Identity

To be quite honest I am still reeling with too many thoughts and questions to wholeheartedly disagree with any of the concepts presented. If anything, it’s perhaps a matter of degree. I buy the general postmodern idea of complexity and multiplicity of “identity,” and that it’s constructed through interactions (including online) and changes over time. I agree that we present ourselves differently to different audiences, putting forward varied “identity markers” in different situations. The many stories of people playing out various aspects of their actual or desired selves on MUDs (to positive or negative ends) attests to the undeniable “realness” of those online experiences. And while I cringe a bit at thinking of myself as a cyborg, I can’t deny the increasing interaction between human and machine, as well as the artificial limbs of my older relatives.

I guess the aspect I feel most frustrated by is the lack of new theoretical frameworks (that I’m aware of) connecting all this to the present (and future) online world, which is much more visual and oral. As Alice Marwick noted in her podcast, this reality makes the anonymity of the “text only” web impossible. In addition, the exploding diversity of Internet access moves us into an online world in which written language no longer reigns. Without reducing identity to a set of fields in a database, as the corporate world already has, according to Marwick, what is the new definition of online identity?