Assignment One

Hello! My name is Danielle Rosenthal. I am a junior in the School of Industrial Labor Relations. I am originally from outside Washington D.C., however, my father, my sister, and I recently moved to Long Beach, New York, which is about a one hour train ride outside of New York City. This past summer I spent in D.C. where I interned with the United States’ Attorney’s Office. I have a twin sister, Jamie, who is a Biology and Society major in the Agriculture and Life Science School at Cornell. In my spare time I enjoy reading, sleeping, watching television, and going to the movies and out to eat with friends.

One Internet related phenomenon that I find particularly intriguing is why people are compelled to share personal information on the Internet, which they might be generally private about in their everyday lives. An example of this is the personal homepage, which includes Facebook and MySpace profiles. It is interesting that people are willing to share personal information with potentially millions of people, very few of which they actually know. Furthermore, very frequently on these websites people post private, even intimate, photographs of themselves in a very public space. Outside of the internet, people often want to get to know somebody on a personal level and develop some level of trust before sharing their interests, religion, political inclination, photographs, course information, etc.

Another facet of this phenomenon is that I find that people, including myself, are more willing to share their true feelings over email as opposed to in a face-to-face situation, even when not remaining anonymous. Personally, I am not only more inclined to share negative feelings over Internet rather than face-to-face, but positive ones as well. I assume that part of the reason lies in not having to witness someone’s immediate reaction to a comment, but certainly the comprehensive explanation is likely much more complex.

Homepages and profile pages fall under the category of the World Wide Web. Although there are asynchronous components to websites such as Facebook, the personal profile aspect of them really is not an interaction between two or more people. Of course the second phenomenon I am in interested in involves electronic mail, which now has become one of the most vital communication channels in our society.