The Spiraling Whirlpool of Constant Revision and Balance
"ending the tyranny of the hit"
Moby Dick: the Video Game
How reliable are rating systems for media? It depends on what you're looking for.
Online Identity: Happily Undefined
Blogging: I took the one less sailed by
A Christian Savage and Christian Savagery
My Intro
It's difficult to say if there's a common theme among all of them, but some topics that I have been interested in are online identity and the potential for anyone's creations to be circulating and consumed through the internet.
I've learned a lot about digital culture so far in this course. Some key topics that come to mind include digital culture's wide-spread influence, the creation of subcultures and networks, and online identity.
Digital culture is affecting so many fields and areas of
life: education, business, arts & culture, journalism, government,
medicine, etc. Kayla did a great post about oDesk and freelancing as a writer, editor, or designer. Her post illustrates how digital culture has changed business and how companies can now outsource online for cheaper labor like they already do in the physical world.
Because of digital culture, networks of people can connect
like never before. Several digital subcultures have developed. This goes along
with the Long Tail a little in that non-mainstream things are produced and
consumed at huge rates. Similarly, non-mainstream people can connect, create non-mainstream products, sell them, and consume other non-mainstream products more effectively.
New types of genres have developed because of the potential for digital
creation and because of mainstream culture and subcultures. Here are few examples: memes, apps, the rant, the manifesto, the tutorial, the
vine, fanfiction, and gif. How are some of these text-based genres different from written their print counterparts? Do they all even have counterparts or print comparisons?
Digital culture raises questions of tension in several
areas: identity, authority, openness, control, participation, isolation,
consumption, creation, the natural, the artificial, human, and technology. But these conflicts can be resolved, and depending on perspective some of these concepts mesh together rather than cause conflict. Derrick comments on the conflict between humans and nature in his post. He argues that humans and nature don't have to be in conflict.
As mentioned above, one conflict that comes with digital culture is identity: how people portray themselves, how their online identities match with their physical ones, whether they are a part of a subculture in the real-world vs. online subcultures, and if those groups are the same.
I am particularly interested in pursuing research on online identities and subcultures through a linguistic perspective. There are plenty of subcultures in the physical world: geek, burn-out, jock, hipster, goth, gamer, etc.; just think high school. There are also a variety of subcultures online. One thing that defines a subculture or culture is its language. Any group of people develops their own in-group language that distinguishes them from others. There has already been some linguistic research done on this topic, like Chris Taylor at Rice University has done. I'm interested in doing my own research on this subject. Does the mode of communication (internet) change how groups develop their own linguistic traits? Are there different dialects for members of subcultures that only interact online vs. members that also interact in person? What will be the most prominent features of online subculture language: vocabulary, syntax, register, orthography, etc.?
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