Eneas' E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

Introduction:

This has been a fascinating journey through three blocks of the course. For my lifestream: http://digitalculture-ed.net/eneasm/eneas-lifestream/ I have mainly used Delicious, Youtube and Twitter. I also occasionally used Deviant Art early in the course and also Flickr and Tumblr at various stages. I also experimented with creating some original videos of my experiences in Second Life and pushed these through my lifestream.

block 1: popular cybercultures

This block allowed me to explore the whole concept of cyberculture. The readings were the main focus in the early stages of the lifestream. Understanding the ideas behind a different type of literacy was useful in the creation of my visual artefacts. My first artefact was an attempt show how the progress in the physical spaces of the classroom has been in many ways non existent. I was thinking of a Stephen Heppel lecture in which he said that the 20th century education system was spent trying to perfect 19^th century practices. In my Youtube video I tried to conclude that the exciting emergence of technology, as of yet, has had no real impact as there seems to be a fear or reluctance built out of mistrust to just ‘unleash it’. My second artefact, a picture, was an attempt to represent a post civilisation idea that we do not recognize that which will liberate us. Both artefacts were an attempt to foreground the same idea, but obviously in different ways. My lifestream in this block was mainly an attempt to bring together different ideas and resources based around cyberculture.

block 2: virtual communities:

It was in this second block that I began to be more selective about my lifestream as I tried to gather information based on the rise of virtual communities. The reading I found most influential in this block was Christine Hine’s ‘The Virtual Objects of Ethnography’ (2000). The majority of my lifestream for this block was built around this influential text. It was from this text that I was able to plan my mini Ethnography. I based my mini ethnography on the virtual community of Dublin in Second Life. Another text I found influential for this was Tom Boellstorff’s ethnography, ‘Coming of Age in Second Life’ 2009.

block 3: critical perspectives:

This was the block which bought all the strands of thought together. Through the readings Of Haraway, Hayles and Bayne I began to realize that in fact my digital identity was scattered across the internet and in many different expressions. This made me see the lifestream as a digital hub, a place where all my searching could be bought together. I was fascinated by Haraways’s Cyborg manifesto which cleverly negates many binaries of humanism including the formation of identity in terms of gender.

Conclusion:

This course been a journey of discovery and through the lifestream I have been able to create a digital imprint of my thought processes as the journey progressed. For my digital essay I am building an ‘imaginarium’ in Second Life, a museum of digital artefacts and scattered expressions of how I have perceived the course. The main focus of this digital essay will be an exploration of the notion of ‘cyborg’ as defined by Haraway and  Hayles’ ideas of Posthumanism.

References:

Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education. [revised version uploaded 10 November 09]

Boellstorff, Tom (2008) Coming of Age in Second Life, Princeton University Press

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Hine, C (2000) The virtual objects of ethnography, chapter 3 of Virtual ethnography. London: Sage. pp41-66

I have been feeding my lifestream with posthumanist, cyborg and Second Life references this week as I begi to think about my digital presentation…The readings in this block have been difficult but ultimately worthwhile.

I have been getting ready for my assignment this week. I am still drawing together fragments of post humanism and the notion of the cyborg in my lifestream. For my digital essay I am going to create a build in Second Life. This will mainly be informed by the notions of Haraway’s cyborg and Hayles post humanism.

It has been an intense but very creative couple of weeks. The readings have been really thought provoking. I have begun to be more selective in what I choose to feed through my lifestream. I am still looking at posthumanism. Enjoyed reading Katherine Hayles, On becoming Posthuman and finding references to support the reading. There is a lot of information on the web on post and trans humanism and it was a bit of a task trying to find course relevant information. I was intrigued by Hayle’s notion of disembodiment of knowledge and ‘distributed cognition’. I see now that this lifestream may be a ’reembodiment’ of these scattered fragments

It has been a very exciting couple of weeks. The ethnographies that colleagues produced were both wonderful and varied. It has been fascinating to track the inception of these works through lifestreams, blog postings and tweets. This is really an exciting new way to work. This week I started to feed through both resources on cyborgs and post humanism, two very interesting theories. Like most other people I found the Haraway reading difficult to analyse. However, I feel that what she as trying to do was foreground the cultural and sexual connotations which surround discussion around most issues to do with both men and women by creating a non gendered ‘cyborg’, almost a new life form which cannot really be classified in terms of gender. I think that this addresses the binaries which surround gender. I also started gathering references to Psthumanism. One quote from Max More, (1994) defined Posthumanism for me in succinct terms:

“. Humanity is a temporary stage along the evolutionary pathway. We are not the zenith of nature’s development. It is time for us to consciously take charge of ourselves and to accelerate our transhuman progress.”  http://www.maxmore.com/becoming.htm

This week has been a post ethnography project week zfter the intensity of producing the micro ethnographic study.This block has been very enjoyable and thought provoking. I spent this week still finding ethnographic resources to feed into my lifestream. I finally built my micro-ethnography around the virtual Dublin community in Second Life. I have really enjoyed reading other students’ ethnographies and like me, I feel that their finished work is in parts a reflection of the resources they have gathered in their lifestreams. I am interested in the idea of carrying out ethnographic studies in virtual worlds as it is such a new field of study, well, a virtual field.

I have really enjoyed this week, hunting down resources for my micro-ethnography and feeding through my lifestream. I have found a few articles and reviews based around the work of Christine Hine and these have been a big help to me. I have been finding information for my lifestream which defines what ethnography is and its key concepts and terms and how  a micro ethnography differs. I also fed information into my lifestream on virtual ethography and how this is gaining status as a new form of ethnograpic study. I have mainly used Delicious and I have decided to do my micro-ethnography on the Dublin community within Second Life. Second Life is becoming a popular place for ethnographic studies; Tom Boellstorff’s ethnography, Coming of Age in Second Life is a comprehensive study of this environment in which he immersed himself as a resident called, Tom Bukowski for three years. I downloaded chapter one, free, from his website and found this very useful http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8647.html. As an active resident of Second Life for about a year now I am beginning to become intrigued by the questions about identity that it raises and indeed the whole idea of what ‘virtual’ really means. In my ethnography I have experimented with creating video with voiceover for part of my ethnography. This week in my llifestream I shall be focusing on Second Life and ethnography and ways to present ethnography from within an online environment such as this.