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?