Changes and Developments

I've begun to get a lot more theoretical backbone to the project. Recommended to me by my adviser IR, Steve Lamy, is Edward Said's Orientalism, a book that had an incredible impact in the field of cultural studies, particularly on the subject of cultural imperialism. It wasn't available in any USC libraries as they were all checked out. Amazon, here I come...

Also, a great brainstorm in class lead to a real reshaping of my thesis. It is still somewhat vague at this point, but I'm dropping the notion of a contained study for participants. Rather, I want to explore the world of Second Life with an assumption and two questions in mind. Firstly, the assumption is that Second Life is built out of a theoretical/philosophical movement that we can call "digital utopianism". The two questions I wish to explore then is whether or not Second Life lives up to the expectations of "digital utopianism" and how its success in this sense is related to cultural imperialism in a digital space.