Turkle, Nakamura, Avatar

Madison Ultis
Turkle & Nakamura Readings
11 March 2008

I read the Turkle piece first, and I have to admit that I thought it was pretty long and drawn out for the first half. This could be because I really have no working knowledge of any MUDs or other references made to that same idea. I used to play the Sims games quite a bit when I was younger, so I do know something about how that works, and that was some pretty advanced technology then, so I can imagine it’s even more “alive” seeming now. The Nakamura piece was less interesting to me, and although it was about the same general idea as the Turkle piece, it focused more on the race identity.
From the Turkle piece, I was completely blown away by the whole idea of being able to create an identity different from who you are to your family and friends; or at least creating an identity out of some small, secretive part of yourself that you wished could show more. She notes in the piece that “…the games are laboratories for the construction of identity” (Turkle). This wasn’t the case, though, for the graduate student, Stewart. His involvement with the MUDs caused him to be even more reclusive than before immersing himself in this online world. The idea of being able to create someone completely different than what you are everyday is very fascinating to me, but I could see how it would eventually prove troublesome in your real life. Being able to have an affair through this kind of program seems so strange to me, and I could again see how that would cause problems in your real life, and I guess it’s just something that would never seem to be of any interest to me, so maybe that’s why it seems odd.
There was an episode of CSI:NY where there was a murderer on the loose, and a MUD called SecondLife was involved in the whole plot of that episode. If I remember correctly, the murderer found out who the avatar on SecondLife was in real life and was able to hunt her down. This was the first time that I had ever even seen something like this, but didn’t know if it was contrived just for the show or if it was real.
The Nakamura article focused on racial identity in cyberspace, and again, I really don’t know anything about this because I have never created any sort of avatar online before to where I would want to be someone different than I am everyday in real life. I liked how this article talked quite a bit about leaving race out of the MUDs because I think that it adds an interesting element to meeting someone online and not knowing what race they are.
Both articles were concerned with the idea of creating an identity for yourself online and the vast ways to go about this. I definitely find this concept very interesting, and it is something I think I will explore a little bit on my own time. I did take a look at the SecondLife website, but haven’t been able to figure much out from it yet, as to how it works. I’m going to look into a bit more because I’d really like to get a first hand account of why people are so intrigued with this form of social interaction.