Class Concepts
~In the article "Political Education for Everyday Life" written by Steven Rubio, the explanation is given on the functions of a homepage. He describes a homepage as "an attempt for an owner to say, "this is what I look like" both figuratively (these are my interests and obsessions)and literally (many, if not most, home pages include the on-line equivalent of family photo album)." Homepages are a representation of a person's identity. This includes detailed information of who the person is and what their interests might be. This may be done by the use of descriptive words, pictures, sound effects, and journals or diaries. After viewing an individual's homepage, a person can verify a small part of that person's identity.
~In his article "Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web" Daniel Chandler discusses this term. He says "Like mass media texts and printed books, web pages are a form of asynchronous communication, unlike synchronous modes of communication such as the telephone and face-to-face interaction, which involve 'real-time' interaction." Basically he is saying that when people visit homepages of other people, they are not meeting that person face-to-face but only getting a representation of that person by reading what they write about themselves. The internet becomes a misleading interaction between people. The only communication taking place is through text and not through face-to-face interaction. Thus loosing all aspects of nonverbal communication.
~Through social interaction, our identity is built. When we log on to the internet, we become associated with people who we think we know or who we don't know at all. When talking about the internet...it is hard to distinguish identity. In the article "Communities in Cyberspace" written by Peter Kollock and Marc Smith, they talk about how most chat systems support a great number of "channels" dedicated to a vast array of subjects and interests. This deals with people creating an identity within a chat room. They can talk about anything from religion to sports to sex. But the main point to learn from this is that people become who they want to be wether or not that is truely who they are and convince other people that they are 'really that person'. This is the reason why internet identity is so questionable.