Late Introduction (Assignment 1)

Hi everybody! My name is Vivian Quan, and I am a sophomore in the school of Industrial and Labor Relations. Typical of an ILRie, I am from Long Island, NY (Manhasset Hills to be more specific!). As a sophomore in ILR, I am not sure what field I want to concentrate on, but like most ILRies you will meet, law school is a definite possibility. I think I would like to go into labor law, but I would want to fight for the labor side. I am definitely better suited fighting for unions and workers—not against them. I have always been drawn to helping others, and I think that this is an important issue that many people often forget about. By the way, I just joined this class, and I hope that I’m not too far behind, so if anybody has any good tips or suggestions (or even really good notes from the first two weeks of class), please let me know!

An internet-related phenomenon that I am interested in is AIM and how it affects people’s daily lives in general. I have friends who are always on AIM, and they are always having at least three simultaneous conversations with friends who could be sitting down the hall from them. I guess it bothers me why people sit at their computers talking to people, when they could be spending their time physically sitting with those people, and hanging out with them. Can’t they just tell them everything in person, everything they would have said over AIM, could be said in person, could it not? I do realize that AIM makes it convenient for people to multi-task—I could be talking with my friend in China, and be doing my homework at the same time, all from the comfort of my own room. I don’t know if this really constitutes “multi-tasking,” though. I find that AIM distracts me from completing what I have to complete, and then it takes me twice as long to finish my homework. All in all, AIM cannot be good for society—especially if it keeps us from being as productive as possible. I am afraid that the more people use AIM, the less they will be interacting with each other in spaces where more cues are given.


AIM would fall under the “synchronous chats” category, which allows real-time (or as close to “real-time” one can using the computer) conversation. AIM allows for people to, as Wallace puts it, “type out their brief messages and read the contributions of the others as they scroll up the screen” (Wallace 6).