Square Pegs

1) In David Bell's article "Webs as pegs", he dicusses an idea called "peg communities". This idea was devceloped by Bauman who explained it as, "...coat pegs on which we choose to temporarily hang parts of our identities," (Bell, 254). I agree with this notion of online communities being coat pegs for the different aspects of our lives and personalities.

For example, in the meat space of the real world we become limited to identify ourselves through clothing, hair, personal belongings, profession, social activities, etc. These things are again limited to the area in which we live. Someone living in a sparsely populated community in the midwest may not have as many places to shop (to buy clothes), or places to work or hang out. You thus become forced to identify yourself within your immediate surrounding environment.

However, with virtual communities, you become able to explore different ideologies, technologies, social cliques, physical looks as well as things like movies, games, music, artists and books. I am no artist by any means however, I use photobucket to post and share photos and videos I have made (and photoshopped) and am able to share them among fellow amateur photo/videographers. While, in the Tri-Cities, I am not able to share these photos at say, an art gallery because I am not trained, do not have any professional equipment and am not a part of that community.

Obviously, that is just one example of how a person can express themselves or an aspect of themselves in a virtual community where they might not be able to in a meat space community.


2) The 3 sites I would like to choose for Assignment #2 are photobucket.com, deviantart.com and flickr.com. These are all sites which serve to build amateur and professional art communities and also serve those who simply want an easy way to manage their photos, videos, and art online. I have accounts with two of these sites and have friends who use these sites and I would like to compare the usability, uniqueness and set-up of each of these sites.

Burnett, Robert, and David Marshall. Web Theory: an introduction. 1st. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. 81-104.

BL0G #2

1) The "digital divide", as discussed by Warschauer, is essentially the differing levels of access and/or literacy (or lack thereof) of technology within different communinites and populations.
In one example, Warschauer writes about an nitiative set up by the Government of New Delhi in 2000 to provide an outdoor kiosk consisting of 5 computers in a city street. The computers had internet-access (although, this was shoddy and unreliable access), joysticks, mouses and Windows operating system for the children to experiment with. While the children were able to teach themselves bare-bones computer operations (copy, paste, draw in paint, drag icons, etc.), there seemed to be no REAL redeeming quality other than VERY basic operations and a fun passtime.



"No special educational programs had been made available, and no special content was provided in Hindi, the only language the children knew. Children did learn to manipulate the joystick and buttons, but almost all their time was spent drawing with paint programs or playing computer games" (Warschauer, 2).



The ability of the children to teach themselves basic computer operations is a sign of their ability to quickly adapt to technological devices - but without proper literacy training (typing education, word/excel training, academic program trainining, web education, etc.) they will hit an inevitable plateua with the understanding and operation of computers/technology. To get the full benefits of technology, we must educate communities on how to utilize technology to their full potential.



The digital divide is marked by the lack of literacy and access of technology by various communities. This divide is a result of; digital, physical, human, economical and social resources.



2) I am going to be truthful here, this question made no sense to me so I had to really mull it over, and even asked my older (and wiser) sibling for some insight. After much thought and consideration, I feel somewhat prepared to tackle this question as *I* (and my brother) interpreted it.

Common metaphors used in "MSoffice" type programs such as; cut, copy, paste, insert, align, change font, etc. seem alligned with a "design office" set up. I believe the reason why the the "office" metaphor works is that these are productivity programs that rely on decades of office processes to be successful. For example; Carbon Copy (CC) comes from when memos were written on carbon forms in which several copies were made beneath the original.

One paragraph I felt was particularly key in supporting the universal effectiveness of Word metaphors is as follows:

"According to reports, children who flocked to the site taught themselves basic computer operations. They worked out how to click and drag objects; select different menus; cut, copy, and paste; launch and use programs such as Microsoft Word and Paint; get on the Internet; and change the background "wallpaper". The program was hailed by researchers (e.g., Mitra, 1999) and government officials alike [2] as a ground-breaking project that offered a model for how to bring India's and the world's urban poor into the computer age" (Warschauer, 2).

These children of New Delhi (presumably) knew little to nothing about Western "office" terms, yet figured out the purpose and meaning of each metaphor within Microsoft Word and Paint. When you "cut" a section from a Word document, it is easy to align this with "cutting" a section from a newspaper or book or magazine and then "pasting" it in a place you believe to be a better, more coherent fit.

I suppose you could change the metaphors. Instead of using words that we associate with images of physical actions, it might simply be a command word such as; "remove" instead of "cut", or "duplicate" instead of "copy".

However, I feel the system is fine as is, and clearly, if these children taught themselves the meaning of these metaphors with no assistance, than it should be entirely possible to TEACH people how to use these metaphors.

Ugh - I hope I answered this correctly! I am all mixed up feeling!

Warschauer, Mark. "Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide" First Monday [Online], Volume 7 Number 7 (1 July 2002)