My name is danah boyd and I'm a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, a Visting Researcher at Harvard Law School, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. I received my PhD from the School of Information at UC-Berkeley. I spend 1/3 of my time in Cambridge, MA, 1/3 in New York, NY, and 1/3 in the air. Buzzwords in my world include: public/private, identity, context, youth culture, social network sites, social media. I use this blog to express random thoughts about whatever I'm thinking.

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dark side of digital utopia

The BBC is reporting on the dark side of digital utopia, revealing the underground behavior that has emerged in SIMS Online. Alphaville has generated child prostitutes, sadomasochists, mafia thieves and shadow governments. Lesson in life: give people freedom and everything will not be all cheery, no matter how hard you try to configure it that way.

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December 22nd, 2003 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments are closed

1 comment to dark side of digital utopia

  • Jordan
    December 23rd, 2003 at 11:10 am

    Reminds me of Gravity’s Rainbow… There is a definate parallel between digitalization and The Zone.

    I see all of these things happening in the real world as well. Just like how children play out senarios that echo their homelife, the digital world is just a space to act out our repressions and act out the senarios of the outside world.

    Taking what you wrote one step further… Could we say that, because all of those things happen in real life, we can determine that (at least at some level) we are all free?