Response 2—ElliotC

From the index of past autobotographies (saved link), I selected two that had abstracts that intrigued me. The first is “Redirecting My Procrastination” (saved link). This project interests me because procrastination adversely affects my ability to perform well in the pursuit of the goals I set for myself, and seeing the ways others have used new media strategies to work through this challenge could be personally valuable to me. That said, the author of this project seems to have a different experience of procrastination than I do (theirs seems to be rooted in boredom, while I am pretty much never bored by the things I work on, and instead just run out of energy and just feel like watching a movie or going to sleep). Their proposal is to produce three creative works monthly. This project seems similar to events like Record Production Month and National Novel Writing Month, which attempt to encourage people to buckle down and focus on producing work that would not necessarily have been made otherwise, by building a community context to provide encouragement. I think that it may be an effective strategy, but also risks simply being a distraction from other valuable work that needs to get done (longer-term projects, employment, and such). Further, I do not really see how it would solve the fundamental problem of procrastination, as the act of creation upon which the project is predicated seems to likewise be vulnerable to further procrastination (such as by only completing the works hastily near the end of the month, completing them after the month is over, skipping some works entirely, or simply procrastinating on doing anything towards the goal until forgetting about it entirely). Consequently, I would be interested in seeing further discussion of the proposal, and think it could perhaps be a helpful tool for some types of procrastination, especially as an element of a larger set of strategies for preventing procrastination; however, I do not think it would have much effect on my own personal experiences with procrastination. The second project I examined was “Study Mediums” (saved link). This project is a set of mockups illustrating various ways that new media strategies can be used to show an individual’s creative works. This project is particularly relevant to me because the project I plan to pursue in this unit is the development of a Web-based interface for exploring my musical work, which is closely related to the type of self illustrated in “Study Mediums”. Consequently, there are several communication strategies shown in “Study Mediums” that I could explore working with, perhaps modifying and/or extending them to fit my project, as ways to develop and improve upon my own ideas in the creation of my project. The strategies relating to visually exploring audio creations shown in “Study Mediums” especially seem relevant to the work I intend to do in this unit, and could prove to be valuable sources of influence or inspiration while I work on the project.

In terms of the way these two examples of electronic-media representations of self act as new ways of exploring what it means to be human, I think the fundamental trait shared within them is that they are tools for strategizing around and working within one’s own limitations as a flesh-and-blood human: “Redirecting My Procrastination” helps challenge the difficulties faced in attempting to manage one’s work effectively, and “Study Mediums” helps challenge the difficulty of communicating one’s creative works effectively to an audience. I think this can be extended as a general principle that is an element in many-to-many new media projects, namely that the projects provide ways of better understanding, extending, and working within one’s human self.

As best as I can tell, there are two primary effects demographic differences between people have on their virtual representations of themselves. First, a person’s individual history, personality, background, and culture will influence the choices they make and the strategies they use or avoid in electronic-media selves. Second, the availability or lack thereof of demographic data from electronic-media selves has various effects; for example, a racist employer may be more likely to hire a person they would ordinarily discriminate against for a virtual work-from-home position if that person does not indicate their race in their electronic-media selves, and conversely, if a person provides demographic information on themselves through electronic-media selves, they may be a target of increased harassment both through electronic media and in the physical world.

The selves created using electronic media in the projects that I examined here are expressions of selves in the physical world, in line with the autobotography theme. While it is possible to create entirely fictional electronic selves in the context of interactive-media works (e.g. computer game non-player characters), these fall outside of the context of autobotography as described here, I think. The type of electronic selves created as expressions of physical selves are especially useful as communication aids, helping to provide ways to allow one’s physical self to connect and communicate effectively, efficiently, and relatably with distant people. For example, a personal Web site can act as a representation of one’s self that can be easily curated, always available, and easy to skim and understand. Such a self would be useful for potential employers, who could examine a range of Web sites relatively quickly and without having to contact directly with the person the Web site represents. This also allows the person to not have to be available for direct contact: the Web site can be available regardless of its owner’s geographical location or being asleep, and having many potential employers examine it takes no extra time on the part of the person whose Web site it is, unlike having to communicate directly with the potential employer.

It seems unlikely that most poor people can effectively interact with or create electronic-media selves. That is because sufficient leisure time and access to electronic media are both prerequisites for being able to interact with electronic media, and both of those are limited by poverty.

There are two primary effects electronic-media representations of selves have on society. The first is to increase the efficiency of communication, with consequent benefits in fields such as employment and entertainment; the second is to reduce the amount of time individuals spend communicating directly with one another, due to their spending more time maintaining virtual representations of themselves, and due to direct communication being obsoleted in some cases by electronic-media selves.