I am a true believer in the secrecy of memories; I am a strong supporter for the expiration date of digital memories

It used to be that memories only existed in the minds and hearts of those who dared to remember. Memories were kept private, within the person, within the family and with time, they eventually faded away by newer memories.

If I wanted to remember something, I would write it down, or take a picture of it, a true paper and ink picture and not a digital file. But with new technologies, many things have changed including memories. Viktor Mayer argued in his book that “because of the digital technology, society's ability to forget has become suspended, replaced by perfect memory” and just like anything, perfect memory has its pros and cons (Mayer 4).

Mayer mentioned that some individuals and organizations make better uses for this “perfect memory”, he mentions that medical offices, the law enforcement and even if some of us could disagree, financial institutions make use and benefit of the ability of keeping archives for non-expiring, undefined periods of time (Mayer 10-11). But you don’t necessarily have to be in an important job in order to benefit from this perfect memory.

• As a student, I enjoy the benefit of keeping my school files longer than I can hang on to whatever is it that I learned.
• As a family member, I enjoy the benefits of hanging on to pictures and videos or family time that happened some time ago.
• As an adult, I guess I enjoy laughing at the silly things I see myself doing in baby pictures, remembering (or believing to remember) memories of the things I did when I was not old enough to remember.

 But the cons of this perfect memory are that we are living in a panopticon under constant surveillance by technologies that will record of every move, every second (Mayer 11). This means, that both, good things and bad things about us are recorded and at times, made public, for not only this generation, but also future generations to come.

In his book, Meyer introduced the idea of an expiration date for digital information. The way this would work could be by requesting and requiring an expiration date before anything is saved, submitted or posted. After the expiration date, the files would forever be deleted (Meyer 171-181).

Now from my perspective, his whole idea of expiration dates seems feasible: a date would be required, the cleaning would take place on a certain schedule,a utility program that can help us manage the expiration dates of our files, but, of course, it could confirm (if desired) before the files are deleted (Meyer 171-181). The only complain I have about it, is that I would also like the option of a 00/00/00 expiration date, meaning that I would like personal pictures and videos of my family to forever be kept on my computer unless I get in a fight with my sister and as a way to deal with my anger and frustration, I decide to delete the file. Well, now that I think about it, I guess that maybe having the option of retrieving deleted files, could also be a good idea.  

As with everybody, there have been times when I have wished that some information about me could be deleted or expired. The most recent example that I can remember happened some months ago when my husband logged in into my MySpace account and read previous picture comments of old friends from high school. The comments were not obscene or anything, but my husband did not like the fact that some of my friends were commenting on my physical appearance.

Reference:

Viktor, Mayer-Schonberger. Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Princeton University Press, 2009. Print.

Biculturalism and Birealism

PART I: VILLANUEVA AND THE NEW SENSE OF SELF

In his book, Villanueva wrote about what it is like to be a Puerto Rican, a Latino, A Hispanic and a Chicano all at the same time. He uses many common terms among Latinos and Hispanics, but, from my point of view, I was personally not exposed to any new terms while reading part of his book. However, one of the things that I saw was that often than not, he had to clarify on many terms because some of them have one or more meanings and he needed to ensure that he was getting his point across using the correct term, with its correct meaning.

One of the words that stood out to me while reading part of his book was the term biculturalism. Villanueva describes biculturalism as “the tensions within, which are caused by being unable to deny the old or the new” (Villanueva 39). According to him, the “idea” of a bicultural society or human being in which both cultures are easily blended is nothing but an “ideal” because there will always be a battle between both cultures, there will always be a battle for not knowing who or what you are (Villanueva 39).

 I have to say that his definition of the term makes sense, but I do not believe that what he sees in biculturalism is the same as what I see. I personally believe that your ability to be a part of both cultures is not something that is inborn and it needs to be mastered, and when mastered there just shouldn’t be any problems with not knowing who or what you are. Anyways I just wanted to give my perspective on the term, now to the real stuff.

How could I use this term for my future assignments? Well, perhaps I will not be able to use the exact term, but I would say, that from Villanueva’s definition of biculturalism we can conclude that the term biculturalism resembles the idea of a hybrid. If I remember correctly, from the definition agreed in class, a hybrid reality is possible whenever one is not able to clearly define between real life and virtual life, pretty much between the old and the new just as Villanueva pictures biculturalism. Perhaps the ability to be bicultural and to live in a birealistic world is not an inborn ability. But I surely hope that eventually there will be a time in this “hybrid world” in which people will be able to master the art of biculturalism and “birealism” and will know exactly who they are, what they are and of course, where they are as well.

