I recently read a couple of books about the Internet, cyberculture and identity especially by Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen. This book is good because it demonstrates an aspect of the Internet life as disruptive. When I read the book, on my way to Kuching to organize an event for my workplace last month, I felt unease. Internet, not all of its technology of course, is disruptive in the sense that it gives opportunities for a user to construct and deconstruct his or her identity. Turkle's research on users of multi-user domains (or MUDs) showed some evidence of 'gender-switching' or 'cross-dressing', for example, as particularly normal. Imagine if 'gender-switching' occurs to teenagers, and the experience might have left an imprint on their life or their identity. And that what is disruptive is the fact that 'simulated identity' is brought to RL or real life. Nonetheless, in other studies, such as by Lynne Roberts and Malcolm Parks (as treated in Green and Adam, Virtual Gender), there is enough evidence that 'gender-switching' at least only occurs among the minority of MUDs users, and not the majority. However, the fact that what is considered 'abnormal' in RL appears to be 'normal' in cyberspace points to the direction that the Internet, as in other human/machine interaction, is a disruptive technology.

Hello world! This site is my second dot five weblog with a new attitude. Well not exactly new, but more serious. I'll attempt to focus on my intellectual rants into the pages here. Hopefully, it will get some audience and at the same time improve my analytical depth which is more important. I have done some blogging at www.xanga.com/adipujangga but I have not been successful in putting serious ideas into it. The site is more of a personal, intimate cries than as social critique. I did put in one or two entries, serious entries, but those are not normal entries. This site is probably a start to something that I want to do for the rest of my life.