Final Response

Blog Response
I really liked the setting of this class it was my first online experience and I can strongly say that I really enjoyed it and that I plan on taking more online classes in the future. I learned a lot in this class like how to download cool fonts and make artwork out of them on Microsoft word. I learned how to read and analyze scholarly journals and make a paper out of them. I learned how to make my ideas flow from one paragraph to another. I also enjoyed doing Module I going around my city and taking pictures of the things that are affection our community and showing them to others to come up with a way to solve these issues. What I liked to do the most is commenting on other people’s projects not so much essays I wasn’t a big fan of checking those but I really liked the pictures and the creative ideas of others. If we had more time I would have liked to have online conversations and discussions about the book that we had to read. This way we would have heard the input of others and they would have heard out input as well. Reading the novel at home it was a very lonesome experience and doing the responses was very lonesome as well. I am not sure what I am going to do with my blog after this class, I never really had a blog before this class because I didn’t find much of a good use for it. I haven’t decided if I want to keep it and post other things on it and make it open to my friends and things like that. I also might stop using it and start using it again in the future at some point in time. I enjoyed this class overall the assignments were very organized and thought out, even though we were having difficulty getting our class started through ctool since many were new to the system. In the end everything worked out and we finished the semester in a great way!

Reading Responses

Michelle Gutierrez
Professor Yerks
Comp 106
14 December 2008
Reading Response
2. I think that Coupland is trying to get us to think more in depth about what our technology is really composed of. Like on page 19-20 we are introduced with random symbols Coupland says “real language decomposes into ecryptian code” this is followed by a full page of random symbols and digits. I interpreted this as he wanting us to understand that everything is broken down into smaller components. Coupland did this throughout the whole book; he might want to let us know that it’s not just as easy as sending an e-mail or writing a journal. There are much more complex things in life and people don’t even realize it. They could also be internal expression such as when Dan decided to write random words any that came to his head(44-48 Coupland). This could also be something that happens to all of us subconsciously and w don’t express it because we don’t realize its happening to us. I think this made the book much more interesting for the reader because it gave us many more thing to think about in terms of how we express ourselves and the things that are actually going in our heads. This was a very well used strategy by Coupland that made us analyze the text in depth and with much more critical thinking that we would have used otherwise.
3. The characters throughout the text used phrases such as “Ich bin ein Flatlander” or “four personality-free gray microsoftmobiles” or “two Microsoft works PC inflatable beach cushions” (7 Coupland). I think that these characters express themselves in such ways because that is how much the workplace has overtaken their lives. Now even their everyday normal lives are being somehow related to work related things; even to describe you how or what you will be eating tomorrow it has to become into this much more complex description. I think this somehow relates to everyone because even I do it sometimes things that I would normally do or say at work I would end up doing the same thing when I was out of work. This is something that we do not notice that we do it just happens, and if someone happens to point it out to us is the only time we come to realize that we are doing this. While I was reading the book I had t reread many sentences because I didn’t quite understand what was going on. I had to go back and see if the character was describing a situation at work or at home. I think that this affects others in a way that makes them analyze and pay much more attention to the actual conversation that is taking place. It makes people think more in depth about what the other person is actually saying versus just having a regular conversation without having to put so much thought into it.
5. I think that a better way to explain what Karla means when she talks about Artificial Intelligence is by something that Dan said “what if machines do have a subconscious of their own? What if machines right now are like human babies, which have brains but no way of expressing themselves except screaming (crashing)?” This basically means that eventually machines will have a mind of their own and operate without any human help. We could just give it a command and it will listen without having to do the task ourselves. Computers will take in its own information and learn for themselves and their mistakes becoming more perfect over time. I am not really too sure that computers will have a mind of their own or have subconscious thoughts one day. I don’t know I might be closed minded or that idea just seems to crazy to be true. I think that if something like that were to happen it would be a very scary thought because how would we know that they wouldn’t try to take humans over and try to control us. Ever since early times humankind has controlled machines and the extent to which we build them but what if the tables turned. Like I said in my head an idea like this does not fit because it just seems impossible that something like this would happen.

250 Word Response

On the outline of my paper I had many ideas that I was going to put on my paper but they were not well elaborated. What I did on my final draft was well elaborate my ideas and see if they were going to fit in to the point of my paper. For example, I had planned to make two different paragraphs one for sex drives and another for sexual attractions; in the end they both served better as one paragraph only. I combined both ideas and made one informative paragraph. Basically I reviewed my own work because no one commented on my paper so I fixed it based on my own criteria and I had a couple people that are not in our class read it for me, but other than them I didn’t get much feedback from my classmates.
The context of my paper is pretty much the same as I had planned it out from the beginning all of the adjustments were minor. The things that I changed were replace some words for others for example I replaced smaller words for larger more descriptive words. I reread the articles I was using a couple of times I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave any important points out and I got the right ideas. I had a hard time with my conclusion so I noted down some ideas and when I had it down my friend helped me elaborate on it and came up with a conclusion.

