Week 11 Presentation - Work & Play

This week lecture cover two aspects of advanced technology, they are Work and Play. However, our presentation will have a larger focus on Work.

Nowadays, most women participate in workforce, and advanced technology provides women to have a wider range of choice on where and when to work. The reading titled “The Normalization of Flexible Female Labor in the Information Economy”. The main focus of this article is to question the impact of flexible working economy for women as directing women to have family & work advance in society. When information communication technology is developed from day by day, the reading suggested us to look at how technology could cooperate with businesswoman. Besides it questions the impact of this kind of flexible working economy for women, re-think their participation in work force and the meaning of ‘work’.

There are some points that are important in this article which are dualities, second shift and flexibility. These key words have a very close relationship with technology and businesswomen.

Based on the content of lecture 1, dualities are just human’s construction that is forced upon us. Things are needed to be distinguish to the extremity meaning, for example, body/ mind, human/ machine or nature/ culture. However the existence of cyborg could break down the dualities, this consequence is much like the dualities between work and home. Because when technology allows people to choice when and when to work, the meaning of private and public is become blur when people choose to do their business at home.

For the ‘second shift’, it has a greater connection with working women. When Moms choose work from home, on one hand, they work, on the other hand, they have to take care of children or do the family work. This is so called ‘second shift’ which means they are having two jobs at the same.

Is it a real flexibility for women? Maybe not.

Because the women who choose work from home, people will think that they should also take care of children. In society, it is already assume women as the primary care-giver in family relationships. Therefore, the ‘choice’, the ‘flexibility’ are just to reinforce the practices of gender division of labor in family & society.

This assumption is always shown in advertising. The following video is an example - 'Netvigator home wireless':

What’s your opinion of the position of the Mom & Dad in the video?

You may discuss by starting think of below question:

1. What does “work” means in your mind? (when, where, what, who, how)

2. What are the differences between mom and dad? And how do you feel that?

3. Is technology helping women to be more self-determination? Are women now having more bargaining power to be what they want to be?

4. Does advanced technology change women identity in workplace? Can it be able to reconstruct the gender identity or make it worst?

5. When the moms are being symbolized as a “work at home mom” and deal with two jobs at the same time. What boundaries does it break down or blur?

6. What social attitudes towards gender roles does it produce?

By
Joey Wong
Ashley Wong

News Story Reflection - Wong Yat Sing

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-13062379

I found a news in bbc which is talking about the cyber stalking. The title is "Police warn cyber stalking is increasing in West Mercia". In the article, the US police mentioned that the case of cyber stalking was increasing during these years. According to the article, there were over 500 cases of cyber stalking reported in 2010 while there were only around 300 in 2009.It showed that the situation is becoming worse and worse as Det Supt Williamson said.

He also mentioned that the cases of the cyber stalking will keep increasing and the problem will get worse and it will become serious too.

I think it is because the internet nowadays have already developed very well. It also provide so much freedom for the people to do whatever they want in internet.The people were willing to share their personal information to the public. The criminal can get the personal information of the stalking victims easily. Also,it still does not have a general law to protect the internet safe.

So i think that the people should protect their own personal information well in the internet and do not upload the important personal information to the internet easily.Moreover, i think the government should create some laws to protect the online personal information. So that the criminal will not get the victims' personal information easily and the cyber stalking will be improved.

News story reflection - Audrey Tang

Meet the real-life human cyborgs

The news raised up that the close relationship between humans and machines. Nowadays, the sufficient technique of technology is enough to be able used in human body, especially the side of medical science, it facilitates a lot of patients, even can convenient, be facilitated on their daily life as well, those can bring them up the hope and to be desirous of life. What is more, we have become cyborgs unwittingly or necessarily. This article cites four peoples who have physical defects and to try to different applications of technology, applied those tools of technological of medicine for the external on their own body.

Stelios Arcadiou, who has the extra ear and it is grown in a lab from cells, and he claimed that, “....My attitude is that technology is, and always has been, an appendage of the body.”; Rob Spence, who is the cyborg, have a “All-seeing eye”, he used the video camera to implant in his false eye; Jerry Jalava, because of the motorbike accident, he installed the prosthetic finger and to turn it in a USB drive, included the programs, like Linux; Kevin Warwick, who has a robot arms and he decided to use the radio chips to link his skin and central nervous system. Moreover, the prosthetics for amputees can works like a real limbs with the myo-electric prosthetics. The amputees can response the nerve signals and operate the digits through the sensors.

