Joey's reflection on blog discussing cyberstalking/online harassment

The internet is just like a mirror of the real world, problems like harassments occur in the real world somehow can also occur on the internet, in what has become known as online harassment. In this blog post, I know even more about cyberstalking/online harassment than in readings. It mentions more about the actual situation or treatment of the victims. People won’t take any cyberstalking serious until it becomes “IRL” stalking (In Real Life stalking). The most distinct difference between the virtual and real world is that people will only listen to you when you are being stalked or harassed in the real world. If you are being harassed in net, the common response is “just turn off your computer” but no one will consider that those victims have already bear a devastating experience. In the internet world, you will realize nowadays not all the bad guys are uneducated, some are university graduates with computers. Insufficient evidence is one of the biggest reason that connive cyberstalkers. Behavior. The blog also suggests some prevention to cyberstalking. “Stalking” is a “power” crime, stalkers enjoy the power which makes you suffer, and they crave power over others. The best way to protect yourself is to protect your privacy. Never give any personal information across the internet.
Although I’m not the kind of people that go random chat rooms chatting with strangers, I still gain a little bit more information on how to protect my privacy online even better.

blog: http://abusesanctuary.blogspot.com/2006/06/cyberstalking-real-life-problem.html

WEEK 10 online community

Hello, this is Ann, Ayaka and Joey. Our presentation topic is “Online Communities”. We used some cases in the reading “A Rape in Cyberspace; or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a society” to discuss (1) how we should define “rape” in virtual world as well as (2) who are the one to judge what is right and what is wrong in the cyberspace.

Cases we used were about “rape” and “annoying acts” happened in the virtual reality, LambdaMOO. A player Mr. Bungle in this virtual reality typed some words that made other players feel like they were “raped” by him. For example, Mr. Bungle asked one of the players to eat his/her own pubic hair or to violate his/herself with a piece of kitchen cutlery. We wanted to think about should we call this act “rape” and therefore we tried to use some laws that related to rape and sexual harassment for reference to compare the differences between. In our world, according to the law, rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. Since in the cyber world, it is impossible for the online players have the real physical touch with each other, not to say the sexual intercourse, therefore we don’t see there is a “rape” between them. Moreover, according to the law, sexual harassment, includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and annoyances to actual sexual abuse or sexual assault. Therefore we might be more suitable for us to treat that “rape” in cyber world as “sexual harassment”.

What our group assumed the players have their own choice, that is, they join this virtual reality due to their own will but not forced by the others. Firstly, if they did not join virtual community, there is no way for other players to “rape” him/her. Secondly, if he/ she feels uncomfortable after reading some wordings, he/she can choose to read it or not, they could just close the window or log out.

And for our stance on this topic, first, we need to define what is cyborg, cyborg is a hybrid of mechanism and organism which means when human use an virtual identity to log in the virtual world to have any activities, then he or she will become a cyborg. We think that cyborg can not rape a cyborg coz there are no physical touch involve, it could only be regarded as “sexual harassment”. If need to redefine “rape” in order to define the sexual crime of cyborg.

When it comes to the regulation of cyber space sexual crime, first, we assume that cyborg cannot rape another cyborg nor virtual identity rape virtual identity use cyber space as a tool. Beside, we assume cyborg has emotion which comes from the organism part, with in this process, part of the real world identity convert into virtual identity. In the real world, if you are sexually harassed or rape by somebody else, you can call the police and the law can protect you and regulate the criminal. However, in virtual community, there are no police or law that could regulate these things, the on who control the regulation of a cyber space is a webmaster. Webmaster as the role to judge what is right and what is wrong but that is not fair as every single webmasters has different stances on different aspect. In the reading, Mr. Bungle was not allowed to log in LambdaMOO after the “rape”, later on, Dr. Jess appeared, is there are possibility that Dr. Jess is Mr. Bungle?If yes, the webmaster did not able to solve the problem. The webmaster can punish or banish a user, but it has a very limited function, because one can change it IP address, ID information in order to establish a new account in certain community.

To conclude, If we could not redefine what is “rape” in the cyber world, rape between cyborg is not applicable, those action can only be regards as sexual harassment. The punishment could only applied impractically to the cyborg as there are no concrete punishment.

