Democracy- A Click Away

After reading, "New Technologies, Old Culture: A Look at Women, Gender, and the Internet in Kuwait," for my Com 435 class, I quickly realized just how important the internet is for people, women specifically in this case, and how the medium provides an area to throw aside gender stereotypes and expectations, and say what you truly want to say. Whether it be the veil of anonymity the internet provides, or the available access to share opinions, the internet has definitely provided a more democratic landscape for women to escape the stigmas of a patriarchal society and express their thoughts.
Even in my day to day life, I look for answers and suggestions from online sites such as, Wiki-answers and Yahoo Answers where individuals are able to ask and answer using anonymous identities or acronyms. In Kuwait, where women are much more hesitant to give advice and information on topics stemming from the gender expectations of their society where women are not expected or asked for advice from males even though they may know quite well what the answer is, the internet provides a space and channel for females to do so.

Gaming...duhn, duhn, duhnnnn

While games carry many connotations including happiness, fun, and adventure, or on the negative side...wasting time, and spurring violence, there is definitely a more serious side that people do not always associate with gaming. For instance, many games offer educational experiences, messages (i.e. health, ethical, and social) and social interaction. Games also help to develop motor skills, and stimulate brain activity.

While many people jokingly make fun of the "gamers," little do they know that these so called, gamers, are actually learning and making their brains work... for fun!

Geocaching

This Wednesday our 11:30 class participated in the geocaching contest. Before going out into the field, the field reporters communicated their contact information with the central reporting unit so we could send information both ways. The devices we used were cell phones and their capabilities such as picture messaging and internet connection, as well as walkie talkies and a video recorder. Using these technologies the field reporters were able to communicate back to the central unit on their locations and the clues they obtained. It was easy to see how important these communication devices really are. The ability to take a picture and send them proved to be very helpful in conveying a message. The old saying of “a picture speaks a thousand words,” couldn’t be more true, and in working together as a team to figure out a solution, the sending of pictures through mobile devices definitely helped. It was quite evident by the end of the class that the more use of effective communication the better.

Wikipedia

My freshman year of college I was fortunate enough to have a teacher who assigned the project of creating a Wikipedia entry. At the time, I was unaware of Wikipedia so it was a great learning project. I chose to write my submission about vintage warbird restoration because my father had been restoring airplanes for years, and I had payed attention.
Wikipedia did not have this subject or really anything else close at the time so it was a good opportunity to bring awarness and insight to warbird restoration.

Despite the bad rap Wikipedia gets about being a bad resource to use, I was absolutely impressed by how thorough the Wiki staff was at checking my sources and editing my work. Within a week, several different users had added more concrete information to the page.

With this in mind, the notion that Wikipedia creates a somewhat Democratic playing field for people to share their expertise is absolutely true. I would much rather learn about something as indepth as warbird restoration from people who are in and around it then from someone who has only researched the subject and has no first hand experience.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vintage_warbird_restoration