The internet (often futurized in unimpressive ways) is a primary tool in modern science fiction but I don't think it works the way it is often portrayed. It's not just another way of being social -- it is used under cover of anonymity (supposed or real) to do all kinds of things. People are different on the internet and I find myself wondering -- is it just different or is it more real? Is it who we are or who we would like to be?
As for cheating via Internet sources, I think the "anonymity" of the Internet gives people the illusion of getting away with whatever they want to do. I know the Rent-a-coder type websites have a bunch of students who are willing to pay people to do their homework for them. And then there are essays you can get that "help you write your own".
Ultimately though, I think this is just a natural outgrowth of the growing sense that we deserve whatever it is we want. And anyone who makes it difficult to get whatever it is we want, even if that difficulty leads to our growth, becomes someone to deceive and hate. This attitude has always been around, but I've been seeing it around me more often lately.
And impatience. I see a lot more impatience, too.
Sorry for the rambling. Hope I made sense.
[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited May 24, 2006).]
(In my stories, I have computers around, but rarely have any action involve them. Partially it's early imprinting---I grew up without 'em so my characters don't use 'em.)
You can also make up fake tax and income documents, it isn't any harder than stealing a car, you just might (should) go to jail.
[This message has been edited by pooka (edited May 24, 2006).]
On a different level, I compare the internet to the human brain. There are so many different areas to explore. Like the brain, the information never goes away, we just don’t access it (I guess if a person’s never researched a given topic, the data is simply not stored in the brain-but if a person has never access a particular area of the internet, it’s not retrievable information either). In researching OSC, I ran across a movie he wrote and produced called “Remind Me Again” (http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/remindme/). That led me to a column written by one of the actors, which lead me to a book, “The Golden Compass” by Philip Pullman. I read the book, loved it, and ended up reading the trilogy. It’s likely I would never have found those books had I not “surfed the net” while being bored one day at work.
The brain can work that way too, by accessing everything it’s experienced. It’s just our search engines are sometimes unreliable.
PS: Reminds me of an Emerson quote: Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited May 24, 2006).]
I think I got a problem.
PS; Sniper rifles are cool.
Robert's right about the current computer culture not lasting forever. Eventually you won't be anonymous online. Fact is, people are already less anonymous than they generally think. They all think they've got invisible rings, but that isn't the case.
As for obvious *tards, they'll always be *tards, just like they are in real life. And they'll always suffer the unavoidable consequences.
And I get just as heated in political discussions online as offline, but online I get banned more often. Recently someone brought up Fidel Castro on a chat board at funtrivia.com . I got in a heated argument about it, in which the moderator took sides--with those against me. Whenever anyone was chastised, it was me, although the others had committed the same infractions prior to me. Finally it was taken down.
That's off subject a little. The bottom line is that a lot of people out there do masquerade as something they're not. So beware!!
[This message has been edited by Smaug (edited May 25, 2006).]
For example, I'm a little shy in real life. I hold back, afraid I'll say something stupid. Online I can write something, hit the backspace key, think it over some more, and then retype it. Yeah, I still end up saying stupid things but usually when I'm made.
I like to help people by offering advice but I don't have as many opportunities in real life as I do online. On hatrack alone, I've offered hundreds of critiques to a wide variety of people, some of whom certainly did not appreciate it but many of whom did.
I am opinionated in both real life and on the internet, but I feel more free to state those opinions on the internet. In real life, I may have to spend time with people everyday and if I've bodly told them my views on some controversial issues then it may become tense.
I have more choices about where to "hang out" on the internet. I've been on sites that I found to be degrading, snobby, and overly heatd. I don't go there anymore. I find hatrack to be a generally reasonable place to chat -- most people don't overstate their opinions and even if we do get into some heated debates I think everyone is *usually* respectful about it. (Thanks to Kathleen for breaking it up or closing it off when it goes otherwise.)
So I think in my case I am more real online than I am off because I feel more free to be who I really am. It's not that I lie in real life, but I do hold back.
I have an alternate "persona" here at Hatrack so that if I want to say something without being SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED, I can, and what I say then has no more clout than what anyone else says. (Not that what I say as SHE etc. actually has more clout, I just like to think it does.)
I have done that as well in other situations where I serve an "official" capacity and where I would like to be able to express myself unofficially at times.
Whether anyone is truly fooled and whether I am truly anonymous or not, those who know (if any) seem to be willing to go along with it. <shrug>
Just saying that there may be non-cheating reasons as well as the cheating ones.
There has always been the possibility of writing to the editor under an assumed name. You know, like that story about the two neighbors who hated each other but when they died they had scrapbooks of an newspaper column that they used to write to each other on. I mean, with the internet at the moment there is the opportunity for everyone to function like that.
