Anchored Discussion Technology  

Definition: An anchored discussion system integrates a document such as a research article into a threaded discussion by cross-linking both items to each other [10]. In other words, this technology allows comments to be attached to a particular part of a document (a specific word, sentence, or paragraph). Thus, it is possible to view a document and comments on it from various users in a single window with an anchored discussion system.

 

Enzenberger’s 1970 essay Constituents of a Theory of The Media suggests 7 characteristics that qualify the use of medium as emancipatory.

 

The first two characteristics concern about the freedom to publish without a centralized authority and major technical obstacles.

 

1.      Decentralized program: In a centrally controlled program, only a few people have the power to decide who may publish, what is published, and who may receive. This environment may be appropriate for learning when students take a passive role in a class and not engage in critical thinking (questioning assumptions). However, it does not motivate students to engage actively in critical thinking to understand a subject matter.

 

     With anchored discussion technology any participant within a community can freely

     write on what he or she thinks incorrect or incomplete. Therefore, the knowledge

     repository within this technology grows through a decentralized effort.

2.      Each Receiver a Potential Transmitter: This criterion indicates that for a medium to move beyond one transmitter-many receivers, it requires active participation of the many.  

     This is one of the goals of the anchored discussion technology because an anchor

     aims to motivate participants articulate their reasoning processes, conflicts, values,  

     experiences, and interpretations of facts through argumentations and negotiations.

     Furthermore, creating and publishing content is as easy as Wiki. Hence, every receiver

     is a potential transmitter within this technology. 

  

3.  Mobilization of the Masses:  Mobility means that individuals should not be isolated.

    To facilitate this criterion, a medium should be able to allow any participant the ability

    to read, write, and comment upon existing ideas.  In this context, Enzenberger

   suggests individuals to take a part in a social process to overcome ignorance. Anchored  

   discussion technology satisfies this criteria because it allows each participant to

   contribute to a discussion in his or her own way. For instance, a student who is new to

   research may not contribute much to a discussion ,but he or she could learn through

reading the comments of other students who are more experienced with  research while reading a research paper online.

 

4. Collective Production: This criterion places emphasis on the importance of collaborative work which is related to the idea of distributed cognition because this idea suggests that that new knowledge could be constructed collectively by group members when they could not achieve the same individually. In this context, anchored discussion technology has the potential to allow participants to see various views and perspectives on a topic while reading an article.  

 

5. Interaction of those involved, feedback:  

 

The term Cyborg was first coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space (Wikipedia 2008). Although modern government, medicine and electronics geeks have tried their heart out to create cyborgs, they largely remain a science fiction fantasy. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway states (1985), “The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late 20^th century.” Haraway declares cyborgs as a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. She uses the metaphor of the fusing of machine and organisms in a cyborg to explain how fundamental contradictions in feminist theory and identity  should be fused.

 

Additionally, Haraway makes the argument that women, like cyborgs, do not require a stable, essentialist identity, and feminists should consider creating coalitions based on "affinity" instead of identity. Furthermore, Haraway refers to the cyborg in order to challenge feminists to engage in a politics beyond naturalism and essentialisms.

 

 

References

• D Haraway (1985). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century Socialist Review 80:65-108, 1985. Available online via http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=WDUFpPibuMs
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=pGva3yU8RZw 

 

A Rape in Cyberspace 

This article explains a rape event and its outcomes in a multiplayer computer game (LambdaMOO). In this game, a user (Mr. Bunge) performs a rape through a program called voodoo doll. This program allowed Mr. Bunge’s actions to be falsely attributed to other users within LambdaMOO. In this context, the author makes one to think about the relationship between real and virtual life. Although I am not familiar with multiplayer online games, to an extent this essay reminded me the sock puppet and meat puppet behaviors that take place in the virtual world. Sock puppet means using an online identity for deception purposes. Meat puppet refers to the situations in which a user tries to depreciate other users’ contributions in an online community. Furthermore, meat puppet could also be used to create a buzz or public interest in certain area. When a sock puppet or meat puppet activity is defined in a Wiki content, it is responsibility of the Wiki administrator to ban the user through his or her IP address because Wiki keeps a record of each user’s IP address.

 

Finally, I think this essay in a way relates to unanticipated consequences of technology that we have discussed before because it appears that users and programmers did not anticipate a rape event in this multiplayer game. Therefore, they had a meeting to decide what action to take.

 Women and Children First:

The main assumption in this article is that gender roles which are reproduced in cyberspace could be used to facilitate regulation in this environment (frontier). Among the author’s arguments, I am interested in the one that she focuses on the public perception of online social relationships. In one of her statements she says that “women and children are victimized in conditions of freedom”. In this context, she says that when we introduce women and children into a frontier we need to implement certain laws to protect women and children within this frontier. In a way, this is similar to justifying the actions that was happened in the previous essay (the meeting to decide what to do for rape).  In one our older discussions, we talked about how the virtual world (even though its limitless potentials) resembles the real world (designing jeans in jean factory in second life). Hence, there should be regulations in the virtual world.

We’re Teen, We’re Queer, and We’ve Got Email 

This essay talks about how the virtual world allows teens an escape from the real world. For instance, the example given in the essay was a gay teen in Iowa does not need to be bounded by the norms on Iowa in an America Online gay chatroom. I think the best example of this argument is the success of myspace. However, I believe that “the escape” is like a double edged sword. On one site, a teenager can say things that he or she can not say things in the cyberspace that he or she could not do in the real world. On the other side, malicious intended people may also perform things that they could not do in the real world such as child molestation. This is where the regulation that Miller emphasizes gets into the picture because as Miller said “women and children are victimized in conditions of freedom”.

 Race In/For Cyberspace: 

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog !”  Among the essays I have read so far, this is my favorite because in a way it relates to the research papers that I have read. One main criticism for the Internet is that, it is missing real world elements that help us to express ourselves such as tone of voice or facial impressions. In this context, users try to represent themselves through a keyboard and a mouse. Hence, bad intentioned users can easily develop fake identities (sock puppets) for deceptive purposes. From LambdaMOO perspective, this essay made me to question the person I am interacting with in an online game.  For instance, is it possible to identify the real identity of a character in an online game? I wonder the extent to which identity issues anticipated when online games and other social tool were first developed. If users are not interested in developing a sense of community, they may not be interested in identification verification. However, if they want to build a sense of community with close friendship they may want a trust indicator.

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Who Am We? 

In this essay, I like the emphasis on how the Internet changes our way of thinking and the way we form our communities. The author considers computer screens as a location for various purposes. In this context, the author states that computer screens allow us to cycle through cyberspace and real life. Hence, Turkle argues that the computer screen allows one to play multiple roles at the same time rather than playing different roles in different settings at different times.  To support this argument, the author says real life itself is just one more window. In a way, I appreciate the great vision that we have been reading on implications of computers on social and intellectual aspects of my life. But, the windows term and playing multiple roles at the same time kind of reminded me the kid who wanted to watch 10 different channels at the same time in the Back to The Future Movie. I do not share this vision because I personally would like to have a few maybe one window at a time and perform the activity on the window great rather than doing poor activity on 10 different windows.