Physical & Digital World

With the demands of a fast paced society, the way we communicate and the human relationship with time has profoundly changed. At one point in time; humans, like the rest of the animals and plants on earth, moved through natural cycles at nature's own pace. Time was marked by the passing of the seasons or by one’s life cycle. Technology and the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the Machine, have lead humans to mechanical processes and machine time. Producing results at a faster rate and speed have become a gauge of efficiency and basis for defiance.

These days there is a significant difference living in a physical world versus living in a virtual one. In a physical world, brain power is used to go about our day-to-day lives, challenges, and tasks such as networking face to face and making contacts on a personal level as opposed to a virtual one. It is so easy to become whoever you want in a virtual based reality and in order to exist and keep up, creating a virtual identity, you have to have access to search engines and tools such as the internet. In class, we discussed identity theory and where our identity’s comes from. Who do I think I am? Who do others think of me or who I am?  After ample research the article posted Tuesday, April 19, 2011 “Tibaldo: Are you doing well in your online community?” depicts a considerable amount of information pertaining to this topic.

19-year-old Jennifer Ringley created her virtual identity by presenting herself online through a webcam she installed in her college dorm room sometime in 1996. She created a Web log (blog) by streaming videos of her in www.jennicam.com. This struck a new phenomenon for the “netizens” in the virtual world. Although I agree with the author that blogging and online diaries helped branch a new spectacle, I don’t understand why people blog. A blog is an online diary, which to me should be a personal thing. When I was little if I kept a diary I would never let anyone read it, much less comment on it. So why do people blog? How did Jennifer help start such a phenomenon? Is it something to do in order to keep their visitors attention, inform someone about something, keep your popularity up, rant off about something?

A plus side the author states to the virtual world is that thousands of Jobs were created as a result. Examples are contact agents, programmers, graphics and digital animators. E-mail, e-commerce, e-learning and even online classes have also come about through the internet. The world we live in is of constant communication and forever changing.