way we (as a society) view females. I am not saying the we live in a perfect society and that no one has outdated views/opinions on not only females, but race as well. What really gets me is that by this January we will have either an African American President or a women Vice President. Although other African Americans/women have ran no one has ever won. This year it is inevitable that one or other will hold office. That to me goes to show how far we have come in our views of not only feminism but race as well.

Another piece of the article that really caught my attention was towards the end when she was talking about the culture of video games and the "high-tech, gendered imaginations". This struck me because of other discussions that we have talked about in class, particularly when discussing video games. A majority of the video games out there the characteres are typically white, young, men who fit the "norm" and you do not see many female characters, older characters, characters of different race etc. This is an one aspect of our culture where feminism has not broken into as seen by the previous examples.

Haraway also states that these technologies "promise ultimate mobility and perfect exchange-and incidentally enable tourism". This reminds me alot of the articles that we have read from Nakamura about identity tourism and being able to transport ourselves to other exotic places and be someone we are not.

Race

In Nakamura's reading she starts her article off with a little quip about the cartoon dog sitting at the computer typing away with the caption reading "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". I personally think that this is funny of course, but true. On the internet you can be whoever you want to be, or who your not. It is not required that you be yourself, you are able to create a whole new "persona" if you so choose to. Nakamura then goes on to talk about places such as LambdaMOO where it is required to choose a gender before being able to start the game, whereas you have no option to choose race. She bases the rest of the article on this particular premise of how race ties into the internet as well as identity tourism.



In the article Nakamura brings up the topic of identity tourism and she says that adopting a racial identity becomes a form of recreation, almost like you are taking a vacation from your fixed identity and locales. This is because you can be someone entirely different than yourself and identity tourism in cyberplaces like LambdaMOO allows you to adopt this exotic identity while never physically crossing that border or even leaving your chair. Not only can you travel to other places (like we read in her first article), but now you can recreate yourself while traveling to these other exotic locations.



So in the whole scheme of things is it really important to dictate what race you are? Is that really going to change the way the game is played who or plays it? Probably not, therefore I don't think that race needs to be addressed in the beginning. In the end all you want to do is play the game and have fun.

"Where Do You Want to Go Today?"

Lisa Nakamura is basically stating in her "Where do you want to go today" that the internet will break down the wall between racial and ethnic backgrounds. Cybertechnology will allow people to just be themselves (our minds) rather than having race, gender, age, etc, play a part in it all. She supports this claim by using her example from the MCI commercial "Anthem". This is what Nakamura considers a utopian society without having "the rest of it" (racial differences) influence our interaction as humans. But is it really possible to have a utopian world through the use of commercials and advertisements?

The commercials that Nakamura describes are trying to sell us the idea that we can achieve a utopian society by showing us these other worlds that seem exotic and untoucable. They are linking their ads with travel and tourism and reinforce this idea visually by showing us sights, in the ads, that are associated with tourism. But in these other worlds in order to communicate to the viewers that we are indeed all the same they are forced to use people of physical differences in order to get there point across. So doesn't this seem like a double standard? And what are the commercials really trying to do? This "other world" that is continually displayed in these ads is not real. The visuals are idyllic and depict the perfect setting but where is the line drawn from something that is virtual to something that is reality? Are these pictures really reality?

When I viewed some of the commericals from this year's Olympics there was only one that I thought supported this claim that your background does not matter, we are all the same. In fact that was the title of the commercial AT&T "We". The commerial showed continuous clips of groups of people made up of different ages, race, and gender and the dialogue with it said that we will shatter records, pull off miracles, and make history. So the bottom line is that "we" as a team, despite who you are or what you look like, will come together to achieve these things. I personally think that it was a very powerful commercial. But to tie this all togehter is is real or just a visual concept that a company came up with for the sole purpose of advertising their product. Is it really possible to achieve a utopian society through the use of the advertisements and technology?

To me digital diversity is all the different forms of technology and how they can relate to people of different race, religion, class, gender, etc. There are so many different forms of technology and more coming out every year, who uses the internet, tv, cell phones, etc and how does that relate to the culture aspect of it all. Is there one group of people more likely to watch tv compared to others who spend more time on the internet. Or is there a bunch of people who do not really use much technology at all and if so why. I think that we will begin to understand how these two things intersect with one another and if culture does play a role in it all.