PART II: TEST QUESTIONS

Multiple Choice Question

According to Nakamura in Menu Driven Identities, what does it mean if a race has no box and if it can’t be clicked on? For example, if you try to say that you are Mexican American but this is not one of the options.

a.       It means that Mexican Americans do exists, but are simply less important than the other races that have a box

b.      It means that the company behind the menu does not acknowledges that Mexican Americans are important too

c.       It means that if it has no box, then functionally, it can't exist (CORRECT ANSWER).

d.      It means that the web developers behind the menu forgot to include Mexican Americans because they are not Mexican American themselves

True or False Question

In Menu Driven Identities, Nakamura compares the narrowing down of identity options to a decision tree (TRUE).

References:

Villanueva, Victor. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. 34-50. Print.

Menu-Driven Ethnicity and Race

According to Nakamura, new web technologies have taken the idea of races to a whole new level in cyberspace; however digital spaces limit “the user's racial identity within the paradigm of a ‘clickable box’-one among the many on the menu of identity choices" (Nakamura 102). This implies the idea that racial representations in cyberspace are extremely stereotypical and limited. She brings on this idea of race as a menu with “limited” options from where to choose from and to which you cannot modify.

Personally, I think that the website, Race: The Power of Illusion does a really good job at explaining what race is believed to be and what race is not about. I do not think that I see Nakamura’s menu-driven identity here as much. Among the many statements made by this interactive website are the following:

• “Race has no genetic basis”
• “Human subspecies don’t exist”
• “Skin Color is only skin deep”
• “Most variation is within, not between races”

Therefore, this site does not mean to tell us what race is all about and how we should classify ourselves based on predetermined “races”. In fact, this website tell us that there is no scientific proof of race, that race has no biological identifiable traits, that humans are all humans and that we are not divided into subspecies and lastly, that the color of our skin, is just a color.

If, this website supports or demonstrates the idea of a menu-driving ethnic identity, it would be under the activity where you can sort people into different categories. 

Under this activity, this website classifies U.S. population into 5 categories: American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latino and white. This is menu-driven because

• it is giving us the categories so that we can sort people in
• it does not give us the option of creating more categories according to our own jurisdiction
• it does not give us the option of  modifying the categories
• it does not have an “other” or “mixed races” category (no mestizos are allowed)
• it is assuming that everyone should fit into one of this categories

Other than this menu-driven activity, the rest of the website intends to declare that even tough racism is real; race is often a misconception of stereotypes when looking at it from a third-person point of view.

“We are all more than just physical traits and our race is better kwnon to us than to others” Jesica Garcia de Laya

Citations

"RACE: the power of an illusion." PBS. California Newsreel, 2003. Web. 28 Oct 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm>.

Nakamura, Lisa. Cybertypes: Race, Ethinicity and Identity on the Internet . Routledge: New York, 2002. 102. Print.

Cybertyping and Identity Tourism

Cybertyping

New technologies often allow people to free themselves from their real live, but since the separation of virtual life from real life (non-virtual) is hard to establish, many of the bad things that real life has are often taken into the virtual world. Some people will believe that the virtual world offers them the opportunity to create and enhance their identities online, while others will believe that the virtual world helps them destroy and recreate their identities, but the reality is that whatever there is in real life, might also be present in virtual life and this is true for racial stereotypes.

In her book, Lisa Nakamura describes cybertypes “as the distinctive ways that the internet propagates, disseminates and commodifies images of race and racism" and cybertyping as act of representing ourselves and our race through the use of new technologies (Cybertypes, 3).  From this definition, we can conclude that cybertypes are racial stereotypes within virtual communities and cybertyping is our self representation of race in our virtual life. 

The purpose of a virtual life is to improve real life, right? But how do we use new technologies to improve the lives of minorities when we have the online version of discrimination or redlining going on?

