Archive for the ‘Doctorow’ tag
Nobody knows you’re a dog…
NOTE: I know this is a bit of a long post, but it’s because I’m not sure what to focus on specifically. There is so much STUFF out there! I figure because I’m working with YA literature a lot, I will incorporate some of what I have learned from fiction into this post. I hope that I don’t confuse too many people.
A lot of what Baym has to say can be seen reflected back from the pages of fiction. Currently, I am reading Cory Doctorow’s For the Win, in which a number of people meet, interact, and fight back the evil corporate world through online games and all sorts of other crazy technological things that I can barely follow. What made me think of this book is Baym’s discussion of the curious dynamics of online relationships and interaction. The cartoon that reads “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is in both Baym and Doctorow and is relevant both in reality and in the slightly fictional world of the novel:
Although Steiner has said he didn’t know what the cartoon was about when he drew it, New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff said it “perfectly predicted both the Internet’s promise and its problems” (2004: 618). Whether this cartoon represents a dream or a nightmare depends on whether one is the dog or the fool unknowingly talking to the dog.