Weirdly enough, while my friends and the rest of the world are all in love with their video games, I really never had similar fervor and enjoyment toward such games. Being a journalism student, I would rather spent my 4 to 6 hours a day of free time watching TV, You-Tubing, or reading and listening to the latest news—now a days I’m spending much more time on news because of the presidential primaries, and I am having a blast. LOL
So what am I doing in this class? Well, to be honest, I never had the intention to enroll, but because I needed three more credits to be a full-time grad student, I decided to give it try. I went to our first class meeting knowing for a fact that I will be dropping the course, but something changed mind. It could be the cool 3-dimensional class infrastructure, or the diverse array of students enrolled in the class, or even the impressive introduction of the course given by the instructors. But thinking about it more, one thing resonated in my head: I think it was when Arturo said that technology is “unfinished”.
I have my career plans all outlined. I know for a fact that after I get my Ph.D, I will be teaching online media and new media technology at Kuwait University. In the past decade, we have seen how the Internet and other technologies have changed the profession of journalism. The advent of the blog, You Tube and other Web technologies opened doors for grassroots journalism or open-source journalism, a phenomenon that allows every individual be part of the news cycle—we can now make, share, correct and disseminate news. But technology is still evolving—it is unfinished and will never be finished—and, with this evolution, we are going to see more changes not only in the field of journalism, but in all aspects of life.
Many people are skeptical of Second Life, me being one of them, but those people were also one of the first to criticize mobile phones and the Internet when they first hit the markets. Second Life is a fairly new phenomenon that hasn’t received wide attention, but I’m pretty sure it will be one the leading technologies in the near future. I really don’t know how or why it will do so, but I guess I will have an idea from the knowledge I gain in this course.
What I know, at least for now, is that this class will further enhance my practical online abilities, and I am pretty sure it will be one of the courses that I would look back to when I teach my Kuwait University students in the near future.
1 comment:
Thanks for your comments, Eisa. I'm looking forward to hearing more of your perspective in this class. In terms of reaching towards a philosophy of technology (which is what you and Arturo have alluded to) there still is no canon. This, in itself, should be a major source of concern. It seems to me that disciplinary coherence starts with the emergence of a consensus that whether or not you agree with what he or she said, so-and-so's article or book cannot be ignored. In other words, the canon is the starting point.
It forces attention on two crucial issues. (1) the naiveté and dangers of reifying technology. Too much of what philosophers of technology do is talk about technology as if it were a single thing. When you look at the details, and yes, the devil is in the details, it isn't "technology" the thing, that does terrible things, it is people. (2) Moral judgments about technology, to be effective, must be based on a solid understanding of the epistemology of the context in question. We leap to moral judgments at our peril.
For and against technology is not the issue. How to talk about the role of our technologies in our culture and in our lives is. Technologies are facts in our lives. We need to talk in an informed and sensible manner about how our technologies make us what we are and what we can be.
Let's try to apply this to Second Life and virtual worlds. People who try to reify virtual world technology usually focus on comparisons to other technologies, or attempt to set up "straw men" in order to forward arguments against the technology.
Second, we must not be afraid to make moral judgments about virtual world technologies, provided we have a proper understanding of the context.
What role do virtual world technologies have in our culture and in our lives? How does Second Life make us what we are and what we can be?
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