Posts Tagged ‘Modernism’

• Life on the screen

  Date: 2009.10.08 | Category: Reading Reviews, Unit SSK12 | Response: 0

  Reading Review
  Unit: SSK12
  Week: 1-5 (in Week 6)
  Date: 08 October 2009

  Book title: Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
  Chapter title: Introduction: Identity in the Age of the Internet
  Author: Sherry Turkle
  Publication Date: 1995

  Thesis:
  Turkle details how the computer has changed our understanding of the self and how this understanding has shifted from the modern concept of computational calculation to the postmodern concept of simulation.

  Main points:
  1. The fragmented self illustrated in the MUD (multi-user domains)
  2. Lessons learned regarding the fragment self from the great French Postmodernist philosophers.
  3. Culture of change embodied in the shift from computational calculation to simulation

  Review:
  I enjoyed the analogy Turkle creates using the multiple windows of a computer to explain the postmodern understanding of self. The postmodern theory of self is that of a fragmented one. The computer, especially for Turkle in the concept of the MUD (multi-user domains) on the internet, embodies the postmodern theory of the fragmented self through its many windows and multiple live and identities one can have in these separate online windows. This book was written in 1995 and so, I did feel that computer and internet related content sounded dated, but nevertheless the concepts Turkle puts forward are still valid.

  Reference:
  Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Introduction: Identity in the Age of the Internet. In Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. 9-26. New York: Simon and Schuster.

• Worldviews II

  Date: 2009.09.23 | Category: Study Reflections, Unit SSK12 | Response: 0

  Reflection
  Unit: SSK12
  Week: 4
  Date: 23 September 2009

  I wrote the attached file in response to some discussion regarding worldviews, but decided not to post it thinking that it might seem pretentious. Besides it was a bit late to add anything of value to the discussion.

  Worldview

• Modernity

  Date: 2009.09.13 | Category: Glossary, Unit SSK12 | Response: 0

  Glossary (Do not use for learning log)
  Unit: SSK12
  Week: 2
  Date: 13 September 2009

  Word: modernity n.
  Context: Modernity appears in different parts of the unit reader both as a period of societal development and as a framework of understanding the world that surrounds us (i.e. a worldview).
  Definition: Modernity in the context of philosophy is broadly considered to date back to the Enlightenment of 17th and 18th century Europe, and is typically understood to have begun with Descartes (of “I think therefore I am” fame). The main feature of modernity is its emphasis on rationality and as the excerpt from the Conceptual Dictionary in the Unit Reader says, the “privileging of science over traditional thought and action”. (Conceptual Dictionary, 1994) The modernist believes that through the supremacy afforded to rationality and science over traditional thought it is possible to improve upon and progress human society. There is some disagreement as to whether the period of modernity has ended or not, and whether we are still in it, particularly from proponents of postmodernism.
  Word in Use: The objectives and hopes of modernity as purported by the philosophers of the Enlightenment was the continued improvement and ultimate perfection of human society.

  Bullock, A. and S. Trombley. eds. 2000. The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. 3rd ed. London: Harper Collins.

  Bunnin, N., and J. Yu. eds. 2009. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.

  Craig, A.P. et al. 1994. Conceptual Dictionary. Kenwyn, South Africa: Juta, University of Natal.