Cyber Culture

For my final post I would like to look at narcissism. I posted a few weeks ago on how social media networking tools like Twitter and biographical websites encourage certain levels of narcissistic behaviour. In culture beyond the realms of the web it is rare to see people walking down the streets in their bikinis or saying deeply profound quotes in front of a large group of people .

Mourning is a crucial part of 'moving on' and is used to "describe a cultural complex of behaviours in which the bereaved participate or are expected to participate" (Wikipedia, 2010).

This week I would like to look at the whole mourning process that takes place on line, as a part of cyber culture, via social networking platforms such as MySpace but more commonly Facebook.

In 1979 a man by the name of Michael Aldrich invented online shopping and made it oh too easy for that woman to purchase those fantastic Prada heels or for that guy -going through a midlife crisis and cruising the net for a cure- to purchase that "flaming hot rod". Now decades later in the year 2010
US e-Commerce and On line retail sales are noted as having "projected to reach $173 billion" (Wikipedia, 2010).

E-commerce, or 'E-cash' as I like to call it, is just one of the many manifestations of cyber-culture. It is a different way to "buy buy buy" and "sell sell sell" without the messy rivalry that comes with being in 'the pit' (stock exchange venues) and a way in which any user can manage their own investments without having to hire a 'middle-man'.

Advertisements on the internet suggest you make the most of this tool by using it to "grow your business" or "e-conomise", phrases of which are seductive and cast a positive glow on trading your money through a network of computing devices and Internet connections and cross-overs.

Inspired by our recent New Media theory studies on the "cultural imperialism thesis" I decided to break down the effects of new media on aspects of identity creation this week.

In studies researching the effects of social media on web-users' identities, several showed positive effects. These imply that social interaction through social media on the web encourages identity growth, better 'real life' socialisation and better communication with friends and family.
By looking at sub-groups identified by Marshall and Burnett in Webs of Identity, one can see how social media is contributing to the evolution of identity construction and therefore life beyond the 'web bubble' and the impact on 'real world' culture.

If you thought that you wouldn't be able host a party or launch an event due to limited promotion funds or resources then you are mistaken.

Grahamstown recently played host to the National Arts Festival which is now marked as the second biggest arts festival in the world. I worked with my class mates in the New Media Lab to produce daily updates on the 15 day festival and by placing articles and multi-media products on the website I realised that now any user with access to a PC and an internet connection could take in the cultural arts explosion from their desks on the other side of the world.

After watching South Park (Season 10, Episode 8) Make Love not Warcraft I started to wonder about the probability behind some of the show's theories.

Let me propose a hypothesis. The date is some 1990 year, pre-technology advancement and you have a disability. For whatever reason you have been restricted to your home because of your disability. With only basic aids to help you live your life, you may feel restricted and bound by it.

With less than 40 days left till the World Cup kicks off on June 11th this year we can only imagine what sort of visitors we can expect and how will they access their information on the event. Everything is now available online from booking tickets, planning transport and planning accommodation. But if you want to skip all of that administration you could always just watch the matches on the television.

With advancements in web based interaction there is a wider platform to interact anonymously, at least to a certain extent.

I earlier discussed the concept of avatar use and this week I want to delve into an aspect of that: how web users use their option to be 'faceless' to offer their opinion or interact with other users and how this impacts on our culture.

After recently watching “behaviours in e-Learning” by Ray Jimenez I realised that in under a session of three minutes I had suddenly learnt something new, something for free and all from the comfort of my office space.

It seems e-Learning is evolving rapidly and that more and more people are being educated as a result. With e-Learning on the rise and more and more reliable sources available online for users to substitute their face-to-face learning, we should consider how this impacts on our culture. Specifically in terms of how we have changed our learning habits and in turn what the effects are both positive and negative.

After recently watching the 2009 film Surrogates , I realised how pervasive the idea of avatars are becoming in pop culture.

Before I start blogging about cyber culture I would like to pose a hypothesis.



If by the 2020 we all have daily access to the internet and various new technology making use of it, will we have a different cultural life-style to what we experience in this day and age?


Consider for a moment how we experience and partake in our various cultural lifestyles today.


Will our text lingo progress into a completely different dialect to the point that we wold need an aged linguist to sift through our 'new' language to find any proof that our traditional one even existed?


Additionally, maybe our iPhone accessories on clothes of today, will develop to the point where we only where clothes that accommodate our mobile devices.


After all of this, we should wonder if we'll even need clothes aside from a 'generic overall' since we may be spending all our time in a posturepaedic, 'lazy boy' chair living our cultural lives vi-cariously through avatars online.


These are all futuristic examples but we can use them to demonstrate, on a less extreme scale, how we are rapidly becoming members of a cyber-culture as opposed to our traditional ones.


In the period of running these entries, I shall address all these issues in attempt to provide an informative blog on cyber culture.