Digital identities – overcoming visual bias through virtual embodiment

ABSTRACT

This study sheds new light on the role of identity in virtual environments when virtual representation of self is in support of disabled individuals and the potential impact of their virtual identity on work opportunities. It is widely understood that individuals who live with disability often experience a lifetime of bullying, exclusion, marginalization and rejection. They often experience workplace bias and discrimination. Yet, when they can create an identity and experience embodiment in virtual environments, the results can be extraordinarily powerful – even life-changing. This research builds on nearly a decade of ethnographic research in 3D online immersive social virtual worlds; seven of those years working with disability communities to answer the following: RQ1: In a virtual world where one can choose any avatar form, how does that visual sense of self-representation influence one’s ability to gain access to a social network, to be a leader in that network, and to find work? RQ2: How does realism in representation influence work experiences in these digital worlds? The results reveal the importance of choice in online representation of avatars in creating work and online social engagement. Implications contribute to our understanding of visual bias in the workplace and how emerging virtual reality technologies may open new avenues for meaningful work and social interactions for people with disabilities.     

The opportunity to contribute: disability and the digital entrepreneur

ABSTRACT

A range of scholarly work in communications, informatics, and media studies has identified ‘entrepreneurs’ as central to an emerging paradigm of digital labor. Drawing on data from a multi-year research project in the virtual world Second Life, I explore disability experiences of entrepreneurism, focusing on intersections of creativity, risk, and inclusion. Since its founding in 2003, Second Life has witnessed significant disability participation. Many such residents engage in forms of entrepreneurship that destabilize dominant understandings of digital labor. Most make little or no profit; some labor at a loss. Something is being articulated through languages and practices of entrepreneurship, something that challenges the ableist paradigms that still deeply structure both digital socialities and conceptions of labor.

Disability is typically assumed to be incompatible with work, an assumption often reinforced by policies that withdraw benefits from disabled persons whose income exceeds a meagre threshold. Responses to such exclusion appear when disabled persons in Second Life frame ‘entrepreneur’ as a selfhood characterized by creativity and contribution, not just initiative and risk. In navigating structural barriers with regard to income and access, including affordances of the virtual world itself, they implicitly contest reconfigurations of personhood under neoliberalism, where the laboring self becomes framed not as a worker earning an hourly wage, but as a business with the ‘ability’ to sell services. This reveals how digital technology reworks the interplay of selfhood, work, and value – but in ways that remain culturally specific and embedded in forms of inequality.     

虚拟仿真婴幼儿实验教学模式构建与运行策略——以山东英才学院学前教育学院为例

与传统实验室相比,虚拟仿真实验室在实验类型、成本与实验条件等方面更有优势,在高校实验教学中的地位越来越重要。山东英才学院积极开展教育资源的信息化、虚拟化和仿真化的建设与应用,通过虚拟仿真婴幼儿实验教学体系基点、目标、方案的构建,对虚拟仿真实验进行合理设计,在创新学前教育人才培养机制方面进行深入研究,旨在推动虚拟实验教学模式的形成和有效运行。     

虚拟世界经济相关概念的界定与解析

随着对虚拟世界经济和网络游戏产业研究的深入,迅速变化的现实与滞后的理论之间的矛盾日益激化。而且,由于新概念的出现,传统经济理论的适用性也存在争议。由于国情不同,中国虚拟世界经济的发展与欧美及韩国之间存在较大的差异,其学术研究的重心和阶段也不同。从经济学角度界定虚拟世界经济基本概念的内涵和外延是接驳统一研究平台的前提,也是使相关研究进一步深入的基础。同时,从学术角度界定虚拟世界经济带来的各种问题也是必要的基础性工作。     

虚拟世界经济收益模式研究

虚拟世界经济收益模式分为直接收益模式和间接收益模式,前者主要包括时间销售和虚拟物品销售等,后者主要包括现实货币交易和微型服务外包.其中间接收益模式对服务贸易发展、产业结构升级、增加低水平劳动力就业都具有特殊意义,更适合中国目前的形势.通过对虚拟世界收益模式新形式的初步分析.为政策制定提供参考.     

虚拟社会对现实社会的影响及对策

虚拟社会是人们在现代互联网环境中相互作用而形成的各类关系体系,它的社会模式来源于现实社会,但又不同于现实社会。虚拟社会对现实社会的政治、经济、文化、信息传播等多方面都带来了深刻甚至变革性的影响,不容忽视。虚拟社会自身也存在诸如诚信缺失、恶意攻击等多种现实问题,这些问题波及着现实社会,对其亟需加强管理。提高虚拟社会的科学化管理水平,应该在明确虚拟环境中的行业责任、加强正面舆论引导和完善相关法律法规等多方面予以努力。     

文化视野下的网络社会的积极效应

计算机技术与互联网的飞速发展催生了网络社会。从哲学意义上,文化的结构与功能两个维度,分析网络社会的文化特点及其积极效应。提出了网络产品的符号化与虚拟性、网络交往方式的超时空性与主体间性和网络观念的多元性与速变性三个主要特点。从对网络的文化特点的揭示基础上,提出网络文化增强了文化的渗透能力与信息共享可能,催生并丰富了虚拟经济形态,在一定程度上重塑了人的生存样式。     

虚拟经营与服装企业的竞争力

本文指出服装业根据虚拟经营的特点,若是成功运行虚拟经营方式可能带来企业的绩效。     

网络化环境下信息技术与口译教学整合路径初探

为适应新时期培养复合型口译人才的需要,口译教学与网络化、数字化环境下的信息技术必须进一步的重组、优化和整合。     

实在的危机

“实在论”与反“实在论”的斗争延续至今,似有愈演愈烈之势。科学技术的迅猛发展,尤其是虚拟实在的出现,似乎预示着“实在论”的“崩溃”。而实际上虚拟实在建立在对现实实在的仿真基础上,其不否认现实实在的优先性。