Identity

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Contents 1 Identity Question One 2 Identity Question Two 3 Identity Question Three 4 Identity Question Four 5 Formatting answers to the questions

The Symposium on the Impact of Digital Media is actually part of a series of events taking place simultaneously all over the Internet and involving participants from dozens of countries. These participants include some of the world’s leading scholars on the topics of identity, credibility, and civic engagement, as well as hands-on users of digital media of all ages who are residents of Second Life, as well as a community of practitioners in more than 200 leading universities and museums across the world.

The scholar group is currently engaged in a set of high-level scholarly online dialogs on our three topics — identity, credibility, and civic engagement — taking place now in a Google Group. The second group, all residents of Second Life, are talking part in this 12-day symposium. The third group, mainstream NMC members, will participate in an NMC online conference taking place on the “flat-web” at the end of this month.

All three events are devoted to the same topics, which are informed by the NMC’s work with the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, a two-year project in which the NMC is helping to explore the impact of digital media on our lives in a variety of ways, and encouraging dialog among experts, visionaries, and thought leaders from around the globe.

This unique symposium brings that dialog to the current residents of Second Life. We are most interested in your perspectives, and encourage you to add your voices to this mix by adding your thoughts about the impact of digital media on Identity under each of the following questions in the space below.

[edit] Identity Question One

Young people are quite diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, nationality, and (to a lesser extent) social class. While recognizing these differences and inequalities, can we still talk about them principally in terms of age? Who’s excluded in – and excluded from – implicit assumptions about ‘digital youth’? And how do we think about the category of ‘youth’ in a global context?

• I am not so sure about the term "digital youth." but there is clearly an affinity between people based on age cohort -- it is based on common knowledge and experiences, music, popular culture of the time, etc. People that came of age during WWII, or the Cold War, or the turn of the millenium have a shared perspective many things, all based on what was happening aroudn them collectively as they came of age.

• Cohorts reflect the times, but times also reflect their cohorts. The influence of cohorts will not go away, but online some young people might be very old and some old folks might be babies. Will there be new kinds of age or will each individua simply be 30 in his or her own mind and age become a less powerful trait that gives way to experience, information skills, and/or manual dexterity?

• And is there something like a "digital age." Do people "show their age" based on how/why they access the internet? Do they "show there age" based on what they do? say? how they talk? what mistakes they make? etc. I guess I'm acknowleding that there is a physical age that does allow for some shared experiences that allows for generalizable assumptions about contemporary youth and their use of technologies; however, I wonder if the comment above hints at the "age" of participants in discourse communities. The internet, and specific groups within the internet, have their communitities and people are "aged" based on their experiences.

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[edit] Identity Question Two

Does it actually matter if Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace – and if so, in what ways?

• 'The identity of the owner of myspace is irrelevant, it's what happens to myspace that is important. If you had posed the question in terms of 'The owner of the Times Newspaper, Britain's most prestigious daily now owns myspace...' the response would be different. - Nolligan Nino

• Sorry to be so brusk, but "Heck, yes!" He owns whatever you put on myspace. Rules that govern journalism, and by extension - personal expression, were changed in the US under Reagan to allow Murdoch to own media. From that point on steady incremental corporatization of the media has metastisized. If we want learning to be organic (which it is) it cannot be regulated, owned, or parsed.

• I agree, but argue that it matters little if it is Murdoch. In fact, I suspect that too much corporate interest will make a phenomenon like MySpace fade to nothing in time. What made it popular was that it was "theirs" ie, it belonged to the people who use it. If that changes, they will move. Look at the success of AOL.....

• ...It is not so much Murdoch as corporate. And the ownership of content has far reaching consequences.

• By the time his influence has any effect, the focus of attention will have moved on to another social space.

• I agree with the answer that says people will leave/rebel against MySpace if they do not feel what they do is "their" own. The internet is giving people the ability to "control" space of their own; you take away that control and they will not be interested anymore. In a time when the gap between the upper and lower classes is growing, many more people will desire the ability to control their identity...even if it is "only virtual"

• I think it depends what Murdoch does with it. I heard that when the most recent Superman movies was in pre-release marketing mode that everybody's myspace suddenly had superman advertising plastered all over it. I think for a lot of people (young and old) the aesthetics of the "space" that they have constructed to reflect their own identities is critically significant to them. If the advertising takes up too much space or intrudes on that space in a way that is offensive there will be massive outcries of protest. I think the degree to which myspace becomes commercialised and the degree to which ownership is retained by the individual is what will make a difference to its development.

