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Dear Everyone,
Many thanks for your coming today; we've reached our largest number of participants so far since the event started in Nov. 2008. And we want to express our special gratitude to Dr. Bu Qingxiu, from School of Law, Queen's University Belfast (QUB), for his coming and participation. Hopefully we will release the newsletter on next Monday. For the next time we will be focusing on the topic of "Virtual Reality / Digital Avatar". Thanks again for all your excellent contributions to the wonderful collaborative work today. We are looking forward to seeing you all again next month.
Best regards,
Jin Shang
31/03/2009
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Event: Creative Cuppa 5th Coffee Meetup (completed & newsletter coming out soon ... )
Theme: Virtual Community/Online Community
Time: 12:00pm - 13:00pm (31st March 2009)
Venue: 526 KEB (Ken Edwards Building), City Campus, University of Leicester
Event Coordinator: Jin Shang
Event description: by Jin Shang
'We are impelled to relate with each other for our survival. But we do not yet relate with the inclusivity, realism, self-awareness, vulnerability, commitment, openness, freedom, equality, and love of genuine community. It is clearly no longer enough to be simply social animals, babbling together at cocktail parties and brawling with each other in business and over boundaries. It is our task -- our essential, central, crucial task -- to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures. It is the only way that human evolution will be able to proceed.' (M. Scott Peck, 1998)
If 'digital identity' is considered as the identity of different individuals online, then 'virtual community' could be seen as the identity of different groups of individuals online. In fact, very few people can really 'survive' without connecting with other people in the 'real world', and so it is the same in the virtual one. A 'virtual community' usually refers to a group of people who 'use computers to communicate, form friendships that sometimes form the basis of communities'; and, the way it's been organized has indeed infiltrated and changed our real world. (Howard Rheingold, 1993)
This time we will be looking at the phenomenon of 'virtual community/online community'. You could share with others your different experiences and ideas getting involved in this special form of online grouping, and discuss any issues you feel relevant to your interests. Everyone is welcome. This is an informal and interdisciplinary event. Being with us, you should always find someone to share your thoughts with. Beverage & snacks are served for free. You can pop in and drop out anytime. The most important thing is that you feel fun, relax, and really enjoying being with every one of us.
http://creativecuppa.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=66646084584
Creative Cuppa
28/03/2009
Monday, 30 March 2009
Monday, 2 March 2009
Newsletter for 4th Creative Cuppa Meet-up
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On the 25th Feb, Creative Cuppa held its 4th meet-up in Group Study room 2.2 of the David Wilson Library. Many thanks to Hao Zhang, Chih-Jung Fan, Amit Chandraker, Li Jun Zhang, Taslim Yakub, Mokhtar Elareshi, and Sarah Cameron for coming and for their active participation in the discussion. We would like to express our special gratitude to Prof. Barrie Gunter for this coming today; his constructive ideas have improved the overall quality of the discussion. Today’s discussion was focused on the topic of “digital identity”, which has become a very important issue to any users of the Internet. Also many thanks to Tony O'Tierney, from the School of Management, who served as the Event-Coordinator for the 4th Meet-Up of Creative Cuppa. Although a little “out-of-plan”, his flexibility to cope with “change” was very impressive.
After a short video clip show, our discussion started with the different personal experiences related to social networking websites. In fact, most people have many different experiences of websites such as Facebook and Twitter, but not everyone has seriously thought about the way in which they identify themselves. Are they just themselves; or do they play a role that is very different from whom they are in a real life? Actually, the latest web technology ( dubbed 'web2.0' ), has indeed further extended the body of a “man”; not only extending the range of their physical activities, but also breaking up and “extending” or “expanding” the effect of their differentiated personalities. Therefore, it is important to understand that “digital identity” would rather be considered as a cognitive system than the segmented facets of self-awareness.
Built upon that, there is another practical concern about “online identity”, which is the avoidance of fake information for identifying people’s online status. People don’t tend to put their real information online for various reasons, for instance, they may want to avoid being monitored by some groups; or they themselves may have something to cover up for certain purposes. However, this has raised a debate on the validity of “digital identity”. As discussed earlier, if digital identity is considered as an extension of man, then fake information has to be taken as one the great challenges to such a practice, because it has surpassed the rationale for the development of online identities. Therefore, the conception of “digital identity” has to be critically examined before it is taken into analysis in research work.
