Now with added blog
.
Sherry Turkle started the initiative on technology and self at
MIT. Pupils at Sackville School in the UK were among those involved in
research for this
project. They were questioned about their relationship with cyberpets.
My own work was on the relationship between pupils and the video game
character Lara Croft Sherry Turkle's books
develop the issue of children's relationships
with computers and relationships in cyberspace generally.
A lot of research still needs to be done in this area. Sherry Turkle's
"Life on the Screen" dealt with developing relationships at a time when
Multi User Domains were a peripheral activity. The massive furore in
the media about chat rooms and the widespread use of Yahoo, ICQ and MSN
messenger are an indication that large numbers of pupils as well as
adults are involved in this.
The media has understandably focussed on the danger of children talking
to unpleasant strangers on the internet. For children the attraction is
the safety - the idea that they can communicate with people all over
the world without going out of the house. For them the dangerous
characters are not real and the much-publicised dangers of talking to
paedophiles are "something which happens to someone else."
There are thousands of cyberpsychology links. I have limited
myself to three and my own yahoo page for anyone who wants to discuss
this online.
Sherr