There is an erroneous belief that access to new technologies alleviates the digital divide, but this is often not true to minorities. Sometimes even if minorities and women have access to technologies they could still face some setbacks (Cybertypes, 10). The problem here is not that minorities do not have access (well part of it is, but not all), the real problem here is that new technologies are often dominated by the white middleclass men, meaning that the purpose of new technologies is often geared towards their benefit. Now why for their benefit? Well… there is no one willing to state that new technologies were made for the middleclass white males, but if we look around, we will see that many new technologies force you to choose between two genders only (what about transgender?) and do not offer the choice of choosing your cybertypes (racial identity) and social status assuming that everyone is the same, in case that everyone could be a white middleclass male. If it does let you choose your cybertypes; it is very possible that the racial identity, to which you are supposed to identify to, is often represented in terms of negative stereotypes. Just look around the web for programs that allow you to choose your own cybertypes and you will see that the representation of your race, if it is not white, will more often than not, give a really bad representation of you. Do all Hispanics have to have a dark hair… can’t they also have red hair? Do all Asians have to know martial arts and be skinny and with dark straight hair? Can’t an African American have light skin and if so, will he still be an African American? And further more… what about those with mixed races?! Do they have to choose between the “best” of the two… or three… or more that they carry?

Identity Tourism

One of the main purposes behind new technologies is to allow the user to “free” themselves from their real life and to allow them to explore a different life. This not only means that the user is disembodied from the real world and that he/she can travel within the cyberspace, this also implies that the user can experiment with new identities in many different ways. Through the use of new technologies in cyberspace, the user can change their gender, age, social class, education, jobs, race, and whatever else that he/she might chose to do so. The exploring of such options is called identity tourism.  Social networks, games and any other technology that allow us to interfere with others require that we choose an identity or character. However, it is important to mention that the real identity behind the avatar, the user profile, or the character is not known and since we only know what the individual choose to tell us or show us about them, the character might not resemble the physical properties of the real individual behind the character (Race in/for Cyberspace).

Analyzing Street Fighter II World Champion Edition in Terms of Identity Tourism

Street Fighter II offers players the opportunity to choose among the following options to provide identity tourism

Gender: Street Fighter II offers players the choice of selecting among twelve characters. However 11 out of those 12 characters are males and only 1 of the 12 is a female. Therefore, this game provides male players with a very slight possibility of touring among genders (if they want to try out the opposite gender they can only choose the one female character that is available), but for female players, it allows them to tourism gender with 11 options of male characters.

Race:  Street Fighter II definitely provides players with the opportunity to tourism among different races.

• Ryu: Japanese (NTE)
• Ken: ¾ Japanese, ¼ Caucasian (NTE)
• Edmond Honda: Japanese (Street Fighter II)
• Blanka: Brazilian (NTE)
• Guile: Caucasian (Street Fighter II)
• Chun-Li: Chinese (Street Fighter II)
• Dhalsim: Indian (NTE)
• Zangief: Russian (NTE)
• Balrog: Caucasian (Street Fighter II)
• Vega: Spanish (Street Fighter II)
• Sagat: Thai (Street Fighter II)
• M Bison: Russian (Street Fighter II)   

Physical Appearance: Once you choose they character that you want to choose, this game will not allow you to change any of the physical attributes of the character.

Specie:  It is possible to say that Street Fighter II allows the players a slight opportunity to choose among “species” because this game has what might be considered a mutant human being among the twelve characters available. Blanca, is considered to be human because he was born human, however his time in isolation from civilization and with other species have allow him the ability to control and generate electricity from his body, which is not necessarily a human trait (NTE).

Works Consulted:

Nakamura, Lisa. “Cybertypes: Race, Ethinicity on the Internet and Identity.” New York: Routledge, 2002. 1-31. Web. 20 October, 2010 http://paulmuhlhauser.org/475/Readings/Cybertypes1.pdf

Nakamura, Lisa. "Race in/for Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.” The Cybercultures Reader. David Bell and Barbara M Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print

NTE. “Street Fighter Characters”. Love to Know Video Games. Web. 21, October 2010 http://videogames.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Street_Fighter_Characters

 “Street Fighter II”. Wikipedia. Web. 21, October 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II

Games and Gender

OK first of all, let me say that I do agree with all of this week’s readings that state that most of the games are created by men and for men. I say this because I am definitely not a game lover, the only games that I ever played were Mario Bros 1 and another one (I do not even remember the name) and it was because I would play them with my dad, but I never really played them by myself and it is not that I liked dolls either (I never liked dolls), it was simply that I preferred to play “real games” with real people. To proof that games where not designed for females let me say that it took me 2 hours to finally get to actual game part where you finally see some action in Super Mario Bros 2 game, I just could figure out how to select a player and how to go in trough the mini door and once I was in the game, no matter how many times I tried, my characters would always end up dying before the first cascade.