Newstory Reflection_New heart grown using adult stem cells

White, Hilary. “Breakthrough: New heart grown using adult stem cells.” LifeSiteNews. 4 April 2011. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breakthrough-new-heart-grown-using-adult-stem-cells/ (accessed on 13 April 2011)

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This online news article revolves around an unprecedented medical experiment in the laboratory. The researchers from University of Minnesota successfully artificially created the first living human heart with the adoption of adult stem cells. They expect this discovery reveals a new page in human history of medicine sciences, and establishes the hope for transplantation towards those people having cardiac diseases.

Dr. Doris Taylor, the lead researcher, asserts that this artificial heart can “[circumvent] the ethical problems involved in organ donation”, since the donated human heart is no longer needed in transplant operation. Contradictorily, this research was utilized the cardiac extracellular matrix obtained from a human donor as a foundation for cell division and growth. Undoubtedly, the technical problems such as immune system rejection will be solved. However, the ethical problems still exist – for example, who should be the stem cells provider? Probably, will this advanced technique promote “brainstem death” become a new definition of human death? Moreover, some further debatable questions occur – do I lose the autonomy (subjectivity) on self body when I died? It seems that even though I am willing to donate my organs after death, but I am unable (in other word, powerless) to involve and control the operation and/or experiment. As patients, they also face the similar phenomenon. Furthermore, will the self-identity be changed after the patients receiving the transplanted organs, which destroy the uniqueness and originality of their bodies?

In fact, the concepts of artificial organogenesis have been purposed since 2007. Theoretically, not only building heart, but such skills are also available to produce other organs such as liver, lung as well as kidney. In the foreseeable future, human will be objectified as a robot, while the organs will also be objectified as mechanical components. Once we discover our separable bodies are suffered from any organic disorders, we just replace the problematic organs. The whole process is seemingly performed like component repair of nonfunctional machines. As a result, those patients who received such artificial-created living organs become cyborgs, since the innovated technology save and even extend their life, and they contain some “non-human” elements inside their bodies.

Reflection on a Blog Discussion of online friendship and cyborg by Charlotte Lam

I always so interested in the mode of communication among human. From the traditional communication (face to face communication) to the new communication (computer to computer communication), this kind of big transformation which I think is so worth for us to study more deeply about it. While technology can connect people, but it can also disconnect people, what I want to say is it connects people who do not know each other but meanwhile disconnects people who have close relationship with you (esp. family).

In this article, the writer had stated that we are now starting to eliminate the traditional socialization; we will talk with our friends in chat room or msn rather than meet them physically. Therefore, the conventional way of meeting is becoming less important. This issue let me re-think about what is friendship means to us, for example facebook, we could simply “accept the friend request” then he/she can be my friend, but actually you and your so-called “friend” may never met each other before. Then this kind of “online friendship” is totally different from the traditional friendship which we need to be careful that what friendship is nowadays.

The author had also mentioned that the Jennicam and other live cam.This is one of a good example for why people in nowadays are cyborg, just take Jennicam as an example, we must see Jennifer in computer every time, just like Jennifer had put her body into the computer, the relationship between Jennifer and machine is so close. More importantly, she had also subverted the word of voyeur, Jennifer was seemed to be objectified in Jennicam. On the contrary, she is actually very subjectivity, it is because she had decided what people could see, so Jennicam could break the mainstream gender norms as well.

In conclude, cyborg is a very interesting and complex identity in this digital age, it not only can break out the concept of duality but also can provide a platform for express themselves freely, but the question is how we use this special identity to deliver any messages.

Online source: http://selinaart.com/artwork/1069151_Cyber_Discourse.html

Image source: http://www.webcamrecorder.biz/images/webcam_record.

Reflection on newstory: Cyber Bullying Takes Over on Social Networking Sites by Oscar Kwan

Nowadays people are starting to realize the problem or at least the term of “cyber bullying”. Still, there isn’t any cure or solution that we can find to control the widespread of that disease. What is worse, through the popularization of using the social network sites, the problem is becoming more and more serious that we can hardly measure.

Scholars argue that bullying is bad, but cyber bullying can be worse. The problem is that it doesn't stop at school. It can follow you wherever you have access to the Internet, or whenever you have your mobile on, such as Facebook, Twitter, it's opened up a whole new avenue for bullies to target their victims.

