Week 3 - Who Am We.

Turkle

This reading covers many interesting points and Turkle's ideas can easily been seen in every day.

The first main point about the several selves and the way you can be several different things all at the same time, you can create any identity, have any carrier. It goes on to talk about the idea of people in today's society are more interest and more impressed when they see a simulation on an online world, than anything they see right in front of there eyes in the 'real' world. How has society come to this, why are we more interest in whats happening online than in the actual world we're living in, is it because we have more control online, we can essentially do what we like. We don't have to live in just this one world, online we can be in as many worlds as we wish all at once, Turkle talks about windows and how this can be done, and how 'real' life is becoming just another 'window'.

The article describes how computer have changed over time and how when they were first released they were nothing more than a giant calculator and now they are all about simulation and creating something new and being able to interact and create your own life and style.

When talking about the game Sims and how the boy in the article tells of how it takes up much of his conversation with his friends, to me this does not seem health and is scary how much computers and games really are taking over peoples life's. It goes on to talk about children in general and how they seem to be fading the lines between computer and human distinction, the idea of a computer being conscious and the intelligence people give it again seems strange to me.

The article then goes on to talk about MUDs, and how users of these types of online environments are not just users, but creators of media content and that with out these users, the worlds would not develop in the way they have.

To me it feels the people who part take in these MUDs or any kind of online world can easily let them take over from their 'real' world. This is not a good thing in my opinion, people need to be in the real world and take notice of whats going on, not just sit in front of the computer screens and pretend to be something there not and act out their dreams in a different form.