Hybrid Humans: Online and Offline Selves

In her article “Identity Work and the Authentic Cyborg Self”, author Jenny Davis discusses identity construction online and offline. For Davis, social actors must engage in identity work, that is to say they must work hard at constructing their identity. This construction must appear natural and organic, and must thus take place behind closed doors. Thus, having an “authentic” identity is difficult, and made all the more difficult when the self is constructed both online and offline. For Davis, social networking sites such as Facebook reveal the construction inherent in identity formation as “the architecture of social media asks us to present ourselves in explicit ways”.

At this point in her piece, I can go all Adorno and state that the architecture of social LIFE asks us to present ourselves in explicit ways. Buying a certain outfit, shade of makeup or playing a certain sport is a choice we make according to the menu, much in the same way that posting a particular photo, “liking” something or posting on a wall is a choice we make according to the Facebook menu. Identity construction is identity construction whether online or offline, we are simply using the different building blocks offered in each.

However, Davis does raise an interesting point regarding the tension between online and offline selves. She states that we shape our offline selves in order so that they meet our online ideal. For Davis this attempt to live up to our online identities is a quest for authenticity. Online selves are an ideal but we try to make this ideal a reality by tailoring offline behaviour.

What do you think, are social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter dictating how we act in real life? Do we go about our day, or our travels, thinking of how we can “tweet” about something, or thinking of what photos would be best for our online albums, which comments and pictures our friends would most enjoy? Are we more image conscious than ever? Who is influencing who: offline to online, or online to offline?

For my research on Facebook, I argue that users have changed their offline behaviour in order to, as Davis would say, live up to their ideal online personas. Before Facebook, would you have gone to that costume party, would you have brought your camera, would you be doing what you’re doing if there weren’t a possibility it would end up online?

The question returns to hybrid humans. Is our identity composed of our online and offline selves, or does one dictate the other?

Living a Transnational life

There has been a lot of discussion in the previous weeks about the way in which diasporas use social media as a means to maintaining a connection to their homeland. However, Panagakos and Horst ask a very interesting question: Do ICTs allow migrants to remain in contact with friends and family at long distances while sacrificing the potential to create proximate relationships? While I understand the logic behind this question, I believe that in a globalized world it is indeed possible to live a transnational life, where migrants can create proximate relationships and immerse themselves in communities within their host country while at the same time maintaining a connection with those from their homeland.

Over a decade ago, the New York Times published an article about the way in which immigrants are able to immerse themselves in two societies economically, culturally and politically. While this article discusses numerous immigrants and their transnational experiences, the experience that stood out most to me was that of Jesus Galvis, a man who immigrated from Columbia to the United States. Galvis was elected to the City Council of Hackensack, New Jersey and eventually ran for a senate seat in the Columbian Congress. This really exemplifies how an immigrant can partake in a community in their homeland while living in their host country.

While the story of Galvis may seem somewhat extreme, it is still common for anyone to live a transnational life. For example, going back to your family’s place of origin for the summer or returning to participate in a specific festival are other ways that people live transnational lives. I think social media has increased the possibility for migrants to engage with two communities in different parts of the world simultaneously, without necessarily sacrificing one for the other.

Raceless, Faceless Cyberspace

Everett situates cyberspace as having similar antiseptic or idealized qualities as television did in late 1950’s according to Spigel. The emergence of television into the home exposes interesting discourses on what type of information is being inserted into the private domain of the home. It is known that television served to preoccupy women within the home, re-inform ideologies of their role in the home and also open a market of consumerism to women. These qualities were attached to the ‘economics’ of a home, which women were surely responsible for.

Everett relates the emergence of the television with that of cyberspace. Everett suggests that cyberspace is a racialized sphere dominated by whiteness, which includes high and low forms of technology. Therefore, like the domesticity surrounding television, cyberspace is also a marginalized sphere. As laid out by Jodi Dean the Internet is not an open democratic public sphere, but a sphere dominated by young white men. Rather than providing a platform for universal communication, the Internet re-informs racialized hierarchies as high technologies are associated with white people and low or non-technology culture is associated with black people.

