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Summary:In “Cyber-Spaces of Grief: Online Memorials and the Columbine High School Shootings,” Maya Socolvsky discusses the psychological and sociopolitical roles of online memorials. Socolvsky states that, “Death is narrated fully, and although the departed are mourned and missed, death itself is understood and mastered [on an Internet memorial]” (476). The author goes on to...

Summary:Foot, Warnick, and Schneider study the characteristics of online memorials, specifically those of the September 11 terrorist attacks, in the work, “Web-Based Memorializing After September 11: Toward a Conceptual Framework.” The authors attempt to both show the differences between “online” and “offline” memorials and create a set of characteristics with which online memorials...

Game Experience Summary: I don’t usually play online games computer games so I tried “William and Sly” (http://www.kongregate.com/games/Kajenx/william-and-sly). The game was fun for a bit, but the task that Sly, the fox you play as, was asked to do by his friend William was just too easy. Sly had to collect some “fairyflies” to fix the teleport system around the map. The...

Chip Morningstar and Randall Farmer highlight the idea of naïve natural planning when it comes to the design of multi-faceted computer programs in their composition entitled The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat. The Habitat project was “the first attempt to create a many player online virtual environment (664).” In its beginning stages computer programming and software reflected...

Sherry Turkle’s original publication of her book The Second Self was an influence to the new media scene. The excerpt entitled Video Games and Computer Holding Power went beyond the consequence and influence video games have on children and adults. She explores the nature of the game and the immersed connection a person has when heavily involved in the matrix of a particular...

Summary:In the article, "Ideology and the Map", by Barton and Barton, a statement is posed at the very beginning of the article that presents the idea of the map being "quintessentially ideological" (NMR 50). Barton and Barton explain this idea throughout the essay and discuss the ways that the inclusive ways of the map are to be taken away and replaced with the ideas of the repressed...

 SummaryFoucault’s Panopticism begins with a story describing how lepers and plague victims were dealt with in the 17th Century—leper’s exclusion, and plague victims intense surveillance and punishment.  He then goes on to describe Bentham’s architectural Panopticon, which combines methods of discipline previously established, but to a more effective degree, “The...

"Hyperreality: The simulation of something which never really existed," --Baudrillard Summary Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher whose works run parallel to the postmodernism movement, writes in "America" describing, by either city or location, his observations of the hyperreal society Americans live in and live as.  His writing voice takes a diversion from his other...

SUMMARY: If you were to define the “real world” today, what major aspects would be included? For Robert Coover, he believes the real world is comprised of “video transmissions, cellular phones, fax machines…” (NMR 706). In “The End of Books” Coover highlights the possible future outcome of the end of books in relation to technological reliance and development, specifically...

SUMMARY:In his analysis, Langdon Winner addresses the idea that social processes and positive social change naturally occur as a result of computer technology. Initially published in a University Press in a scientific magazine, it can be assumed that his intended audience is the scientific community; as well as general computer enthusiasts, which can include the common public,...