Choose one of the following statements. Write a 4-page position paper, in which you explore the assertions of the statement, and argue in detail your agreement or disagreement with it.
"We are rewriting ourselves on the Web, hearing voices we’re surprised to find coming from us, saying things we might not have expected. We're meeting people we would never have dreamed of encountering. More important, we’re meeting new aspects of ourselves. We’re finding out that we can be sappier, more caustic, less patient, more forgiving, angrier, funnier, more driven, less demanding, sexier, and more prudish – sometimes within a single ten-minute stretch on line. We’re falling into email relationships that, stretching themselves over years, imperceptibly deepen, like furrows worn into a stone hallway by the traffic of slippers. We’re falling into groups that sometimes feel like parties and sometimes feel like wars. We’re getting to know many more people in many more associations than the physics of the real world permits, and these molecules, no longer bound by the solid earth, have gained both the randomness and the freedom of the air-borne. Even our notion of a self as a continuous body moving through a continuous map of space and time is beginning to seem wrong on the Web. If this is true, then for all of the over-heated, exaggerated, manic-depressive coverage of the Web, we’d have to conclude that the Web in fact has not been hyped enough." -- David Weinberger
"The computer's allure is more than utilitarian or aesthetic; it is erotic. Instead of a refreshing play with surfaces, as with toys or amusements, our affair with information machines announces a symbiotic relationship and ultimately a mental marriage to technology. Rightly perceived, the atmosphere of cyberspace carries the scent that once surrounded Wisdom. The world rendered as pure information not only fascinates our eyes and minds, but also captures our hearts. We feel augmented and empowered. Our hearts beat in the machines. This is Eros." -- Michael Heim
"People accept the idea that certain machines have a claim to intelligence and thus to their respectful attention. They are ready to engage with computers in a variety of domains. Yet when people consider what if anything might ultimately differentiate computers from humans, they dwell long and lovingly on those aspects of people that are tied to the sensuality and physical embodiment of life. It is as if they are seeking to underscore that although today's machines may be psychological in the cognitive sense, they are not psychological in a way that comprises our relationships with our bodies and with other people. Some computers might be considered intelligent and might even become conscious, but they are not born of mothers, raised in families, they do not know the pain of loss, or live with the certainty that they will die." -- Sherry Turkle
"Tourism is a particularly apt metaphor to describe the activity of racial identity appropriation, or "passing" in cyberspace. The activity of "surfing," (an activity already associated with tourism in the mind of most Americans) the Internet not only reinforces the idea that cyberspace is not only a place where travel and mobility are featured attractions, but also figures it as a form of travel which is inherently recreational, exotic, and exciting, like surfing. The choice to enact oneself as a samurai warrior in LambdaMOO constitutes a form of identity tourism which allows a player to appropriate an Asian racial identity without any of the risks associated with being a racial minority in real life. While this might seem to offer a promising venue for non-Asian characters to see through the eyes of the Other by performing themselves as Asian through on-line textual interaction, the fact that the personae chosen are overwhelmingly Asian stereotypes blocks this possibility by reinforcing these stereotypes." -- Lisa Nakamura
"The disadvantages suffered by women in society carries over into "the virtual communities" on the Internet: women are underrepresented in these electronic places and they are subject to various forms of harassment and sexual abuse. The fact that sexual identities are self-designated does not in itself eliminate the annoyances and the hurts of patriarchy. The case of 'Joan' is instructive in this regard. A man named Alex presented himself on a bulletin board as a disabled woman, 'Joan,' in order to experience the 'intimacy' he admired in women's conversations. Van Gelder reports that when his 'ruse' was unveiled, many of the women 'Joan' interacted with were deeply hurt. But Van Gelder also reports that their greatest disappointment was that 'Joan' did not exist. The construction of gender in this example indicates a level of complexity not accounted for by the supposition that cultural and social forms are or are not transferrable to the Internet. Alex turned to the Internet virtual community to make up for a perceived lack of feminine traits in his masculine sexual identity. The women who suffered his ploy regretted the 'death' of the virtual friend 'Joan.' These are unique uses of virtual communities not easily found in 'reality.' Still in the 'worst' cases, one must admit that the mere fact of communicating under the conditions of the new technology does not cancel the marks of power relations constituted under the conditions of face-to-face, print and electronic broadcasting modes of intercourse." -- Mark Poster