In the twenty-first century, the human beings enter a "post-human" of period. The human would like to makeup, make the tattoos, foot binding, and so on to change the appearance of the body in the past. But now, we may use of surgery, reproduction, gene modification and implantation of mechanical to “create” our body, even could change the gender. In the development of high technology, as machine, always gives a cold, hard, lifeless feeling, and now, it can replace the body organs, which must is the extremely valuable tool for the doctors or researchers. Through technology to be a guidance system that assist the surgery, improve the quality of health care system, so that the mechanical and medical can achieve an effective combination. This is the great benefit to human undoubtedly, besides, the rate of cyborgs will also increase and emergence. Specially, the human can use the computer's “memory” to access “files”, we can not live without mechanical and the lines between human and machine become blur and vague increasingly.

News article : http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/meet-the-real-life-human-cyborgs-600543?artc_pg=1

Newstory Reflection - Anna Ng

Do you want to have a perfect virtual girlfriend? Cloud Girlfriend can help you to do so. By just defining the type of girl that you like, the web will help you bring “her” into existence, which is creating a fake Facebook account with a detailed profile. “She” will keep a public long distance with you by leaving messages on your Facebook, and at the same time, you can reply her messages too. It sounds an interesting idea.

The CEO of this company, David Fuhriman, believed that this new service can act as a platform for people to build up their confidence, especially for those who do not have girlfriend in reality. After they thought that they are able to manage a relationship, they can try matching online and find their ideal partner. The real profile of the user will only be sent unless both sides agreed to be friends.

In my opinion, finding an ideal person to have long-term relationship in reality through online community is an unrestrained and vigorous thought. I think the information provided by others is not trustable. How can we ensure the real profile using by the others are REAL? Due to the rapid development of the internet, people can make use of its characteristics to create new identities for themselves. They may shape an ideal self to fulfill the defects in reality and individual Traits can easily be concealed. There is a significant difference between face-to-face communication and online interaction. Texts are commonly used in online communication; however, throughout this mode of communication, there is lack of non-verbal clues to measure the authenticity of the profiles of that person.

To a certain extent, I agreed these kinds of services may build up self-confidence of some people. We have different social roles in daily life. The things that we do are restricted by norms and standards in the society and family. Sometimes, it may be hard for people to obtain identification towards the identity.
As we are in the post-modern society, more people accepted the idea of multiple identities. It appears that there are no constraints in the internet. This leads the internet network become a place for people explore self-construction.

However, I have a doubt in how the interaction with virtual girlfriend trains up one’s confidence. I cannot think of any reasons to support this since the messages from virtual girlfriend are only sort out by an artificial intelligence system and not required any real people to sitting in front of the computers to talk with.

Finding fantasy dates
http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Cloud-Girlfriend-to-deliver-the-perfect-partner-1339324.php

News story reflection by Michael Wan

A Twitter Knockoff Has China Talking

The news is about Sina Weibo took advantage of a social media vacuum to become the top micro-blogging service in China.

Weibo has become part of life of many Chinese. More than 50 million Chinese are the weibo users. It is a micro-blogging service provided by Sina. I would comment it as twitter in Chinese style. A lot of friends around me created their own Weibo accounts and become every bloggers. They usually post the short messages. Also, they love checking the status of the celebrities by becoming the “followers” of the famous stars- in order to get topic to gossip with friends. In fact, Sina uses this practice as a gimmick to attract new user.

However, can weibo users enjoy the freedom of speech under the straight censorship of Chinese government? For example, when the weibo users write message about Tiananmen Square protests, their passage will be automatic deleted as the content is sensitive. Although a lot of users complained about that practice, censorship still takes place nowadays. A lot of people know the consequence of violating the rules of the Communist Party when they see nobel peace prize winner Liu xiaobo is now in jail. In the modern countries like the U.S, Britain and other developed countries, bloggers can have right to express what they think and feel. It is sad that the Chinese government try to control the thinking of the citizens by using backward practice. I agree that Sina Weibo users' toleration of its censorship practice will determine the living space of weibo.

Are blogs journalism? I think it can’t be applied in China. As I mentioned before, there is a strict censorship in China, it is common to see Chinese government to conceal the fact in many cases. Moreover, even the trained reporters in China will create “fake news” to boost sales volume, how can we trust the news reported by normal bloggers which without watchdog? In my opinion, the passages posted on weibo can be the source of news for journalists, but only suitable for the entertainment news. Can we say weibo is blog? I won’t agree it is a blog as it can’t provide a place for people to enjoy freedom of speech.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_09/b4217039139980.htm