I think there will always been an anonymity due to mass proportions. Could a stalker come after you and try to make your life hell? Sure, but most people assume the chances of that happening are no greater than ther chances of experiencing violent crime by leaving their houses. And as the sayings about violence go, I think the possibility of being sabotaged by someone who knows you is greater than from a stranger. But the idea of it being a stranger just seems more chilling, for some reason.
Hmmmm...now I'm going to wonder which one is Kathleen...
Take hoptoad's LAN FPS example. Would he go around hunting down his friends and killing them in real life? Probably not, unless he wanted them to be dead in real life. My perspective is that he probably feels that his friends feel better about being fragged by him than by some random stranger. I know that I feel a lot less evil for killing in split-screen Halo, where I'm in the same room with the person I'm killing, than just wasting random strangers online.
People also go through ups and downs in various aspects of life. I was totally able to play Halo or any other FPS for hours on end before the beginning of this year. Then, a little bit before beating Halo 2, I just started to get bored of it. Partly because Halo 2 wasn't as good as Halo in a lot of important ways, possibly also because when you play on Legendary there's a lot of deja vu to the point where you lose track of whether the room has multiple waves of enemy spawns or you've just forgotten one of your many deaths And that last room with Tartarus...you can only shoot the same guy for so long before it starts to get kinda old. And they didn't have a special ending. I was hoping to get the real story of how Sgt. Johnson got off the first Halo
Long story short, I discovered that I was bored of Halo 2, so I started playing Halo again and found out that I was kinda bored of that too (which I wouldn't have thought possible six months ago). Come to find out...I'm bored with FPS games generally. How weird is that? It's okay, anime has neatly filled that gap. The point is that I don't currently feel tempted to go on online rampages against strangers, whereas I used to do that despite my suspicion that it was a rather cruel thing to do.
There are a lot of things I don't bring up on this forum, since it's a writing forum and not a general ranting forum. The same would be true of church (with obvious differences) or work (well, maybe) or whatever. It's not a matter of being a different person, it's a matter of being the same person in a different situation.
quote:
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
Only now it's "Judge of your natural character by what you do online?"
Well, crap. I'm done for.
Actually, the only difference I can think of for me is that I talk a lot less online than offline. Make of that what you will. I think it's scary, personally.
I rather relish being blunt here on Hatrack. I value blunt critiques, so blunt comments are what I give. Face to face I've learned, through much trial and error over the years, to be more diplomatic.
In other online venues I've allowed other facets of my personality to be more prominent, whether that is through flirting, taking leadership, or being a practical joker. It's all part of who I am. It just seems a bit more intense when you don't have all the other facets of my personality to counterbalance the impression.
I err on the side of caution when posting, and will often soften what I'm really thinking because of the fact that people can so easily misinterpret the written word. And I still get misunderstood on a frequent basis, especially on the other side of Hatrack. Which is why I don't post there anymore. I'm tired of getting jumped on by twenty insane people for what I think are completely innocent remarks.
All that to say, that in real life I'm much more likely to speak my mind openly than online. Among my close friends, I don't hold back or pull punches (though I simply won't bring up subjects that we've agreed to disagree about).
And I think I apologize a lot online, too. Probably too much. Oh well.
What do you mean other side of Hatrack?
Is there a dark, brutal part I missed?
Anyway, people rarely (if ever -- it's been 30, 40 years since I read the novel) had physical contact with other people even on their own world. They had an internet sort of thing going. More like tv phones, but similar.
What I'm getting at is how this internet busniness is fostering a lack of people's ability to interact in normal social situations. I'm seeing it in my shy daughter who loves to get on the internet with her friends rather than getting to together and doing something with them in normal life.
Was/is Asimov right?
[This message has been edited by arriki (edited May 26, 2006).]
The "other side" of Hatrack is BFF&C and DAOSC. I don't go there very often. I went once when I heard that Card got chased off the forum (he had, but he eventually came back) and another time before that after watching episode 22 of Madlax for the first time. Before that doesn't count, since it was prior to the UBB upgrades. As indicated by the fact that I only go there when I'm either insane or really angry about something (did you hear about the time they chased OSC off the forum?), it's not a place I where I'd like to hang out.
As for Asimov, the internet is simply changing what constitutes a "normal" social situation. Back before clothes were invented, it was totally normal to be naked with complete strangers. Back before arguing was invented, it was totally normal to beat the hell out of anyone who disagreed with you. I'm relatively comfortable with both (as long as no women are present ), but that doesn't mean I consider them to still be normal in modern society.
I was willing to argue to my heart's content and to theirs...but I got the feeling that the moderators, who participated in these arguments, also controlled them. More often than not, I felt I was being shouted down. With one thing or another, without even a formal announcement, I just stopped showing up. (You may gather what you will from the fact that the arguments that cheesed both me and them off were over politics.)