Everett says that although blacks have become well acquainted with the internet and technologies, cybercritics and cyberpunk subcultures have created a figuration of an imaginary cyberfuture untroubled by the complication of blackness. This discourse lends itself to Tarryn’s presentation on the ‘facelessness’ of the internet, suggesting that there is no race, no gender or no age on the internet. The advertisements brought up in Tarryn’s presentation highlight a world that has no race and therefore no inequality. But I question whether the desire to eliminate race is an attempt to homogenize and eliminate minority races, rather than unify humanity.

A Democratic, Online, Transnational Public Sphere?

I found this week's chapters by Everett very dense; at times, I felt I knew what she was talking about...but then as I continued to read, I became lost. Sophie's presentation really helped me situate Everett's main arguments about the digital divide and the digital public sphere. In fact, I am inspired to change my topic for our final conference paper so I can draw on larger course themes of globalization, diaspora, imagined community, online vs. real community, transnationality and the democratic public sphere. I do find it difficult, however, to answer the question about whether or not the Internet/digital technologies allow for greater participation among global citizens.

We often speak about the digital divide - not every citizen has access to technology such as the Internet - therefore, the digital public sphere is automatically not fully democratic because not every person has access to participate. However, the Internet's benefits for creating online spaces to "meet", and for people to gather and share information quickly about a wide variety of issues, cannot be denied.

I am especially interested in the comment threads of featured news stories on the websites of The Globe & Mail & The Record for example. It is interesting to see people voice their opinions on the information provided in an article and then continue to discuss with other citizens. However, another key aspect of the public sphere is to initiate change - and I wonder how much "change" is actually driven as a result of the information/public opinion expressed through online comments on a news article/website.

I know we have discussed this question at lengths in previous courses from last semester, but I’m curious to see if anyone’s opinions have changed since then on the legitimacy of a democratic, online, transnational public sphere. Is it possible? Or is it simply an ideology or utopic dream?

Can Programmers Debug Every Difference in Cyberspace?

In her article, “Where Do You Want to Go Today? Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet, and Transnationality”, Nakamura discussed how race and otherness are represented in the cybertechnology advertisements to stabilize the anxiety that cyberspace may break down ethnic and racial difference. It is not a question of whether racial and ethnic difference exist or not (obviously race as a visual marker cannot be eradicated in visually presented advertisements), but a question of how to manage and present difference, how to kick a balance between the anxiety of racially advantaged group and the “hope” of racially disadvantaged group. This reminds me of Nakamura’s use of the metaphor of race as “the bug in the machine, causing it to behave unexpectedly” in another chapter of her book. Managing the representation of race in cybertechnology advertisements is just like the routine of debugging anything that inhibits the program functions by programmers.

Admittedly, Nakamura’s work is imaginative and witty. Indeed, race can be concealed in cyberspace where everyone can have his/her own online avatar, thus excludes the possibility of discrimination. But there are two questions remain to be asked.

First, in parsing the narrative of the cybertechnology advertisements, she tends to simplify the utopian of democracy in cyberspace to the elimination of difference, and simplifies the problem of difference to racial difference. Nakamura might argue that she is aware of the complexity of the constituents of difference; however, I did not see her elaborations in this article. Can visual markers also be gender, physical condition, appearance, age, class, etc.? I am sure that these markers were also debugged in those advertisements if observe carefully. Luckily, we have another reading to resort to: “Return to Cyberia: Technology and the Social Worlds of Transnational Migrants” by Panagakos & Horst. In recalling scholars to research on how and why transnational populations use rapidly evolving new communication technologies, they put up some thoughtful points concerning the differences, or even hegemonies in the use of cybertechnologies/ICTs. Differences exist in such aspects as generation, gender, class, access…For example, when using ICTs, people from developed countries have priorities over those in home country. As a matter of fact, communications from a developed country to a developing country is ridiculously cheaper than the other way around. People in developed countries have their privileges in choosing the time and way of contacting people in homeland, which might totally change the lifestyle of people in homeland due to time difference. Isn’t it a confirmation of the unequal distribution of power and resource? What about other aspects of difference, such as gender, generation, class, access? What if those aspects combine together (say, a man live in a developed country using ICTs to contact a women live in a developing country)? Will this show a new form of hegemony in cyberspace?

