This is one of the answers for my question which was why do people leave their counteries and come and settle in other counteries far away from their homeland. Please see my trackback entry to natasha's post for some thoughts on the identity crisis that is present in many diasporas.

Identity crisis does not nessecarily mean that the person going through it does not know who he/she is but it includes people who are struggling to maintain a balance between their past identity and their new identity. In diaspora the past identity is th origins of these people while the prsesnt identity is linked to their current home country where they have been living for many years.

Some of the things diasporas go through are:

The mother tongue is forced to become your second language now as to communicate you have to adopt English as your fisrt language. Taste buds have to be trained to get used to the local food. There is a constant battle with your inlaid morals grinding against western morals. Religion has to be practiced  in modertaion. These are only some of the things that diasporas have to experience. Bringing up questions of  "self" and "cultural" identity.

John Sorenson in his article Learning to be Oromo: Nationalist Discourse in the Diaspora says:
 " Processes of migration, diaspora and exile offer diverse and complex environments for the renegotiation of social identities. Immigrants and refugees must not only adapt to the material circumstances of uprooting but must also confront, maintain or recreate a sense of self, often in contexts which are vastly different and fraught with constraints, in which they are removed from their familiar social networks and in which their previous identities may be of little meaning or relevance to the new society. In confronting an altered social status and radically different circumstances, individuals may be required to come to terms with a new or reconstructed sense of ethnic or national identity."

Artist's like Shirin Neshat, who is an Iranian born but has lived all her life in the US, adresses the notion of "a feeling of being an outsider here(US) and when you go back to your country (Iran) you feel like you dont belong there anymore either."

These notion of "not belonging anywhere anymore" whcih can be seen in diaspora is also experienced by people (such as international students) who have lived abroad for a couple of years.

References:

Sorenson, John. "Learning to be Oromo: Nationalist Discourse in the Diaspora." Taylor and Francis 2 (1996).

Other arguments against cell phones are that they are a risk while driving. Vehicle drivers have a much higher risk of losing control of their car or having accidents while they are talking on the cell phone. Myth busters an American Tv show once reported that using a cell phone while drivin has the same risk as someone driving under the influence of alcohol.

Mobile phones are also criticized to be a cause of disturbance and disruption. For example libraries and many public places ask you to turn of the cell phone as it causes an intrusion in other people space. Terrorism is sometimes linked with cell phones too.

Here are only few of the controversies attached to our beloved companion: the moblie phone.

Mondovision's plan to sleep with her phone off from now sounds like a good plan. Risks present in new technologies can be just our paranoa s or could actually have some grounding. Whatever it is, i think until we know for sure it is definately better to be careful now then to regret later.

Heidegger, Habermas and the Mobile Phone (Postmodern Encounters) and The Mobile Connection : The Cell Phone's Impact on Society by Morgan Kaufmann seem like great books if someone is interested in the impacts of mobile phones on today's society. The impact of cell phones on the society does not only include obvious effects like driving and health controversies but also the effects on how we precive the world now. Cell phones have changed the way people communicate and interact. It has made life easier in some ways and more complicated in other. We have become more connected with people and at the same time have become distant. Mobile phone are not just walkie talkies anymore they are taking on the role of TV's, Computers (internet), cameras and music players.

It is important to start looking into this evolving technology as it sure is effecting our lives at many levels.

Another postmodern characteristic is that the human body has become redundant. This concept is really scary and is mentioned but often discarded by saying "it is long before this will actually happen." But i think we have started to see the begginins of this idea. After a few years of this routine of staying silent and not listening to anyone for hours while i do all my "communication" will probably lead me to be uncomfortable while having a one on one discussion with anyone. Communication on human level such as conversing, sign language, eye contacts will probably become less and less important.

This means i am happy! It is said that a smile is the most precious thing you have. And now it is represnted by an "emoticon". Emoticon comes from the words emotion + icons. We use icons, signs and symbols such to convey and express our emotions. HOw human is that? Are we slowly loosing our humaness?

And yes i will answer this question like it is always answered. Yes we are loosing our humaness and our body is  gradually becoming useless. But….. it will take a lot of years for this to actually happen!

What would Walter Benjamin have to say about todays art that exists in the networked media. Is their an aura? where is the author? If Benjamin's thoughts are carried forward a few points would be worth considering.

In the postmodern era of today where digital art is all about using and reusing existing material. One of the characteristics of postmodernsim is appropriation; which is the borrowing of someones else's work to create something new. Be it music, images, videos or text, people are reinventing existing material. The idea of authorship is very different now from what it was before ( the author/artist was the person who mixed the paint on his pallete and put it on the canvas.) Now the raw materials are already present (and are someone else's) and author inevents or mixes them in a unique way. This is the contemporary artist of digital media. I guess the athenticity now lies in the way the appropriation takes place. (How the existing material is combined.) In my opinion the question of the"aura" is not relevant to this kind of art. Or maybe there is different kind of unique aura now whcih is made up of a combination of auras (of digital artists and the raw material owners). This aura is experienced much differently then that which was experienced standing infront of an original Van gogh paitning. Now it travels the world through a shared network and is experienced by people sitting in their homes infront of computers.

p.s When appropriating images, music or any other thing from an online source people or artists have to be aware of copyright issues. But now with the Creative Commons oraganization such borrowing has become much easier. People can use other people's material (which is under the creative common's license) just by acknowledging it and without fear of copyright problems.

According to Angus Kidman in his article The local search-war, there are two key elements that determine whether a search engine is successful or not. One is the"reach" of the engine, which is the number of sites a search engine can include in its index. The second characteristic of a good search engine is that the results have to be relevant relevant. Relevancy is tricky. Because what is relevant for one person might not be relvant for another. Google is successful beacuse it is linked to many other sites. I think it is important that the search engines are localized, in other words when we use google in Canada it is google.ca and when in Australia it is google.au. This helps in making the results more relevant. As we all know it is much better to have 30 relevant results then 1000 irrelevant ones.

Some tips for successful results( relevant).

1. Use more terms; be precise.

2. Put quotations marks if you are looking for the exact phrase.

3. can add (-) minus sign to exclude                                                                

4. can add (+) plus sign to use more then one word.                                         

5. Put a(~) tilda if you want the engine to search for synonyms of the word.                  

6. Use Boolean tools.                                                        

If you still get to many irrelevant results try advanced search or specialist engines such as if you are looking for blogs use technorati. You can also adjust the engines preferences.

Netguide is a great website to learn how to become a professional searcher.

I think it is a good idea to make the best of what the net has to offer to us. I almost feel like a manipulater and a free-rider when i can get so much information just sitting at home and without having to pay anything for it. To maximize what we can gain from the interent it is important to learn shortcuts and some tips on how to be efficient with the search engine.

But sometimes i think…are the bennefits really one-sided?  

trackback 

natasha's entry about where we live is really related to my community which is about diaspora's. I have been trying to explore the meaning and significance of home myself. I agree that where one lives is really important and does in many ways define us. But i have also found that sometimes where u live is not enough information. For example I have some Sri Lankan friends who haave been living in Australia for years. Their children where born and brought up here. But they always get the quaestion "So where are you from?" And when the austrlian born kids say they are Austrlians the person questioning is not really satisfied. He wants to know: "Where are you from? like actually." Sometimes ones colour, race and origins are questions that overpower questions like where one lives.