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[edit] Identity Question Three

There has been much discussion of the value of ‘informal’ learning, for example in relation to gaming. But what do we understand to be the differences between ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ learning; and how useful is this distinction?

• The distinction is important only to individuals and institutions with vested interest in maintaining a hierarchical system of information. This would be the case in accreditation and licensing. Learning is part of the human Umwelt. The promise of being able to expand rather than contract through the democratic management of digital information is exciting. We all learn informally. This is the natural state. Formal learning is measured learning. It is an ends-directed and thus an unnatural process.

• I agree with much of the answer above, especially that the distinction is largely irrelevant. Even in schools, the most powerful learning is often informally gained, through serendipity, casual reading, or conversation. Perhaps a better classification, if there must be one, might be "structured learning" vs "natural learning."

• I to agree with much of the first answer. I know that many faculty have started researching "deep" learning. From what I understand of "deep" learning the research is based on faculty knowing that "informal" learning is what "works" or "sticks" or "transfers" and therefore need to somehow tap "informal" learning to better facilitate "formal."

• Starting over...I think much of the research and writing on "learning spaces" is demonstrating that this is a faulty distinction. Many of these studies argue that learning spaces have to be less formal, including food, access to the internet, both group and individaul work spaces, etc.

• If I can get my class to learn a concept by playing one of the many excellent learning 'games' on the BBC schools website is that formal or informal? Really the distinction is irrelevant. The most important thing is that they learn, and children learn best through play - Nolligan

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[edit] Identity Question Four

In the world of Second Life, there is much energy expended on the representation of the individual via an avatar. The pervasiveness of this phenomenon leads to several questions:

What are the dynamics and issues that might separate one's RL and SL identities - for example, why is it important for some to maintain complete separation, while others offline and online identities blend together?

• I can only speak to one side of that question...for me, my identity is my identity. I am the same person in RL and SL, merely explorign different facets of the same person.

• I have multiple avatars. One is for work-related SL stuff (I'm an educator doing it on university time.) and another for fun (at home, on my own.). So my SL identity is spread about - I become what I need to be. - Brett Bixler

• It is a safe place to play out possibilities we may not have (or think we have) in RL

• We have to consider one's own comfort with his or her identity, whether one has vast areas of self that are unexpressed, repressed, or impractical in RL but surface almost immediately via avatar/skin/attachments...

• At least SL give us the locus of control, rather than the system making these decisions for us- we can choose an avatar that is a reflection or a complete fabrication; we can choose the list of RL info in our profile, or stay anonymous.

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Why does one person make an avatar physically resemble him or herself and another choose a form that is completely different?

• I've come to wonder if your choice of avatar is related to your time in world. For example, it is easy to tell the realtive age of an avatar, just on appearances. it takes time to learn the skills required to really customize your av -- and having such skills is what allows you to begin to play with your in-world representation -- and I posit -- to learn from those experiences

• ...because it takes all sorts to make a metaverse and Second Life would be a very boring place if we all were the same. - Nolligan Nino

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How does the choice of a gender-crossing avatar impact classical perceptions of sexuality and sexual identity?

• I think it might be shocking to some, but at the same time, I think it is a very healthy way to explore gender differences.

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Why is it so important to "groom" one's avatar and what does that say about identity?

• I've often wondered if there is an aspect of "playing with dolls" that is part of this. Not everyone does it, but some do it daily, spending considerable time not only shopping, but selecting outfits to wear, dressing, etc. To someone who tends to wear the same outfit for weeks on end (clothes don't begin to smell in SL), it is easy to ascribe that behavior to play.

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[edit] Formatting answers to the questions

As you include your answers to these questions, you are encouraged to focus more on the ideas than the formatting, and so a simple approach has been chosen as an example. An asterisk followed by a space makes it a bulleted list item, and everything else can be plain text. Note that everything must be in a single paragraph with only a single carriage return at the end.

* Your perspective on the question would look like this.