Our video features a typical university student Alice in a setting where there is a collision between the real world and the virtual world. In the real world, she is immersed in stacks of scholastic readings which undoubtedly will enhance the success in her academic trajectories. It is likely that intellectual achievement is important in her culture. When Alice came home exhausted, she did not talk to anyone, but plunged right into the virtual world of Twitter, where possible relationships with strangers await. I can relate her story to Coleman and Shirky’s concept of “X-Reality” (2011: 19). In Alice’s universe, there is a constant crossing of her reality with her virtual reality. For every virtual reality, there is a reality behind it. Alice’s brought up probably shapes the culture of her reality. This culture continuously traverses to build her virtual reality, her expectation from the digital community. The feedback from her interactions with the digital world in turn impacts her reality. The culture is evolving, with real and virtual realities inter-twined and influencing each other (Coleman and Shirky). Under this environment, the generation of independent, successful, tech savvy university student is nurtured.
The cohorts from this generation, like all human beings, crave for acceptance. According to Bugeja, we all desire to belong somewhere (1). Belonging to the virtual world has its advantage. Alice can close the door to socializing if she chooses to turn off her phone. She can explore intimacy in the virtual world, but retreat to her privacy of the physical world by the flip of a switch. She is in an environment where she can be a loner, yet not alone (Turkle).
The relationship in the virtual world, however, cannot replace the compassion which only human interface can offer, like that of a face-to-face relationship. I can reflect that over 40 years ago I had 3 room-mates while attending the University of Hawaii. We had someone to talk to when we came home. The human interface led to life-long friendships. Next week we will chat via a 4-way Skype video conference, only because face-to-face is no longer feasible for us as we now live in Honolulu, San Jose, Toronto, and Waterloo.
Abbie Ho 20701760
Works Cited
Bugeja, Michael. “The Need to belong.” Interpersonal Divide in the Age of the Machine. University Press, 2018.
Coleman, B., and Clay Shirky. Hello Avatar : Rise of the Networked Generation, MIT Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/waterloo/detail.action?docID=3339340.
Turkle, Sherry. “Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self.” Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies. Ed. James E. Katz. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
ENGL 108D 