The blurring of the distinction between the online and offline worlds is persuasively argued by Gies. The improvement in visual and audio technology enabled by Web 2.0 and broadband enable many more clues to offline identity to be offered or if we want to put it that way left behind. It occurs to me that we could experiment with postings without our known names. Would I be able to distinguish Sian from Jen and Silvana from Bill without their names. I think so because their print is probably academically recognizable for me. An expert, like Gies, would clearly pick up more clues than I would. But it remains true that I still don’t know any of those people when they move outside of the limited context in which I have experienced them. I could, in fact, be a woman (or a cyborg, human or posthuman). I would have to me a consummate internet actress of course but isn’t that what conmen/women are?
In the early days of the internet we all hid behind personas. I think Gies is right and that the tendency to reveal our differing personas through facebook, interest groups, flickr and webcam has made ‘personality’ more accessible on the web. For me posting remains a very cerebral activity however. I can smile at the amusing comments from my communicating partners but the belly laugh engendered by live contact at humorous dinner table comments is missing.
On the negative side this can be misused as in teenage chat rooms where a lurker enters and starts to groom a vulnerable, trusting person and I do think that there remains a sizeable difference to someone who chats someone else up in the street for criminal purposes. The tone of voice and the demeanour of the person together with their real appearance don’t come over in the internet especially if the would-be criminal takes care to avoid being seen.
As far as images or moving images are concerned, at a basic level we can enable people to see us, but the us but what they see remains within our control.The relative anonymity of the internet helps to increase confidence by enabling concealment.
Venetian Mask
Disability can be concealed until we are ready to reveal it ( as in the IDEL example) and I, for example, would not have been prepared to be facetious or use images to illustrate the points I make in my blog if I were not comfortable within the group: not just peer assessment but peer warmth. I know personally someone who survives depression by means of late night chatroom exchanges of information with other depressives.
The person lives in a relatively isolated place and the chances of finding someone to help when the feeling is at its deepest are slight.
The cyborg for me is a flight from not towards reality. I do not wish to discover that my partner is made of plastic and has a kind of lymphosuctioned brain.
References:
Gies, L. (2008). How material are cyberbodies? Broadband Internet and embodied subjectivity. Crime Media Culture 4/3.
Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.
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