Pramod K. Nayar, author of An Introduction to Cybercultures and New Media, is a faculty member of the English Department of the University of Hyderabad in India. Nayar teaches a variety of courses in Literary Theory, 17th Century Cultural Studies, postcolonial literature, techno culture and many more. On January 26, 2010 Nayar published a book called, An Introduction to Cyber cultures and New Media. Nayar was very intrigued in techno cultures and cybercultures. In his book he outlines and defines the key contexts and aspects on cybercultures, and some of the many issues that follow.
In todays society Cybercultures have become a new daily trend and aspect of daily life. Nayar defines in his book, An Introduction to Cybercultures and New Media that cybercultures describe the worlds and domains generated by digital information and communications technologies (ICTs). It is seen in this book as a set of relations and actions in electronic space. Nayar also explains that cybercultures are “formations,” meaning that these conditions can generate and inform. People are able to obtain information in seconds now and be able to connect someone in seconds. By this our society is starting to become more reliant and dependent on these machines which is becoming problematic and causing issues, that many people would not acknowledge.
Nayar has several arguments throughout the reading one issue was on the Digital Divide, and how their is a lack of unequal access among people all over the world. Not only does he talk about access to internet or a computer, but to the lack of meaningful knowledge. Throughout the chapter Nayar brought up “post human” several times, and the issues with Identity and the distrust between Avatars. An Avatar is an online identity.
Cyberspace allows one to pick an identity, to masquerade, mimic, and transcend bodily identities and interact with the world as somebody else. In a world where race, class, gender, and sexuality can become obstacles in interactions with the world, cyberspace allows one to choose an identity that may have nothing to do with one’s “real-life” gender or race. Critics see this as an enabling condition (Turkle 1995).
People “Avatar’s” are able to play a role or act as someone else someone that he or she may not be in real life. This can be very conceiving and misleading, but you are able to get away with it in the cyber culture world. Sadly cyber cultures can generate their own risks and can be very serious to staking, privacy invasion and financial fraud. Nayar sums up,that by being involved with the internet culture and becoming apart of the cyberspace/ cyberculture world you are putting yourself at risk at any potential second. Nayar finally explains how cybercultyres are changing every day, and we as users need to become more aware of what has and what is currently happening amongst society today, because it is going to keep on changing. When he talks about the topic of post humanism I think that he is referring too people relying so much on technology and less and less on manual labor, and Nayar believes their maybe no going back.
After reading this first chapter in Nayar book, I definitely would say that it was pretty bland, and boring. It was hard for me not to get distracted or nod away from the reading. I feel as if I were truly interested in the topic of cyberculture I would have been able to follow, but not being that interested made this really boring, and this blog somewhat hard to write. Although the reading was rather long, Nayar was pretty clear in his writing and prove his persuasiveness in his argument about this subject. The two topics that I found intriguing were the risk associated with cybercultures and the different identities individuals can be. I would maybe expand on those two sections being that it was the most interesting to me. Overall the first chapter explained the topic of cybercultures fairly well, I personally just was not enthused about the topic in general. Hope the next reading assignment is better!
XOXO
Jordi <3
