November 2011
1 post
May 2010
15 posts
"Everyday Life in our Wired World"
Ben Agger writes about how media and technology control the lives of human beings in our modern world.
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The author of “Everyday Life in our Wired World”, Ben Agger, writes about the relationship between the everyday lives of people and their social structure,...
Texting in Public
Imagine yourself in a really crowded bus, full of strangers all around you, pushing you as they moving, touching you as they shift in their seats. In this situation, you take out your phone and start texting your friend about this very uncomfortable situation. The person next to you looks over at you, and makes a comment about the crowded situation and how they can’t wait to get off the...
Self-Respect in Cyberspace
Julian Dibbell, one of the victims of the famous cyberspace rape incident in LambdaMOO, wrote about his experiences as he saw the crimes occur in front of his eyes. An analysis of his work shows us just how important it is to be able to protect our online identities.
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Dibbell, Julian. “A Rape in...
Class Divisions between Facebook and Myspace
The following is a research analysis of a very interesting piece written by Dana Boyd in which she describes the class divisions that can be seen along the lines of Myspace and Facebook.
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Boyd, Danah. “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace .” Apophenia Blog Essay. June 24,...
"Adventures in Capitalism"
Another reading done by our rhetoric class was Ben Agger’s chapter called “Adventures in Capitalism” in which he talks about the uses of Capitalism in our postmodern world.
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Agger, Ben. “Adventures in Capitalism”. The Virtual Self: A Contemporary Sociology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007: 98-123. Ben Agger, in his...
Mindmap
In my Rhetoric class, we made a mindmap explaining the activities of our online identities.
The Ways In Which We Communicate
The writing tone is different between the different types of communication such as texting, social network messaging, public posting, emailing, etc. This is because in each of these ways, we are addressing a different type of audience. For example, when we text our family members, the writing is very short and informal. When we post a message on our friend’s facebook wall, we are very...
Controlling our Online Identities
How much control do we really have over our online identities? We can make hundreds of profiles in various sites online. We make an identity on each website while we are in the process of making profiles. Each identity is unique in its own way and has its own factors of significance. My amazon identity for instance, is very different from my facebook...
Universal Logins
All around the world, people are logging in to different accounts from different places, trying to get some shopping done, or read online publications, or watch their favorite videos, etc. Each site will have its own password, its own ID and username. These details can sometimes become very difficult to remember and writing them down is completely out of the question- why?...
Day 4 of my Virtual Life
I now took Nerwen from the walls of the White House and took her over the oceans and far away lands to- St. Paul’s Cathedral. She teleported, of course.
St. Paul’s Cathedral wasn’t only like the real cathedral. It looked like it, on the insides and outsides. But the surrounding area had so much more activities than the real place (at least that’s what I imagine- I’ve...
Day 3 of my Virtual Life
So again, with Nerwen, off I go to other lands. Lands different than my own. This time I took Nerwen to the White House all the way up to Washington D.C (which of course didn’t bother Nerwen. She teleported.) Anyways, visiting the White House, the Second Life White House, was a unique experience. It wasn’t very much like the real White House. I remember the real one with my own eyes,...
April 2010
3 posts
Day 2 of my Virtual Life
The sun’s up, and it is time for another bright and sunny day for Nerwen’s adventures! The second day, the theme for our adventures was recreational activities, and this was to everybody’s glee. We were allowed to go anywhere fun, and take our avatars outside to have a time of their lives. So I took Nerwen to a very pretty beach party, where the water was shining in the distance,...
Day 1 of my Virtual Life
Nerwen is her name. Nerwen Inventor. She looks a little like me. She has a nice complexity, wears pretty clothes, is skinny.. and very short. She likes to do what I like to do: walk around, go to the beaches, (sit and chillax with the pirates)… etc. There is one difference between me and her though. Flying. I wish I could fly, although I am terribly afraid of heights and even if I was a...
March 2010
3 posts
Freshly Printed Nostalgia
By Nupur Basu
For much of my life, I have seen my elders sit down at the breakfast table in the beginning of a new day, unfolding brand new, printed pages of the morning newspaper which was delivered several minutes before at the front door. The fresh scent of the printed pages blended with the essence of coffee and whirled around in the kitchen area, waking everyone up to a bright,...
February 2010
4 posts
5 tags
Myspaces and Facebooks
By Nupur Basu
Myspace. Facebook. Internet. Computer. Life. These are all words that connect to our existence, our world.
How many people do you know that don’t have a Facebook or a Myspace? Few.
How many people do you know that don’t have internet? A couple maybe.
How many people do you know that don’t use computers? None.
At least I don’t. There may be a couple of...
Our Wierd Wired World?
By Nupur Basu
Another work attempted, and this time devoured, by us written by another author, Ben Agger, about our wierd wired world. Like my alliteration? He never mentioned the word wierd, but I thought I would insert it for my own amusement.. and of course because of the alliteration =)
After reading this summary, read the actual chapter, it’s quite...
4 tags
January 2010
4 posts
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300...”
– Michael Jordan
9 tags
Roller Coaster of the Future... Technically...
By Nupur Basu
An interesting article-reading attempted by my classmates and I in our rhetoric class turned into a prolonged thought process that I quite wasn’t expecting. How would you feel if someone were to ask you to summarize into one page your theory of how the world will merge, or has already started to merge, into the open arms of the never-ending patchwork of technical devices?...
About Me...
Hi,
My name is Nupur Basu, and well, this is my first post on Tumblr. I am currently a Microbiology student and am in my second year at the University of Texas. Some of the ways in which I would identify myself would be through the things I am passionate about in life. These would be things like music, friends, science, family, dancing, reading, singing, and of course, love. Some of the ways I...