I suppose moderators are necessary---I mean, somebody has to keep conversation polite and not obscene and to keep trolls and other riffraff at bay---but I'd hate to wind up in a similar situation again.
(Hmm...I wonder if I should check out the other forums---fora?---'round here.)
*****
As I recall "The Naked Sun," interacting by video conference was the normal social situation in that particular world...physical contact was seen as something, well, dirty, though not quite in the normal sense of the word. The detective / protagonist uses this to great effect in his investigation, while struggling with his own, different, complexes and hangups.
That's exactly what I meant -- how the internet seems to foster something akin to that reaction to physical contact.
Speaking of which, "fora" is listed as an alternative plural. But don't use it, that just makes you sound really geeky and mockworth. Like that guy who told Trump that the show wasn't called "The Apprenti". Apparently Trump now has a group of helpers for the show that he calls his "Apprenti". Though at least with "fora" people can look it up in some dictionaries and see that it is a "real" word.
I think that moderators can fulfil their duty to keep the forum on topic without taking sides on off-topic issues, and can shut down an off-topic tear without getting into who's right and who's wrong. KDW does this all the time when the topic turns that way around here. On the other hand, moderators also have a responsibility to help define the community, if someone is posting "on topic" but saying things that are completely incompatable with the vison of the community, I see no problem with the moderators stepping in and stating the community position.
For instance, if we were in a forum for breast cancer survivors, and some person was arguing that breast cancer was a fictional illness that served as a socially acceptable excuse for women to start down the road to transgender surgury...I would hope that the moderators would step in and say that the community position was that breast cancer was a real disease and mascectomy was a legitimate medical procedure that had prevented horrible deaths for many members of the forum. I don't think that the point should be open to argument on a forum for a community of breast cancer survivors.
Take a less extreme example and plug us into the equation. If someone comes around here talking about how we're all a bunch of wannabe writers who don't have a chance in hell of getting published or making a difference in the world, we show them the door and KDW takes our side. It may be arguable that some of us aren't published yet, and even that some of us are a long ways away it. But even if the poster were entirely correct, it still wouldn't be in keeping with the goals of this forum.
On the other hand, supposed that we had different moderators who tolerated off-topic arguments as long as their side appeared to be winning, or went ahead and persecuted members who disagreed with them about various topics. Yeah, that would really kind of suck, even for some of us who might agree with those moderators about many things.
Ultimately, every forum has moderators. Whether or not they are official depends on whether those with the power to institute an official moderator choose to set up a moderator with that power. There are forums where the official regulation is so slack that unofficial moderators rule. Lacking official methods and the restraint of being answerable to a higher authority, these moderators are usually tyrannical in the extreme. So official moderators are a good idea. But there are right ways and wrong ways to do it.
On that previous board I mentioned, we did have a few people who, apparently, showed up from time to time for the joy of complaining about everyone else. Occasionally they were fun to read...but mostly not. I'd hate for *that* to happen here.
I was a little concerned with Kathleen's Double Identity. I can certainly see how that would be useful---after all, moderators / posters who forgot which hat they were wearing was one of the problems I had. But I'd also hate to get into a knock-down drag-out argument with Kathleen and not know it was her...
After all, assuming that you're okay with getting into an all-out argument with anyone here, it's someone....
Maybe that wasn't so clear. I suppose that the rule is to not engage in any argumentative tactic that you would feel bad about using on KDW's secret identity.
Hadn't thought of using my "secret" identity so I could argue with people.
Mainly it's so that I can offer feedback without risking that people will think it has any extra "authority" behind it because it's from me. I don't offer to read anyone's work in F&F as the adminstrator because I can't do that for everyone--not enough time, not enough energy. It's an attempt at being fair.
Also, that way I feel can ask for feedback on something I've written and not have to worry about anyone being too intimidated to volunteer.
Besides that, I've known Kathleen for a long time, long before I ever thought of coming here and posting---and it was Kathleen that set that off, too. I'd hate to ruin all that...
I'd be reluctant to use Wikipedia as a primary source without verification...
I've done a lot of reading and know a little about a godawful lot of stuff---but I usually want to know a little more to write about something and not sound like I'm shoveling it---even if I am, like when I talk about writing 'round here. (Once I wanted to know something about gold mining---I wanted to look like I had done more research than just watched "The Gold Rush" and "North to Alaska"---and, right off, found some blueprints for a sluice that dovetailed right into my story.)
I can't say I've found an error in the Brittanica or any regular encyclopedia (I don't use Wikipedia often enough to be sure of it), but I find errors in non-fiction books all the time. Take everything you read with a grain of salt, that's all I can say...
My set of Britannica has volume 3 bound into the cover of volume 1, as well as in volume 3. So, errors of that sort are always possible.