Crazy Enough mentioned in class how new media technology helps with class registration.

As a social sciences person, a non-lab science class to fulfill my area requirement is a godsend. I was extremely disappointed in finding that this geology class was filling up extremely quickly...and I know I wasn't the only one. However, thanks to email and my.pomona.edu, everyone quickly found out that a new section of this class has opened up! Making life much easier. Yes.

I'm assuming we all agree that new media has potential to be an extremely large field of study in academia. At this point in our lives, of course, with our class as evidence, computer and internet theory is already being studied from both a humanities and social science perspective.

I just so happened to be looking through the Media Studies section of the Pomona course catalog and was overwhelmed with courses on film, with topics ranging from "Anthropology and Film" to "Modern Cuban Literature and Film," among many other courses that study film through various perspectives. As Professor Fitzpatrick has mentioned in class, there are events that bring together people from all aspects of academia to discuss new media.

So after our class on Monday, I started thinking about all the ways that my online "persona" and my offline one connected. I have a few stories. For me, Myspace is where you meet new people on the internet (i.e. the creepos and the guys that always try to hook up), whereas Facebook is where you friend people you have met in person. When someone I don't know friends me on facebook, I get suspicious and immediately reject them because that is something I would expect on Myspace (and also because I do have quite a bit of private info on my Facebook).

I also realized that when I tell people about things that happen on Facebook, I usually use Facebook as a verb. (As do a number of my friends). Instead of saying "he sent me a friend request" I say "he facebook'ed me" or "he friended me". Does anyone else do that. And God forbid someone sends you a message on facebook asking you to lunch or something. Because everyone knows that the Wall is informal, friendly, but the message is "I WANT TO DATE YOU".

Today's class discussion has been one of my favorites thus far. I really enjoyed spending time discussing topics and issues that I can fully relate to in my everyday style of life -- therefore I want to further discuss some of the things I began thinking about right here on our class blog--

As we discussed the significance of worldwide forms of communication, such as the existence of Facebook, Instant Messenger, and Cellular Text Messaging, I started to think about the affects these technologies have had on myself, and my relating to others. When touching upon the reading, the very significant point that "virtual technology can be so distancing from the real world that we don't make connections in the same way anymore." I thought about the relationship I had with a former boyfriend of mine, and one of the most disturbing, as well as fascinating realizations I had after we broke up: our relationship was based on technology, and the societal development of new media was responsible for the reduction of romance and dating.

We were discussing in class today how in the past users or certain sites/programs were banned due to limitations on bandwith and how that focus has now shifted to copyright infringement and illegal downloading.

This article made me think of how maybe in the future, energy consumption may be the center of that argument - limitations may be made based off of CO2 emissions caused by users?

Today I have spent lot of time reflecting on our class discussion from last Monday, regarding personal threats that may appear on blog sites. Unfortunately, as we acknowledged, verbal and physical attacks are common issues that present themselves in our society on a daily basis. I immediately thought about the article we read, titled: "Death threats against bloggers are NOT 'protected speech'" as I came across a related issue last night. I was at the Mickey Avalon concert, which took place by the CMC senior apartments. A close friend of mine was pushing through the crowd (just like everybody else was doing), in hopes of getting to the front and having the honor of shaking Mickey Avalon's hand. A drunk, and seemingly irritated boy started yelling at her for cutting in front of him, and purposely poured his entire cup of beer all over her head. Understandably startled, and attempting to defend herself, my friend asked him what his problem was, and yelled at him for spilling his drink all over her, simply because she was pushing through the crowd like everybody else. Next, my friend decided to walk off and get away for a bit, as she decided to sit down on the curb and take a breather. The boy followed her and suddenly kicked her really hard in the back, yelling a bunch of terrible things at her.

As discussed in class and in Cameron Bailey's text, if one does not mention his or her gender or race, it is assumed that whoever it is, this person is male and white.

Is this broad statement outdated? Do alterations of these assumptions apply to certain sites that are aimed at different demographics? Can it be assumed that Brad Pitt discussion forum participants are different from bloggers on Barack Obama's website?

Is it ever safe to make assumptions as to who the general participants are? In Lisa Nakamura's article, she discusses that the new media furthers racial and cultural steretypes.

I realized something during our class discussion today about the effects of misogyny on the web. Specifically, it was when Prof. Fitzpatrick used the article from Salon.com to illustrate her point about how offensive flamings can affect female writers. I'd read that article before class, because I wanted to see how it would address the same problems that you find in the comments on salon.com against female columnists there. That site features just as much anti-female vitriol as any other one, and I definitely agree that comments like this:

"Is there any reason why this is acceptable from liberal Salon, but not Ann Coulter?

I just watched the new South Park episode entitled "The Snuke", which is a parody of the show 24. In this episode Kyle (and later, government officials) track down a Russian terrorist from Kyle's bedroom by cross-referencing user profile information on websites such as eBay, YouTube, PayPal, MySpace, J-Date, eHarmony, Google maps, and Mapquest. I was amused. :) It reminded me of our discussion in class about the extent to which we release personal information on the web and the potential it has to cause trouble...!

In class today, we talked a little about how cyberspace is gendered, usually female. I remember that people had some reaction to this. It made me think about other forms of technology, such as GPS where the voice is female and if there is anything significant about that.

I've been trying to do a little reading on cyber feminist theory, and I think the idea is that women's liberation and technology took off and found 'identity' at approximately the same time, and thus share a parallel path. Man has in the past, been the dominant, whilst female and machine are the submissive.

I don't have