Internet
Before the internet, there was only the computer, large ones that take up a whole room. The computer then was seen only as a tool, and then a few years later there was the personal computer which made it more accessible and more interactive. The PC was a kind of evolutionary step which enabled us to have wider relationships. But these relationships did not appear yet until PCs started to become interconnected. This is where internet comes in. At first it was only a military tool, used by the States to connect their military branches and easily share their data. That was until someone saw the commercial value and the great potential of the net. In the article of Sherry Turkle, she described a new world where we have started to populate over the years with several mirrors of ourselves. The cyberspace is exactly that strange new world people have inhabited with the help of technology like the personal computer. With our lives now inside the screen and our personal selves cannot be determined by the other end then the internet, we gain the ability to recreate ourselves virtually in the new world. We now have the ability to create characters will may or may not reflect our own identity. With MUD or multi user domains the characters we
play can even have emotions that can be conveyed to a large number of other players residing in the cyber world. Through the interactions we have with players around the world, our real life personas, Turkle pointed out, go to ?gsleep?h and our characters materialize inside the virtual domain. Players often border between real life (RL), a term coined by several MUD enthusiast and their cyber worlds and as a result there are several analogies that will work for this topic. Let?fs take Play by Email (PBeM) as an example; this will be discussed further later on. The author is the player in cyber world and the interaction in the game is in the form of writing and the computer is the converter of simple words into the character?fs actions, thoughts and feelings. Anonymity is a window to a new character. The internet also gives a person a chance to explore his other desires. He may be a man in RL but plays a woman in the game. She maybe a lawyer but plays a bartender. We often reach the point that we forget to really know the person on the other side of the screen but intimately know his cyber persona. Of course our cyber identity does not end at one point in cyber space. In recent years there has been an increase of programs that allow us to talk to our cyber friends. IRC or internet relay chat was one of the hottest ?gplace?h in cyberspace because it imitated a tavern or bar where people mingle and chat. With the desire for a much more personal interaction entered the person to person chat which ICQ (I*SEEK*YOU) pioneered. Here, the computer informs us that a friend of ours is online and available. Microsoft Messenger (MSN) built on the ICQ concept and furthered it with features like Application Sharing where two people can share a computer program or Whiteboard for company meetings that need a cyber black board. Such automations or advances in the programs that have affected the artificial intelligence of programs make it more difficult for us to differentiate what is real from an automaton. With this shift to a culture of simulations, we have developed simulations for everything. A simulated love affair, simulated plane fight where we are the pilots, simulated plane cr
Some common words found in the essay are:
Play Email, Application Sharing, Sherry Turkle, Email PBeM, Valley Radio, , Police Quest, Death Angel, Star Trek, ICQ I*SEEK*YOU, security officer, cyber space, real life, personal computer, play email, cyber world, simulated plane, police quest, role playing, set quest,
Approximate Word count = 1471
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