250 Word Response

On the outline of my paper I had many ideas that I was going to put on my paper but they were not well elaborated. What I did on my final draft was well elaborate my ideas and see if they were going to fit in to the point of my paper. For example, I had planned to make two different paragraphs one for sex drives and another for sexual attractions; in the end they both served better as one paragraph only. I combined both ideas and made one informative paragraph. Basically I reviewed my own work because no one commented on my paper so I fixed it based on my own criteria and I had a couple people that are not in our class read it for me, but other than them I didn’t get much feedback from my classmates.
The context of my paper is pretty much the same as I had planned it out from the beginning all of the adjustments were minor. The things that I changed were replace some words for others for example I replaced smaller words for larger more descriptive words. I reread the articles I was using a couple of times I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave any important points out and I got the right ideas. I had a hard time with my conclusion so I noted down some ideas and when I had it down my friend helped me elaborate on it and came up with a conclusion.

Outline

Outline

I. Introduction
a. There are many similarities and differences between heterosexuals and bisexuals like:
i. Sex drives – what sexually drives heterosexuals and bisexuals
ii. Sexual attractions- what is sexually attractive to heterosexuals and bisexuals

b. There also many personal opinions on these topics
i. What heterosexuals feel about bisexual men and women all around America?

c. There are different factors that influence bisexuals that do not influence heterosexual.
i. Higher Substance use rates

II. Body
a. Sex Drives
i. For females high sex drives associate with both males and females
1. Depending if preference is stronger for one than the other
ii. For males high sex drives associate with one gender only
1. Depending on their sexual preferences

b. Sexual attractions
i. Have high correlations with sex drives
ii. Depend on sexual orientation of men and women
iii. Could be gay, straight, lesbian or bisexual
c. Attitudes
i. Negative Attitudes
1. Higher Age
2. Less Education
3. Lower annual income
4. Reside in southern rural areas
5. Higher religiosity
ii. Positive Attitudes
1. Expressed by white heterosexual women
2. Men are more acceptant of female bisexuals
d. Influences
i. Higher substance use among bisexuals
1. Adolescence
a. Current and solitary substance users
b. Stronger pro-drug beliefs
c. Parental approval
d. Peer encouragement
2. Only applies to females
ii. Less substance use among heterosexual
1. Only applies to females
III. Conclusion
a. Restate differences
b. Closing remarks
IV. References
a. Richard A. Lippa. “The Relation between Sex and Sexual attraction to men and women: A cross-national study of Heterosexual, Bisexual, and Homosexual men and women.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 36.2(2007): 264-275.
b. Gregory M Herek. “Heterosexuals’ attitudes toward Bisexual men and women in the United States.” The Journal of Sex Research 39.4(2002): 264-275.
c. Tucker S. Joan et al. “Understanding Differences in Substance use Among Bisexual and Heterosexual young women.” Women’s Health Issues 18.5(2008): 387-398.

Disscusion questions

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think MySpace profiles are “social portraits”? Is this a way for people to express who they really are or is this a way to express themselves how they think others want them to be? Is this a way to be accepted by others to be liked and seem normal? In the article Gender Differences in “Social Portraits” Reflected in MySpace Profiles it says “MySpace is a social networking…it offers each user a network of friends” but do users make these friends based on their true selves or based on other factors that have nothing to do with who they really are?

2. Do male identities revolve more around themselves than do females? Do females tend to include their significant others in order to describe their self identities? Do males see their significant other as just another component in their life that does not define their identity? What would be some reasons for this? What do you think defines yourself identity? If you don’t have a significant other do you think that if you had one they would become part of yourself identity? Why or why not?


3. What plays a bigger role in identity formations, relationships with family members, influence from peers, personal ambitions or your significant other? Where do all of the other factors stand, what kind of influences do they have?


4. Do MySpace pages help us study differences in male and female personal views? How realistic and reliable do you think a MySpace page is? Do you have a MySpace page? Why or why not? Are you honest in the thoughts and ideas that you include in it? Do you think others are honest with the information that they supply on their page? Why or why not?

5. According to Erving Goffman “users’ presentations of self by means of networking websites provide a rich source of conventionalized communicative symbols that reveal the social construction of realty…” What do you make of this statement? Do you think that a website like this that promotes social reality can be dangerous for young people to use? If so in what way? If not why? Is this cause that many people parents especially try to make their children avoid encounters with these types of websites such as MySpace?

Experiment

MySpace: The relationship between males and females when talking about their significant other and their sense of “self”.

What: I will create a MySpace page that current non-private users can upgrade to. This new page will contain many more features that will enable its user to talk more about his/her significant other. For example, it will have a section that says “All about my significant other and me”, “a picture of me and my significant other and my thoughts on it”, “What me and my significant other love to do together”. It will be up to the user whether to upgrade or not. Before they choose to upgrade the new page will be explained to them and the new features will be highlighted to make sure they are aware of them.
Who: I will run this study on 18 to 25 year olds because I think that this age group is most likely to actually have a MySpace page and to be in a relationship that is not necessarily permanent and be either in favor of their own self identity without including their loved one or in order to talk about their self identity they have to include their significant other.
When: I think I that I will make these upgrade options available to the users many times during the course of one day, to make sure that they are logged on and are actually aware of the option and in case they do not accept to upgrade but change their minds later on, I will do this for about a month to make sure that I get a good number of people to make my results more reliable.
Where: I will conduct this study from my lab and my computer I will also review the results in my lab.
Why: This experiment will allow us to measure two things; one is we will be able to see how many users actually want to upgrade to this new page once they realize that it has more sections where they can include their significant other rather than themselves only. The second thing is that those who do upgrade to this new page will have to fill in these new sections about their significant other and themselves; based on the responses they give we will be able to see if they talk about their significant other as part of their self identity and who they are or if they talk about them as just something more in their life that does not influence their idea of “self”.