Now to the gender stuff…

I think that Super Mario Bros 2 definitely follows gender stereotypes due to the following…

Mario is short and fat. He wears a typical red shirt and blue overalls depicting that he is a “hard working” and “always busy” man and he has a big mustache (typical of a macho man). Males are often stereotyped as aggressive and I think that Mario has some aggressiveness or rudeness in this attitude. I believe this, because I choose Mario as a character, Mario puts his hand up and his tongue out, as if he was saying “yeah it’s me losers” or something along those lines. When he is walking, Mario has his hands to the side as if he was simply too cool to move his hands as he walks, and when he dies, he can really show that he is not to good at expressing feelings because his cheeks blow up but he never screams (men usually hold feelings in and that’s why he has his cheeks blow up).

Luigi follows male stereotypes just as Mario does. He is a little bit taller than Mario, but he still has that really big nose and wears the same blue overalls that Mario wears, he has the macho mustache as well and wears a different color shirt than Mario (its green). When walking, he also has his hands to the side (too cool) and when he is picked on he acts rude like Mario and pulls out his tongue as well. Like Mario, Luigi also never screams and if he dies his cheeks also blow up holding back feelings. When Luigi jumps, he jumps higher than Mario and makes weird fast movements that allow him to suspend himself in the air longer and further when the walks and jumps.

I think that Princess just couldn’t be any more feminine in this video game. First of all, why do the rest of the characters have names and she is just called Princess?? It appears that on the original game (I believe its Japanese) she was originally named Peach for her sweetness (yeap female attribute) but when the game was translated, she was simply named Princess. Princess loves pink and obiously wears a pink dress with a crown (aww all females want to be princesses) and I wouldn’t be wrong if his girl was wearing some pink high heels as well (they are not visible, but a dress and high heels go hand in hand). Princess is tall and thin with long  hair, makeup and a tiny waist that gives her the illusion of having big breasts (typical of female models). Princess is really girly. She screams when she it’s chosen as the player as if saying “OMG I can’t believe you picked me,” she gets all excited like a cheerleader when she jumps pulling her hands up, legs to the sides and screaming (yeap, girls love to scream). When the walks and jumps, she jumps as much as Luigi does, now I am not sure why, but do girls usually love jumping or something? When she is walking he has her hands right next to the dress and it makes her see as if she has holding the dress not to get dirty and if she dies, her cheeks turn red and she screams as if wanting someone to save her.

Toad has a weird personality. I think he is supposed to be a man with a female personality aka a drag queen (we is wearing white pants and a  vest with his torso showing as if he wanted to show off his six pack or something). He is small and fat like Mario and jumps as low as Mario does, however I think he runs faster. His female personality comes in when he is picked on (because he screams), when he jumps (Hands up, legs to the side and a big scream) and if he dies, he shows his feelings just like Princess does.

Schleiner, Females and Games…

Schleiner believes that games are usually male centered and females only appear as trophies (Schleiner 222). This is true because if I remember correctly, in Super Mario Bros 1, Princess didn’t appear until the end, when she was rescued and married by Mario (she was the trophy to Mario’s quest I guess). Super Mario Bros 2, changed the roles a little bit and allowed Princess to be one of the players, allowing males to have “a safe zone to experiment with genders” and allowing females to see themselves as players hoping to get more women engaged in video games (Schleiner 223-224). Now, the character Toad plays a mix gender, which might be suggesting that males can be feminine as well. Close the conclusion of her article, Scheleiner states that having “bad girls” in video games could in fact be beneficial for girls and I see where she is going (Schleiner 224). I think that the purpose behind bad girls in video games is not to develop harsh and aggressive girls, but to develop girls with more confidence in herself and her actions. Games like Super Mario Bros 2 teach girls that you can wear a pink dress and run in high heels and still be adventurous in a game, however since I didn’t get to the end due to my bad video games skill, I am not sure what type of trophy Princess would get.

Works Cited

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games." Leonardo 34.3 (2001): 221-226. Web. 7 Oct 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/pss/1576939>.

Avatar: Genders and Web Pages

Part I: Avatar and Gender

Avatar was meant to represent genders just as they are, but in the end, I think that so much emphasis was made into making such representations truthful that we ended up with more negative than positive representations of gender. 

