Midterm #2

So, this will just be brainstorming. I will be using this blog post for my personal reference as well as your enjoyment.  If you have any ideas or suggestions be sure to comment.

My defining questions are: 1) How does one define immersion, especially in the context of both Moby-Dick and digital culture? 2) How does one become immersed in the digital world?
Immersion is about belief in what you really think is out there versus what is actually there.
The first instance in the book that comes to mind is on page 278: Ishmael's observation that a sinking whale corpse is regarded in logs of merchantmen as shoals and rocks that ought to be avoided.  He also observes that this is how people in general tend to think.

Being LDS, when we think of the word immersion, we think of baptism.  However, in Moby-Dick and in the digital world, rather than coming up from something, immersion in this means going into something and becoming part of it. For instance, on page 435- Ahab "baptizes" his harpoon in the blood of pagans, in the name of the devil. This may be equated to his assuming an avatar or identity--What identity do we immerse ourselves in in the digital world? Do we represent ourselves or adopt a "persona"?
This Smithsonian article  suggested by Dr. Burton leads me to a book about information technology, life,a nd ideas, called The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, by James Gleick. I will look for this at the library. The ideas in this article go back to  page 278 and the orthodoxy quote. And as a side note,
this is why the LDS Church has a centralized hierarchy, manuals, and web tools so that all of the members get the same message and to prevent the ideas about the gospel from being perpetuated incorrectly. 
So this is my working thesis statement and a rough outline of the ideas I want to write about: 

To Ishmael, there is an entire ocean of ideas and knowledge to follow and explore, but Ahab's downfall come from refusing to open himself to this diversity (better word?) and immersing himself in the narrow idea that he must take revenge on the White Whale. 

•  There is an entire ocean of ideas and knowledge to follow and explore
• the digital universe exposes us to this
•  creating online profiles and avatars
  • Ishmael signing the ship's articles? (62) 
  • by signing up for a service you allow messages and updates to be communicated to you--you join a larger world when joining the internet; but, in reverse, Ishmael was joining a smaller world.
• by interacting with others online
• by "going places" within the digital world
• Ishmael spends the course of Moby-Dick trying to comprehend the vastness of the ocean and the manifold aspects of whale science and whaling; 
• he immerses himself in the avatar of the Adventurous Sailor "Ishmael" the outcast, the one who wanders around and in wandering, explores and sees many things
• Immersion as place: he wants to go everywhere and see everything
• Immersion as belief:  he knows the danger of limiting ideas; he knows the benefits of knowing what's out there. (page 1--when he gets stuck in a rut on shore it's time to go to sea for a change of scenery)
• you can't stick yourself to one idea because that's the nature of ideas: they aren't always what they seem!  like genes, ideas (scientifically labeled memes) want to spread and change (this was in the Smithsonian article).  Ideas are never stable, they change as they are transmitted, so one idea shared by one person can be altered by someone else and completely misunderstood as it is continually shared.  What Ishmael knows to be a whale's corpse is a reef to a merchant ship that runs across it.

• There are dangers in becoming limited to a single idea
• there are multiple instances in the book where he is described as standing in a pivot-hole on his peg leg: the peg leg IS his monomania, it is his rut, it is his revenge
• Ahab immerses himself to the narrow idea of revenge, separating himself from the wonders of the ocean and the happiness he could have had in the world at large 
•  identifies/immerses himself only with his lust for revenge (monomaniac)
• not to make a living off the sea and all of its treasures, but to hunt for the one thing he wants and ignore the rest, including the danger (find book quotes about this)
• Immersion as place--Ahab is only ever in one place, in one perspective
• Immersion as belief: he wants to kill the whale, he thinks if he kills the white whale he will have revenge and revenge will bring him....? The satisfaction of getting even. This isn't even getting even, because whales don't have legs.

This is the research I want to do:

Comb Moby-Dick for more quotes. 

Check out the Gleick book: I might not read all of it but there might be an introduction or something similar to the Smithsonian article.

Check what other people have said about online avatars and immersion; start with my other crewmates on Moby Digital and then check elsewhere on the internet.

Find scholarly articles about immersion into certain aspects of reality or virtual reality and perhaps immersion into avatars; perhaps I may find an article or two from a psychology perspective, or maybe find a book about the psychology/sociology/anthropology of identity.