Midterm 1: Looking Back and Zooming Forward

This is an index of the blog posts that I've completed to date on Team Ahab:

Pleasta Meecha! (An introductory blog post)
The Sea and Solitude (Isolation and connectivity in the Digital Age)

Digital Text, Plato, and Dynamic Expression: A Vlog (XML and static/dynamic forms)

Avatars and Anonymity: Who are We? (Anonymity and online personae)

Bionic Us (Bionic implants and prosthetic technology)

God in the Whale (Melville's use of Moby Dick as a symbol for deity)

Devil in the Man: A "Hell-Bent" Captain (Capt. Ahab as Milton's Satan remade) 

Don Yer Blubber, Land Lubber (The virtue of blubber/thick skin in the Digital Age)

My Research, Your Voice (Exploration of research topics and requests for social proof)

"Another and still stranger world..." (Selection of research topic as "digital worlds unseen" and a brief look at EVE Online)

In class, we've talked about various social platforms that have allowed people to meet others with similar interests and connect in meaningful ways--in many cases, in ways that would be impossible except for the Internet. Whether it's collaborative music sites like Kompoz or expansive, fantastical worlds as in EVE Online and other video games, the Internet is creating digital spaces wherein people are able to share ideas and interact in meaningful ways.

My Research, Your Voice

By Giulia Forsythe

Over the past few days, I've been looking into a number of different research topics, but I want to narrow down my scope and try to begin spiraling in on a single topic or two. The thing, is I want these ideas to matter to someone more than me. The existing academic approach typically focuses on super-specialized topics and presents them in ways that are almost entirely inaccessibly for the vast majority of people. Well, you can maybe see where that might be a problem. People just aren't interested in things that have no relation to them and which are couched in so bizarre or abstract a form as to render them unintelligible. So what's the solution?