The males in this film are often negatively represented as…

• self-centered (such as the corporate representative who thinks he can do anything he wants to because he is the representative and all he cares about is the mineral and the profits he could possibly make from selling the mineral)
• aggressive (such as Coronel Quaritch who thinks that anything can be solved with force and weapons and acts and speaks all tough)
• hyperactive (like Jake who disobeys rules and guidelines and does things his own way whenever he wants to)

While the females of the film are negatively represented as…

• Indecisive (the lead scientist Dr. Grace, who is not sure of whether she wants to be a scientist or a navi) 
• Lazy and complainers (like Neitiry in the scene where her mother tells her that she is the one who will teach Jake the navi “ways” and who complains about having to do so)
• Double-sided, hard to trust in, gold-digger (such as Dr. Grace who hates Jake for being a handicapped ex-marine and not a scientist, but as soon as she sees that Jake was chosen by the navi, she immediately starts to be nice to him because there is now something in for her)

But of course there were also some nice things about both genders...

Males were positively represented as…

• Followers (such as Jake when he is taught the navi ways by the female navi Neitiry)
• High self-esteem or the I can do anything attitude (Jake throughout the movie challenges ideas because he strongly believes in his potential to achieve)
• Leaders (such as Eytukan, the [navi] clan leader who always has the last words in a clan’s discussion)

Females on the other hand where positively represented as…

• Caring and protective (Neitiry was always watching out for Jake)
• spiritual (such as Mo’at the spiritual leader of the navi clan)
• Strong-willed (Neitiry was not submissive of the male navis)
• Forgivers (I am not really sure if this is a good or a bad representation, but in the end of the film, Neitiry forgives Jake from lying to the whole clan about his purpose and yet after such a big lie, she still takes him back)

Part II: Avatars as Personal Web Pages

When I first saw the film, Avatar,  several months ago, all I was thinking was  that this was such a good movie with an amazing use of technology to create a new world in which life not only dealt with societal problems, but also with the equilibrium of nature. Very often, people like me are stunned by the technology used in a film or by the actors and the storyline and we don’t usually dare to read in between the lines or to see in between the scenes. However after reading the article, Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages, I clearly see that the typical avatar as represented in the film, functions just like a web page. Just as a webpage, an avatar allows you to recreate an identity, to self reflect, to free yourself from the “real world” and to connect with others.

Just like a web page, the avatar allows you to represent who you are or who you want to be. In the film Avatar, Jake has the opportunity of a new life in Pandora, whoever the avatar allows him to choose what personality he wants to show in this new world. Jake has the choice of being a cutter or a non-cutter; of being polite or disrespectful therefore Jake has the ability of choosing some of his personal traits (a second example would be Dr. Grace who has a much more feminine personality as an avatar than she does as a huma). Also, it is important to note that there are a couple of things over which he has no control, for example the avatars are made by mixing the DNA of humans with the DNA of the natives, so technically, Jake Sully does not have much choice of weather he wants to have black hair or blond hair, weather he wants to be tall or short, slim or fat, all of those “biological” choices are predetermined through the combination of the DNAs. However, the whole idea behind combining the DNAs is to look like a navi person and yet at the same time to retain a little bit of your physical identity, so in the end, an avatar looks like the navi people and at the same time looks like you. Just like a website in which a profile can reflect who you are and yet at the same time, the construction of the profile also depends on the options that the homepage provider makes available to you (Cheung 281-283).

 Another use of both, websites and avatars, is to recreate your personality and to free yourself from the world. In the film, Jake goes from being a disabled paraplegic to having full function of his body as an avatar and Jake’s disability becomes “invisible” in the Pandora world. The avatar here functions just like a website that can make “disabilities invisible so that people can’t respond” therefore emancipating the user from stigmas related to disabilities (Cheung 276). Perhaps, if the avatar were still physically disabled, the navi people wouldn’t have accepted him as part of their people. An avatar also helps you recreate your personality because it allows you to self-reflect. We know this because at the end of each Pandora journey, Jake has to do a video blog of everything he sees, does and feels. However, Jake takes his self-narrative to a whole level and instead of just thinking about his blog and what he sees and feels, he also starts reflecting on his life as a human and his life as an avatar. In the end, Jake chooses to stay in this avatar body in this Pandora world because he is much more emancipated as an avatar than he is as a human. Just like a web page that might allow a person to establish personal relationships with other users and to link, an avatar also allows the “soul” to relate to other people or organic beings, just like the avatar body allowed Dr. Grace to join the navi or allowed Jake to control and lead new species of animals. In fact both the avatar and the web pages allow you to link and relate in such ways that someone could even find true love, which ended up as the main reason why Jake decided to stay in the Pandora world ([Cheug 276]).

Works Consulted

Cheung, Charles. "Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages: Emancipatory Potentials and Reality Constraints.” The Cybercultures Reader. David Bell and Barbara M Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.