I have never been cyber bullied before but I do know how does it feel. What is scary the most in cyber bullying and different with physical bullying is that we don’t know who the bully is. Even at home, we may receive terrible pictures or texts but we don’t know who did it. Also, more people can join the bullying easily through the internet. "Rather than just some people, say 30 in a cafeteria, hearing them all yell insults at you, it's up there for 6 billion people to see. Anyone with a computer can see it," says David, one of the cyber bullied.

In fact, the root problem is that, there is no authority can take charge of cyber bullying. The schools say they can’t deal with the things outside the school, the government says there is no such a law to protect the victims in the internet. So, in my own opinion, unless the government and the responsible organizations can’t do the prompt action to establish a suitable measurement that can control the cyber bullying, the social network will soon become a platform of bullying the poors!

newstorys source: http://www.keyc.tv/story/14167536/cyber?redirected=true

picture source: http://www.geeksugar.com/tag/cyber+bullying

Reflection on a Blog Discussion of Virtual Ethics - Carmen Lam

The ethical issue of internet pornography is always very controversial in the contemporary society. As the internet create a favorable avenue for the development and spreading of pornography, more people can easily reach the pornographic items anytime and anywhere.

In a blog, All about Sex, a journalist, Michael Castleman posted an entry which was entitled ‘Does Pornography Cause Social Harm?’ He mentioned that pornography make many people feel offended. Some even insisted that porn can definitely cause social harm for example, leading to sexual irresponsibility and divorce. However, Castleman tried to provide some figures of research to against this argument. Firstly, he indicated the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), since 1990, the teen sex, nation's abortion, venereal disease and even if the divorce rate have fallen. Also, according to the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization, the rate of Rape has declined too. Though, finally, the writer did not show his stand of the ethical issue in internet porn, he proved the evidence that porn causes no measurable harm from a social welfare perspective. He supported that online porn can be beneficial such as in mental health aspect.

As we may know that the web use is becoming a normal part of life for majority of the developed world, people can get the information from the internet more easily. For the issue of online porn, you can assess pornographic items once you have the internet access. Therefore, when you claimed that you are above 18 in the web sites, you can get various kinds of messages especially porn. As porn always encourages people to exchange sex for money and represents the women as sexually active. It is considered to be immoral. Thus, is it significant that the statistic in this article showed porn causes no measurable social harm? If so, then can we say that internet porn is actually moral? This is absolutely a worthy discussion to the public.

In fact, I do not agree that internet porn causes no measurable social harm which can be an indicator that internet porn is ethical or moral. In some cases, some may argue that online porn can provide a unique opportunity for who with alternative sex practices. Yet, in my opinion, most of the porn is only depicting the sex and sexual activities. Some indeed degrade the image of females as porn still represents a limited range of body types as sexually appealing. This leads to another encouragement that female should be like or acting like that. I think that it is a kind of degrading. On the other hand, from my point of view, the discussion could be more interesting if it not only focuses on the moral issue of online porn, but also why people consume the online porn and how the online porn influences the public.

Image Source: http://www.indiavision.com/news/article/international/23763

Article Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/200904/does-pornography-cause-social-harm

A reflection on a blog discussing gender issue

Girls, G.I.R.L.s and Everyone in Between: Gender Identity in Video Gaming and/or Why I’m Male on the Internet
This article give me a new way to make sense of G.I.R.L. this word on the Internet. I think the situation that the blogger encounter can reflect the norm in our real world. For example: female needs males protection while male should be the one strong enough to protect female. This can show that online interaction can show the gender issue easily and I think this kind of act can enact gender stereotype. As the blogger said in online game, people will treat you differently when they know your gender is female. Female always can be benefited by giving gift or can be protected. In contrast, female will also be discriminated by regarding them as a loser or weaker and people do not want to include female in one group to fright against other. Therefore, G.I.R.L. appears in the cyberspace. I think this is subverting female, in the meantime, enacting male. If we pretend to be a male in online game, we will use our stereotyping knowledge which we learn it from our daily life to present a male character. In this way, we will exaggerate certain elements which we think male should have. This is why I think G.I.R.L. is work on both Subverting and enacting gender.
This article really impress me a lot by introducing G.I.R.L. this concept. I think I can try to be a G.I.R.L. and experience what gender issue I can encounter.