Second, Nakamura totally neglected the discourses of the audiences, both the western internet users, who are put in the position of tourists and the other, whose images are idealized and stabilized. Will the visitor truly feel palliated just by viewing these visual images? Will “the other” genuinely feel liberated in cyberspace where all bodies are “reduced to minds” as is claimed by the programmers?

The very last question is: Can programmers debug every difference in cyberspace?

Crackberry

I want to address Panagakos and Horst’s point on the problematic nature and addictive qualitity of technology for migrants. This article discusses the rate in which migrants are adapting to forms of technology as it’s an effective and instantaneous solution to communication with their homeland and family. It appears that Horst and Panagakos are suggesting that migrants are turning to technology as their only connection with their homeland. The need for this communication is much more urgent and necessary for this group of people than with many others. Therefore, “this new sense of connectedness can create problems”, where signs of addiction, panic, and paranoia set in with the absence of their cell phones or internet.

According to a South Korean study, a migrants connection to technology instills a constant worry and sense alienation and isolation when these technologies do not work. The “temporary removal causes social dislocation and a perceived breakdown of social networks” (112). Perhaps this reliance on communicative technology is an emotional investment in a commodity. This is a problematic because these technologies not only serve as a false sense of relation to their home, but their emotional investment in their products feeds a consumer market and can be instrumentalized to serve a capitalist strategy. Assuming that migrants are willing to purchase phones, pay for contracts and feed into the business of communicative technology, they are also sacrificing “potential proximate relationships” and a true integration into the community that they currently live in.

A desire to maintain contact with their homeland may interfere with opportunities for meaningful physical human interaction like eye contact, physical expression and therefore leaving them displaced from their environment. Outside of the apparent pseudo-relationship that migrants build through technology, there is a generation gap that limits these forms of communication to those who are technically savvy. Thus, communication is limited to family members who have the money to buy these technologies, live in an area that supports these networks and also have an understanding of modern technology.

Therefore, as much as communicative technology is celebrated as removing national borders and unifying the world, it further complicates the notion of true communication, forming true relationships with family in foreign countries and with a migrant’s current environment.

Where's my (flying) car?

Over the past weeks we have all been discussing the possibilities, potentials, uses, etc. of new technologies and their role in a global culture. This has been a very interesting conversation that has brought out some interesting points and counter points. Panagokos and Horst discuss at length the old promise of the Internet as a medium to erase race, gender, class, etc. While we know that technology may not erase inequalities it does, to a certain extent, bring us together in a way like never before. As has been previously stated on the blog, it does allow people from around the globe to communicate in ways never dreamed possible before.

As we learn more about the ways various groups use technology, it is important to keep commenting on the state of technology in a global society. According to Escobar, different groups use or reject new technology based on various cultural, political and economic factors. Whether they utilize certain technologies may be effected by social standing, class, economic means, access (technological or political restrictions), and a host of other facts that fit into these classifications. At a time when cyber-culture was quickly emerging he termed this appropriation or rejection of new technology Cyberia. Cyber-technology and technology in general has emerged in unexpected ways and thus the way it is used needs to be studied as it emerges.

I think the web-comic above, brought to us by xkcd, nicely illustrates our obsession with new technology, how we use it, and the importance it plays in our imaginations. Sixty years ago the future looked like flying cars and cities on the moon instead, today we have wireless access to information around the world on hand held devices. And we always want more, we want new ways to use it. This is one of the important reasons why we must study how people use technologies in their everyday lives, because we may use old technologies in new ways or new technologies in old ways. Perhaps this is in our human nature, to always strive for more, to always be better. Either way our social reality is clearly always in flux based on new technologies.

