technoculture314-09

... are up on CECIL. Please bear in mind they are just a skeleton outline to which you should add your own notes from the class. We're discussing issues of gender in next week's lecture. Why? Hopefully that will become clear at the time if it's not already. But in case any of you are not likely to spend the coming weekend parading around the Internet pretending to be a member of the opposite sex, here's a piece of light-hearted reading to get you thinking (though the issue can take on rather more serious proportions as a very contentious proposal to introduce "Gender Verification" into Second Life recently proved). OK, so we won't be focusing too much on 'virtual cross-dressing' in the lecture itself (though it's a good topic for tutes and the blog) but it helps to prise open the question of gender and new media quite well. Are we (and should we be) free to shed our offline gender identities when we enter the virtual spaces of online games, communities and so on? (My favourite quote from the article: "Erica Poole, a 31-year-old legal secretary in Austin, says she's picked up a few ways to spot a male disguised as a female in online games. 'The fact that they are scantily clad is a huge clue' she said. 'And often the bigger the breasts, the more likely it's a guy... Also, most guys don't use a lot of emotions, even when they're trying to be a girl.'") And why does gender even matter when it comes to new media and the Internet? It's just a tool, right? Have a great weekend, however you spend it.