Thoughts to the (Quaranta, Domenico, “Life and Its Double”& Clover, Joshua. “Edge of the Construct”, from The Matrix, BFI Modern Classics, London, British Film Institute, 2004, pp.6-28.) reading:
Isn’t it being pretty fascinated that when you could have your life start over again? Well, some people may agree with that. I remember that my brother bought me a computer game called “becoming stars” when I was in primary school. I was so addicted with that because I could actually being a movie star, a singer or a model in the game, so I could earn money, go shopping, go clubbing and meet friends there. I feel like this is my “second life” at that moment and spent lots of time on it. It seems that it may be possible to people who could living in the second life while they might be sick of living in real world. In the class, we discussed about the second life which is more related to Facebook nowadays and we raised the some issues that Facebook is kind of Avatar where we try to idealize ourselves, which I don’t really agree with it. According to Domenico, “Portraits bears witness to the gradual humanization of our digital identities.” I guess that is the reason why we are so honest to ourselves when using Facebook because we as human beings with actual body in real world trying to figure out whether we are “in world” or “out of world” in such an ambiguous situation. Therefore, I would say that we rely on facebook more than we could imagine nowadays, so we sort of internalize ourselves into it which affect the way we talk and communicate with others also the emotions we express on someone’s wall (facebook wall) which are almost the same way we act in the real world otherwise friends in our social network may misunderstand the meaning. However, I do believe that sometimes one would be an avatar in facebook when he doesn’t want to show pictures or some specific messages to someone he hates such as boss, colleagues, annoying friends or maybe ex-boy/girl friends. In that case, facebook can avoid the awkward situations and exclude the misunderstandings happened, which I think that maybe the way we change ourselves to suit for our friends depend on the privacy setting on facebook is a kind of avatar behaviours in such networks where we as a centre of it.
Good digital & Bad Digital
I still remember around 10 years ago when I was a teenager, “the chat room” had greatly been popped up during decades. I went on line to chat with different users every night for nothing but enjoying the characters I have been played. I pretended myself to be a 30 years old man who had wife, a 20 years old young lady with long hair or a 10 years old little boy who use his sister’s pc in private. I had so much fun to play around my characters with different visual friends, it may be suggested that to be a “good digital” as in second life, we could do whatever we want and change the appearances as we wish. Thus, Domenico wrote about “the most famous avatars in Second Life, those who have made a name for themselves “in world”, are rarely well known in the real world.” Thus, we may play around ourselves as famous celebrities or prince charming in second life with really fat body and ugly look lying down on the bed in front of the laptops whole day. I mean, that is not you or that might be you for some purpose depending on how you conduct it. “Good digital”, not so realistic, comparing to “bad digital”, facebook, in my opinion, is more likely to be bad digital, where we are more honest than we expect to this small network. Furthermore, I feel like the more people tend to rely on the social networking sites, the more actual characteristics that people may express themselves on it, because the one who being on line is exactly the one who talk to his friends in real way. Wouldn’t it because these networks have been built up the convenience of communication? Also, it’s free of charge which is more accessible than calling up to someone with phone.
The other interesting point of view is in The Matrix, which emphasized on absolute conceptual terms--- being digital, whereas it could lead to actorless in the future of Hollywood movies (EX: Pixer Studio’s Toy story, 1995). I found that the power of The Matrix effects are everywhere and ubiquitous on film business as well as the video games industry, but Anthony Lane (2003) addressed that it’s already from novelty to cliché. Due to the facts that the PC, PS and GC games has been made for fully digital while the movies seems like too “analog” to the video game players. Somehow, we, as the video players or the movie spectators, may quite enjoy the immersible world which is provided with fully digital so that we are so fascinated with it like the kaleidoscope we owned when we were children, in fact, we can’t deny the truth that we hardly could pull ourselves out of it.
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