Moore’s law is a predicted trend that can be used to explain how technology will continue to develop. This law states that computer technologies will double every 2 years; this has been happening and is expected to continue happening for a number of years. We know that new technologies will continue to develop at an alarming rate, and that is why they must constantly be studied, so that we can compare them to those that came before them and those that will come afterwards.

We may not have flying cars, but we have something a lot cooler: the Internet.

Freedom in a Post-Internet World

In her article “Where do you want to go today? Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet and Transnationality”, author Lisa Nakamura brought up a number of interesting and provocative points. One which stuck in my mind and that we didn’t explicitly cover in class concerns her discussion of the post-Internet culture. Here are two interesting quotes:

“In this post-Internet culture of simulation in which we live, it is increasingly necessary for stable, iconic images of Nature and the Other to be evoked in the world of technology advertising” (19).

“In the post-Internet world of simulation, “real” things are fixed and preserved in images such as these in order to anchor the Western viewing subject’s sense of himself as a privileged and mobile viewer” (21).

Nakamura seems to overlook something that I find important to the credibility of her argument: the relationship between freedom and the post-Internet culture. According to Nakamura, the Internet is marketed as a utopian space, as a space where “freedom” is made possible simply by logging on. With her discussion on the post-Internet culture, Nakamura suggests that the “freedom” offered to us by the Internet, by the world of simulation, makes it so that we crave structure and stability more than ever. This thrust into the open, magical world of the Internet causes users to panic, which is why we moderns neatly categorize and commodify difference. Therefore, I pose the following question: How do we conceptualize freedom in a post-Internet world?

It seems to me that freedom exists for the privileged, Western Internet user who has the freedom to appropriate, construct and consume the Other. Freedom means envisioning how you want the world to look and deciding how you can structure it visually. But as we know, appearances aren’t everything. So does our control of images, of how we expect the Other to look really have an impact? Is this not a pseudo-freedom? Or does the Internet offer instead freedom of speech, of thought - just what kind of freedom is Nakamura talking about?

So I turn the question to you: How do we conceptualize freedom in a post-Internet world?

The Tablet to Create a Better World.

In her article, “Where Do You Want to Go Today?” Lisa Nakamura asks: “What is the use of being asked where you want to go today if every place is just like here?” (20). Advertisers have caught on to the realization that our craving for difference and choice is not so much about diversification, but making people feel that they can access what they want, when they want it.

I believe that new technologies such as tablets and Smart Phones do enable us to transcend the boundaries of space and time. In addition to connecting people worldwide, these technologies allow for intimate relationships to be maintained via virtual spaces. However, as Nakamura suggests, in our attempts to create a space where no difference exists, we have created a virtual world without difference.

By creating new technologies that enable everyone to access everything in the same way, similar to Nakamura, I would like to ask: What is the point in participating in these new technologies if they make us look and act like everyone else? In a given day, we all check Facebook, work on our computers, send and receive text messages. The content may be different, but the actions and platforms are similar. Sure we might have a Mac or a PC or a Blackberry or Android, but in the end they all enable us to perform the same daily functions we feel we do by choice. I think it is fair to say that how we spend our day and the way in which we communicate is very much a form of identity creation. As we perform our daily actions, we are creating who we want to be and who we want others to believe we are.

Nakamura also speaks of new technologies giving off the impression of “a world without boundaries” (21). However a world without boundaries is not simply a by-product of just the Internet. The ability for us to travel by air has definitely had an impact on our ability to transcend space and time. The radio and television too have been argued as bringing visuals of the outside world into our very homes. As such, I think it is important that we define what we mean by boundaries. Are boundaries those barriers that we cannot cross without aid, such as a language boundary? Or do boundaries represent physical structures preventing us from entering certain places?

I want to leave this week’s discussion with a video and a question. The video is a commercial made by Motorola in response to Mac’s 1984 commercial.

The question is:

Is diversity possible when we are all conforming to the same mediated habits and relationships as others do? More so, if the digital world purports the message of no race, sex or gender, is diversity possible when we are all conforming to the same mediated habits and relationships as others do?