In the 17th century Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”.
In 2008, Descartes would say: “I ‘Facebook‘ therefore I am”.
The problem is that ‘I am’ in all sorts of places and I’m feeling a bit Sybil.
There’s my Facebook, which is a mix of offline friends, online friends and work colleagues. I have a pipl profile, I’m LinkedIn, you can find me on me.edu.au. I belong to groups in edna Groups, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, and Ning. I’m del.icio.us, I chat, and I Exchange. I’ve been skyping and twittering. I’ve got a private email account, an email forwarding account and a work email address. I belong to a bundle of professionally useful email discussion lists. I’m subscribed to a number of blogs written by innovative thinkers. I’ve got a Second Life. I’ve got a work blog - oh yes, that’s where I am…Forgot for a moment…
To say that my online life is feeling fragmented is understating it. My continuous partial attention is an equation of fractions and fragments, as I surf about from one environment to the next inviting a friend here, posting a photo there, bookmarking this and joining group that - it’s a bit like going to a sale and buying things that you wear a few times but aren’t the ‘classic pieces’ that will last from one fashion season to the next.
Most of the services I’ve mentioned are useful, or interesting, or innovative or places where I learn stuff from others, and some I will have a longer association with than others. But the transient nature of the internet and the services and information I find there means that I’m a bit commitment phobic - I don’t want to commit to just one service when there’s so many other virtual tasty treats: perhaps ‘continuous partial commitment’ is the next big thing?
Perhaps continuous partial commitment will also permeate our real world relationships (perhaps it already does?) where we wait for twitters to tweet on our mobiles so we can bow out of one social engagement and teleport (oops, I mean drive) to the next, leaving bits of disappointed avatars (oops, I mean friends) behind us.
What I do ponder is what it means for a sense of personal identity as we move from one virtual space to another: changing our clothes, sets of friends, areas of interest, picking up one avatar and dumping another, leaving parts of ourselves at the virtual door and picking up others. Over time, how will this impact on the ‘who’ of who we are?
And who owns our identities? Our assumption would be that if we create an identity within an online environment, then it IS us - I am my online identity(s), ok? - whichever fragmented fraction it might be. But it’s not quite so clear cut.
Our online identities - the reputation associated with them from our contributions and participation, or the special features with which they have been imbued by our creativity and expertise - have developed a commercial value and can be bought and sold. But not necessarily by you.
The owners of some MMOGs argue that the copyright in these identities belongs to them and the player/creator cannot sell the identity on - that is, you don’t own that fraction of ‘yourself’
Some online MMOGs like EverQuest have had thriving economies based around the sale of virtual goods and desirable online identities that have been created within the game - and these $ exchanges have lead to a subculture of criminal activity which involves the stealing of virtual identities so that they, and virtual goods associated with the virtual identities, can be sold.
So who exactly are you - if the various bits of yourself are scattered in multiple locations and some are actually owned, and ultimately controlled, by others, and can be snuffed out by a bankruptcy, an electrical outage, be virtually stolen, or be traded away for money?
How will we talk about a sense of identity - our ’self’ - when we have many fragmented identities doing different things in different environments?
And what does this mean for our young people who will form multiple identities in multiple virtual spaces before they even have a chance to learn what it means to think: ‘I am’?
Post a Comment