Workshop --- Menu Driven Identities

Qusetion 1

When signing up for Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, we have to type our birth, name and mail's address. Besides, we also have to choose which country we are living in and our gender. There are limitations when choosing the country and gender. Most of the choices are name of countries but we can see Hong Kong is also a choice for choosing beside China. If Hong Kong, a tiny place, can be counted should Beijing and Shanghai or other regions of China also be a choice for choosing? This show that the webs assume Hong Kong like Taiwan that is separated with China Although Hong Kong is part of China’s. And the gender section is also in narrow limitation. The choices is only male and female which is seen as normal as we get used to it in filling form for identity cards, passports or other identity form. The form does not expect other type of people to appear on the net for example transgender. It also appears in Second Life gameworld. There are limitations when choosing different characters in only male or female gender.

Question 2

In Lavalife, although we are allow to choose different countries and regions to show where we live, when we start searching for friends, all of them show their countries as living in Australia. It seems that this site runs base on Australian and other countries seeker is invisible or seen as others. There are similar problem of narrow limitations of the gender selection that only has male and female to choose from.