Cyborg She

I had found this movie about a week ago in a very popular movie site for Spanish speakers, the title; My Girlfriend is a Cyborg (also known as Cyborg She). I will not review the whole movie, although, I have to admit that it is hilarious and captivating with a touch of romance and hope. What I will do is make a comparison of the movie using the criteria for human/computer relationship set up by Deborah Lupton.

Before I start my comparison of Cyborg She, I need to talk a little bit about the criteria from which I will be comparing the movie. Deborah Lupton wrote a wonderful article about the human/computer relationship where she claims that computer users have become “disembodied” and that the computers themselves have become “humanized” (Lupton 422-432). Deborah also claims that while many people might be afraid of computers due to their complicated manuals and the security problems created by hackers and computer viruses, there are also those that have created very strong emotional relationships with their computers and now see their computer as part of themselves (Lupton 422-432).

The Cyborg She is a perfect example of what Lupton is taking about in her article. Cyborg She, is the story of a Japanese teenager named Jiro, who establishes a very strong relationship with a female cyborg that has no name (Lance). The cyborg from this movie fits the description for a cyborg that Lupton uses in her article. Cyborg she is “represented as the closest to this ideal that humans may attain, that is a ‘humanoid hybrid’ that melts together computer technology and human flesh” (Lupton 425), you see, this cyborg is “as perfect” as the “dream girl” that Jiro had in mind and is basically a computer (or should I say intelligent device) with organic flesh and titanium bones (Lance).  This female cyborg has a body that is “far stronger than the human body and far less susceptible to injury and pain” just as Lupton had portrayed the cyborg in her article (Lupton 425). The bottle line behind this female cyborg is that she is sent from the future to save and protect Jiro from all kinds of injuries and although she is not capable of repairing herself when she breaks apart in one of the scenes in the movie (as Lupton would have imagined) she is quite strong.

Contrary to what Lupton would have expected from this female cyborg, this female cyborg acts as human, eats as human, drinks as human, I am not sure if she also defecates as human, but I am sure that she also becomes tire as humans do, because every night, she shouts down in “sleeping mode”. She might resemble a human body and might act pretty human at times; however, she does not have a soul and does not have feelings. Jiro, spending so much time with “her” slowly becomes impressed with this “girl” and starts feeling a strong attraction to her, not only physically, but also emotionally. In her article, Lupton had mentioned that sometimes the human/computer relationship can become “romantic, sexual or marital,” however, in this movie this was not the case, not because Jiro didn’t wanted to, but because the cyborg didn’t allowed him to (Lupton 426).

Close the end of the film, Jiro becomes tired of waiting for the cyborg to have emotional feelings towards him and starts disliking the “super” human powers that his cyborg had, supporting Lupton’s idea that at times, technology is so impressive that it simply becomes scary.

Works Consulted

"Cyborg She (teaser 1) English Sub." YouTube. Web. 23 Sep 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKPCBoCORj8>.

Lance . "Cyborg She (My Girlfriend is a Cyborg) Review." Amped Asia. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Sep 2010. <http://www.ampedasia.com/movies/Cyborg-She/>.

Lupton, Deborah. "The Embodied Computer/User.” The Cybercultures Reader. David Bell and Barbara M Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.

Part II: Digital Diversity and Me

I have learned quite a bit in this course, but since I am planning on becoming a teacher, the most useful thing that I have learned is about the digital divide and the effects we, future teachers, have on closing or increasing the gap. The phrase that has had a great impact on me and how I view the digital divide comes from the source Mind the Gap. In his article, Carving stated that “internet access in schools isn’t worth a hill of beans if teachers aren’t prepared to take full advantage of technology” and I could agree with him more. It doesn’t really matter if a school has access to impressive technologies if the teachers are not prepared or simply prefer not to use this technology to teach children. This ideology that access to technology solves the digital divide is wrong, because access does not help when pedagogy gets in the way. It reminds me of a video I saw a couple of years ago, tittled A Vision of K-12 Students Today, in which it mentions that teachers who prevent K-12 students from using technologies in the classroom, are preventing them from exploring and learning from a world that gives them tons of possibilities for self-growth.  

Works consulted

"A Vision of K-12 Students Today." YouTube. Web. 23 Sep 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8>.

Carvin, Andy. "Mind the Gap: The Digital Divide as the Civil Rights Issue of the New Millennium." MultiMedia & Internet @ Schools. MultiMedia Schools, January/February 2000. Web. 23 Sep 2010. http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/Jan00/carvin.htm