One of the first things I noticed was the little amount of development in the field of cyber anthropology. It has taken years to study just a small portion of the overall Internet community. But that is not a criticism of the ethnographers; it is a testament to the massive breadth of the Internet's influence on the world. There is no way to study the Internet like a remote Indonesian tribe, especially with the ever-changing technology and design of the Internet.
The study of the virtual ethics code, which was mentioned by Silver in the article as a way some people have chosen to study Internet behavior, really interested me, as I have been interested the whole semester in how completely anonymous message boards like 4chan and semi-anonymous boards like comments on Youtube and online newspapers police the comments. What is unethical on 4chan - which little is - is much different on newspaper websites - which usually even monitor for vulgar language.
When Silver talks about the issues of race and gender, that really struck me. When navigating through the Internet, even on seemingly gender-neutral sites, comments seem to be slanted to more masculine and Caucasian influences. This is seen in the language on Anonymous message boards like 4chan who playfully call other posters fags - just like many college guys - and derogitory racial terms like nigger.
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