3. Critically assess the ways in which constructions of identity have been extended and/or altered by information and communication technologies.
Introduction:
"No longer is a matter of physical attributes, identity made intelligible through the art of self-performance. And 'self' in this(virtual) realm is anything but fixed; it is as multiple as the imagination, unstable and infinitely 'morphable’.”
[1]
The realm of the virtual world offers a myriad of identities and personas that one can easily build and amend at a click of a mouse. The potential for diversity and multiplicity is endless and as Herrup says “infinitely morphable”. To fully grasp the extent of this question, it is imperative to define the nature of ‘identity’ in the cyber culture and explore the different ways users consciously or unconsciously extend and alter the construction of themselves in various virtual realms. The power of the internet to personalise and at the same time typify people is a potent and complex one.
1.Cyberculture :Cyber-Identity and Virtual Community
Ng’s site
[2] is a great introductory site to what cyber culture, cyber identity and virtual communities are and how they function. It is a useful starting point to begin research as it is well organised, comprehensive and contains a good range of links and sources. Ng uses work from Suler and Turkle that gives comprehensive theoretical backing his writing.
He analyses identity in cyberspace versus the real world and believes in the “parallel existence” of the two worlds and that the real world influences the virtual world thus affecting what one portrays onto the cyber identity. A certain aspect of a person’s experiences and desires will be projected directly and indirectly. He goes on to acknowledge the importance of socialisation in virtual communities such as chat rooms that will help to alter and construct a person’s online identity.
2.The psychology of cyberspace :Identity Management in Cyberspace
In this site
[3], John Sula offers a psychological perspective to cyber identity in the virtual arena and states that a person's identity ‘embodies multiplicity’. He analyses how the virtual world ‘offers a niche for each of these specific facets of selfhood’ or in other words, it creates a diverse avenues for people to unravel and expose their multifaceted personalities. He mentions the ‘deconstruction’ of self that occurs online and believes in the balance of this assortment of identities to be a “healthy” state of mental health. He does bring up a point that identity markers through the medium of ‘verbalisers’ can be a conscious and sub-conscious effort; he believes one must strive to gain some form of consciousness in the construction of identity to become a better person online. I found Sula’s work particularly interesting and it revealed a fresh and insightful aspect of cyber identity online and the power we have to determine its outcome.
3.Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community
In this article
[4], Donath begins by acknowledging the importance of identity in an online world. She
uses the quote from Sartre``I am my body to the extent that I am,'' and contrasts this physical definition from the implications of virtual identity. The virtual world is one that thrives and functions using information and like free particles the information diffuses across an endless space. “The inhabitants of this impalpable space are also diffuse, free from the body's unifying anchor. One can have, some claim, as many electronic personas as one has time and energy to create”.
Donath uses Usenet as an example and distinguishes it from fantasy and imaginary realms like MUD. And yet in these worlds, identity deceptions exist for a number of reasons and results in certain effects as well.She lists out a number of signals of deception and identity cues that will hint an identity deception such as account name/ID, identity “voice” and “language”, signals, writing style, signature. Then again, these can be concealed and altered as well. Towards the end of her article she makes a powerful point on the architecture of the online environment and how the virtual “architects” are responsible in ensuring a design of an online structure which would enable us to attain maximum knowledge of the people we are in virtual contact with.
4.Who Am We?: We are moving from modernist calculation toward postmodernist simulation, where the self is a multiple, distributed system.
‘Who am We?’
[5] by Sherry Turkle further explores the notion of an extended identity brought about by the advancement of communication technology such as internets in the form of countless chatrooms. This has created a free experimentation of identity creation and role playing in a limitless extent. “Now real life itself may be, as one of Turkle's subjects says, "just one more window."
Everything from SimLife to MUD opens another window to a new identity. She goes into a study of MUDs and its anonymity which gives people an avenue for self exploration and multiple personas. The fluidity of identity construction is evident in this virtual world, as people bring not merely what they are but what they wish for and what they never dared to be into an extended version of what they are from behind the key board. The notion of the self not only being “decentered but multiplied without limit” is explored and she provides a series of case studies to fuel her point.
5."Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet"
Lisa Nakamura’s
[6] article was very useful in understanding racial identity and its altering nature in the virtual world. She states that identity can be created at will, where gender, age, race, etc can be altered and manipulated. She used LambdaMoo as the chosen medium where programming features (such as the ability to physically "set" one's gender, race, and physical appearance) are offered to the participants to construct a ‘theatrical’ online identity.
At LambdaMoo, writing a self description is the first component to the participant’s cyber identity.The majority of players do not mention race in their self description, and use pronouns to indicate a male or a female gender. A noticeable choice is made to exclude racial description so as perhaps not to feel “excluded”, as all players are assumed to be the default “white, male, highly educated, and middle class”. Here, it is possible to be a tourist of races and identities where one can construct a sense of exoticness by adopting an Oriental or Asian identity, perpetuating racial stereotypes and myths on the internet. Nakamura makes strong points with references to Butler and Haraway on the subject of racial and gender identify and inequalities in LambdaMoo and across the internet.
6.BABES ON THE WEB: Sex, Identity and the Home Page
Marj Kibby[7] addresses a dominant feminist conflict where the body is the object of the gaze. She provides an in-depth account of how woman on the web seem to be stuck in a paradox where they want to disconnect sexuality from their identity but they seem to incorporate it as an ‘integral part’ of their identity when given the ability to construct an image of themselves through homepages etc. She provides sound rationale behind such behavioural patterns and uses many examples on the web and theories from Bakhtin and Goffman to validate her points. She sums it saying that “boundaries between the self and the body are in a state of flux under the impact of technological development, the divisions between the identity and the body blurred by the mediations of technology”.
Conclusion
This research has brought about a whole new level of understanding and appreciation in regard to the diverse elements of the construction of identity and how it evolves and alters in the virtual world, an extension from the body behind the screen. The different sources reveal that through the advancement of technology a liberating and yet disempowering force has emerged. Identity is now a multi-faceted construct bounded only by imagination. However, due to the lack of responsibility and knowledge both by the ‘architects’ and users of an unchecked virtual world, elements of identify such as race and gender has also become marginalised and bounded unnecessarily.
References(footnotes)
[1] Mocha J. Herrup, ‘Virtual Identity’ in To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, ed. Rebecca Walker (New York: Anchor Books, 1995) pp. .
[2] Kevin Ng, ‘Cyberculture: Cyber-Identity and Virtual Community’, University of Alberta, (2003)
http://www.ualberta.ca/~kbng/Cyberculture.html (accessed 20 August 2004).
[3] John Suler, ‘Identity Management in Cyberspace’,The Pyschology of Cyberspace (May 1996)
http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/identitymanage.html (accessed 19 August 2004).
[4] Judith S. Donath, ‘Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community’, MIT Media Lab (November 1996)
http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html (accessed 19 August 2004).
[5] Sherry Turkle, ‘Who Am We’, Wired Magazine, 4.02, (January 1996)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01/turkle_pr.html (accessed 26 August 2004).
[6] Lisa Nakamura, ‘Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet’, Humanities UCI,
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/nakamura.html (accessed 20 August 2004).
[7]Marj Kibby, ‘BABES ON THE WEB: Sex, Identity and the Home Page’Media International Australia, No. 84, (May 1997), pp.39-45,
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/discipline/sociol-anthrop/staff/kibbymarj/babes.html (accessed 31 August 2004).
