In cyberutopia, we can be whoever we want to be, or that’s
what I once thought. I believed that we had the ability to keep certain traits
of ourselves off the web, but this is not true. Nakamura explains, “web
interface design reveals assumptions about users’ race and ethnicity” (101).
How can we express ourselves as having unique identities if
we must select our identity traits from a pre-determined list? We can’t. Like
Nakamura says, “it forces the user to choose ‘what’ they are, and allows only
one choice at a time” (104). We must identity ourselves, but the options we
have to choose are often limited and only allow one choice to be made, though
many of the choices may be applicable.
I was very surprised by this reading, and I guess it was
because I wanted to live in the naïve bliss that we could be whoever we wanted
to be on the web, without the lines of race and ethnicity.
solid observations about the reading-how will these insights influence your web design?
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