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Rebecca Davidson

2 updates, last on Sep 9, 2026

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Questions this week

Week 2

This week I was taking a step back from the direction of my concept, and started asking more simple questions: Who gets left behind in cyberspace? Before I can ask what it looks like to regain agency and sovereignty in cyberspace, I need to understand it as a space like any other that is vulnerable to social underrepresentation and inequity. I decided to ask: Who was left behind at the beginning of the digital age? How does cyberspace mimic physical space in terms of how it is colonized?

Week 1

I’ve been reevaluating my previous thesis research on anthropomorphic robots and the complex relationship between humans and our digital technology. I have been asking myself why I leaned toward that topic and what actually makes me feel uncomfortable about being dependent on digital technology. Instead of asking “why do we have it?” and “what does it say about us?”, this week I started to ask “why do we feel trapped by technology that was created to be expansive, connective, and imaginative?”, “what has been lost in the process of corporations capitalizing on this technology?”, and “how can we restore or reclaim our digital agency?”

Research discoveries

Week 2

There is so much content related to identity in cyberspace, varying in outlook, intersectionality, angle, etc. Cyberfeminism is a well-studied concept, and I find it interesting how apparent feminism is in conversations about social justice across all platforms. There seems to be a direct correlation between visibility of underrepresented groups in physical space, social hierarchies, and now in cyberspace.

Week 1

In my previous research, I was avoiding politics and my own intimate relationship with technology. It may seem obvious, but I discovered how deeply politicized digital technology is and how quickly that happened. There is a lot of discourse on this issue from an economic standpoint and overwhelmingly the perspective seems reflective yet pessimistic. I’m surprised that I haven’t found much discussion about potential for change or optimistic perspectives. Maybe that discourse is out there and I haven’t found it yet!

Other work

Week 2

Paralleling cyberspace to physical space makes it easier to relate to in every sense, however, I’m still trying to wrap my head around what it means to be excluded from one and not the other. I found some more intimate work on identity in cyberspace, and it actually helped me bridge the abstract research to the personal sensation. Our identities may seem insignificant, but of course, they shape the communities we associate with, things we care about, places we reside in, etc. I hadn’t considered that our physical identities are quite fixed, whereas our digital identities are malleable and can be disconnected with our physical ones. I’m trying to investigate how that impacts the roles we adopt in cyberspace.

Week 1

When I met with Munus last week, he used the word “agency”, and it flipped a switch in my brain! This week I distilled that my discomfort with technology had been displaced into the concept of robots, which are distant and somewhat apolitical. I realized I don’t hate robots, I hate corporate greed. I hate capitalism. And I hate being controlled! I’m a very political person, so this week I feel a bit of relief that I can include this in my research. I’m excited to keep exploring this topic, so this week I researched where best to join the discussion.

Other questions or notes

Week 2

no ◡̈

Week 1

No <3

References

Week 2

Week 1