Apart from that, data security also aroused some interest, because people do care about the privacy of their personal information online and they want to make sure that their personal data won’t be used for business or improper purposes. Finally, the discussion was linked to another question; that is whether or not online identity should be considered as an inseparable part of physical persons. In fact, there are some people who achieve fame via their online identity. This may lead to problems with their virtual status being abused by others; therefore, it is really important to stress the relevant concerns when making policies so that the virtual identity can be protected.
Generally, although being affected with more or less unpredictable minor incidents, the meet-up still could be seen as a successful experience because it has provided a valuable opportunity for the interested people to share and to brainstorm on those key issues or main concerns related to the topic of digital, or network, identity. Next time, our discussion will be focused on the topic of online "virtual communities", which could be seen as a continuation of the discussion on network identity, since it examines a collaborative work emerging from the online identities of different people. Again, thanks for all your active participation and wonderful contributions to Creative Cuppa. We’re looking forward to your coming next time!
Video links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BhEj-tI66E (I.D. / self :: the new "real")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKFK0d2OVJU (online identity)
Creative Cuppa
02/03/2009
http://creativecuppa.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60675201456
On the 25th Feb, Creative Cuppa held its 4th meet-up in Group Study room 2.2 of the David Wilson Library. Many thanks to Hao Zhang, Chih-Jung Fan, Amit Chandraker, Li Jun Zhang, Taslim Yakub, Mokhtar Elareshi, and Sarah Cameron for coming and for their active participation in the discussion. We would like to express our special gratitude to Prof. Barrie Gunter for this coming today; his constructive ideas have improved the overall quality of the discussion. Today’s discussion was focused on the topic of “digital identity”, which has become a very important issue to any users of the Internet. Also many thanks to Tony O'Tierney, from the School of Management, who served as the Event-Coordinator for the 4th Meet-Up of Creative Cuppa. Although a little “out-of-plan”, his flexibility to cope with “change” was very impressive.
After a short video clip show, our discussion started with the different personal experiences related to social networking websites. In fact, most people have many different experiences of websites such as Facebook and Twitter, but not everyone has seriously thought about the way in which they identify themselves. Are they just themselves; or do they play a role that is very different from whom they are in a real life? Actually, the latest web technology ( dubbed 'web2.0' ), has indeed further extended the body of a “man”; not only extending the range of their physical activities, but also breaking up and “extending” or “expanding” the effect of their differentiated personalities. Therefore, it is important to understand that “digital identity” would rather be considered as a cognitive system than the segmented facets of self-awareness.
Built upon that, there is another practical concern about “online identity”, which is the avoidance of fake information for identifying people’s online status. People don’t tend to put their real information online for various reasons, for instance, they may want to avoid being monitored by some groups; or they themselves may have something to cover up for certain purposes. However, this has raised a debate on the validity of “digital identity”. As discussed earlier, if digital identity is considered as an extension of man, then fake information has to be taken as one the great challenges to such a practice, because it has surpassed the rationale for the development of online identities. Therefore, the conception of “digital identity” has to be critically examined before it is taken into analysis in research work.
Apart from that, data security also aroused some interest, because people do care about the privacy of their personal information online and they want to make sure that their personal data won’t be used for business or improper purposes. Finally, the discussion was linked to another question; that is whether or not online identity should be considered as an inseparable part of physical persons. In fact, there are some people who achieve fame via their online identity. This may lead to problems with their virtual status being abused by others; therefore, it is really important to stress the relevant concerns when making policies so that the virtual identity can be protected.
Generally, although being affected with more or less unpredictable minor incidents, the meet-up still could be seen as a successful experience because it has provided a valuable opportunity for the interested people to share and to brainstorm on those key issues or main concerns related to the topic of digital, or network, identity. Next time, our discussion will be focused on the topic of online "virtual communities", which could be seen as a continuation of the discussion on network identity, since it examines a collaborative work emerging from the online identities of different people. Again, thanks for all your active participation and wonderful contributions to Creative Cuppa. We’re looking forward to your coming next time!
Video links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BhEj-tI66E (I.D. / self :: the new "real")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKFK0d2OVJU (online identity)
Creative Cuppa
02/03/2009
http://creativecuppa.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60675201456
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