Carrying on from last week, a large portion of this topic is about our identity online. Again, I will begin this portfolio with a quote from the lecture slides.

‘When we step through the screen into virtual communities, we reconstruct our identities on the other side of the looking glass’ (Turkle, 1995)

Here, Turkle is referring to the ways in which we can present ourselves online. Interestingly, Henderson notes that Turkle was making a connection between god and the net.

“Internet is one of the most dramatic examples of something that is self-organized. That’s the point. God is the distributed, decentralized system.” (Turkle in Henderson, p. 77)

The connection stems from the decentralised system, as the internet holds a rapidly growing variety of content organised by different organisations. Governments have their own websites, but so do sites that did not exist before the advent of the internet. One example is Wikipedia, launched in 2001. While it represents an attempt at collating information, it’s basis is a decentralised and open-collaboration. It is chaotic, decentralised yet distributed.

Garner, S. (2011). Image-bearing cyborgs.

The lecture not only covers cyberspace, but other aspects too. ‘Cyborg’ is a term coined by Clynes and Kline during the 60s, conceived as part of a proposal to help protect astronauts in space (Clynes and Kline in Garner, S. p. 33).

So what is a cyborg?

A cyborg is organism that is a hybrid of technology and biology. They possess enhanced or restored abilities, based off the technologies ability to either deliver feedback. (Carvalko, 2012)

Back to Garner’s ‘Image-bearing cyborgs’.

The most interesting perspective presented in Garner’s chapter is that of ‘narratives of apprehension’ (p. 33). Cyborgs, and what they represent, are oppositional to the traditional ways society interacts with technology. To the average person, it sends a disconcerted feeling. Cyborgs therefore raise questions about “human nature, human identity, and the relationship between the human and non-human in the world” (Garner, p. 34).

Avatars

One of the most notable examples of online ‘avatars’ is Second Life (SL). Ikegami (2011) gives account of one of their interactions on the site, visiting the online house of a friend from the United States from Japan. Although, because of the virtual nature of SL, they are all together, connected through the computer.

References:

Carvalko, J. (2012). The Techno-human Shell-A Jump in the Evolutionary Gap. Sunbury Press. 

Garner, S. (2011). Image-bearing cyborgs? In Garner S. (Ed.), Theology and the Body (pp. 33-54). Hindmarsh, SA: ATF (Australia). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt163t9m6.6

Henderson, C. (2000). The Internet as a Metaphor for God? CrossCurrents,50(1/2), 77-83. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24461233

Ikegami, E. (2011). Visualizing the Networked Self: Agency, Reflexivity, and the Social Life of Avatars. Social Research,78(4), 1155-1184. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23349847

Turkle (1995). Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet. Simon & Schuster