By: Eleanor Wynn and James Katz
This web site included a lot of
information about the internet and consequences that have resulted from
it being in use. The main consequence is the development of the cyberself.
It contains some very intricate and deep concepts, so bare with me as I
attempt to explain it all.
The site
starts off with a very long abstract which basically explains the development
of different personalities and identities as a result of internet
use. The reasons for the development of different personalities is
that it "liberates the individual from the body" and allows them to live
in an altered sense of reality. I agree with eveything that they
say up to this point of their abstract, which I thought was too long.
After that point, they go into saying that self was only a concept used
in psychology, and that the idea of this was never explored outside of
it. However, now the "self" has come to include a vast amount of
meanings and definitions as a result of the interenet and its use.
A helpful gesture that this site
does is include a listing of key words. The not so helpful part of
this section was that it just lists the words, and does not define them.
So, you are left to look these words up yourself or left to ponder the
meaning of each.
The real beginning of this site
begins now with "Parallel approaches to the study of internet behavior".
This part I thought was necessary, but like the rest of the report, very
long and thorough. In summary, this long section discusses the function
of the internet. It lists the internet as a "new and unique medium
of communication". I agree with their point that it allows easier
communication with more peoples across the world. Okay, now heres
where the report gets really confusing. The authors use a lot of
quotes in their report. This is good to support their point of view.
However, they also list the reference information for each quote right
after each quote. I found this to be extremely distracting and made
the report most difficult to read. They should have used foot notes
in addition to their bibliography. It would have made their report
easier to read and more organized.
Basically the report gets really
technical. It uses quotes from various books including Sherry Turkle's
Life on the Screen. It doesn't really get into the "self until
about a quarter through. This report describes the self in different
terms. The first is a psychological defnition as provided by Turkle
and Stone. They describe the self as "the way we create and experience
human identity". The authors of this report disagree with this calling
it "outmoded". They believe that, "We take issue with idea
that the self is discontinuous and a creation of
the individual, under the control of that individual or else conversely
controlled as a political unit. "
Another defnition as provided by
Goffman is that it is not self, but self-presentation. It's an "image
of self that social participants put forth as viable means of negotiating
normal social life".
This is not the end of the complications
in defining "self". The next topic for discussion is the "Self as
a Being" which describes it in philosophical terms. It says that
the internet is a means for people to be able to give people the opportunity
to "abandon the confines of a limiting self". I agree with this,
because in my opinion, I find this appealing, however, I don't find it
to be a philosophy to live by. I look at it as a form of entertainment,
being able to be someone I'm not for the time that I am on the internet.
However, some may view it as an escape from who they really are, if they
are not happy being who they are. This is also supported by Stone
saying that the "more removed the self is from this locatable socially
articulated self, the more freedom is available... that suit the participant".
I also disagree with this, because it only views people on the internet
in one way. It says that people are not happy with who they are,
and so they create identities that are closer to who they want to be and
should be. This could be destructive. What if someone is really
psychotic and loves to scare and torture people, but in real life they
act like a normal person. They could get online and really do some
damage by letting their real true feelings out and expressing themselves.
The issue of homepages and gender
also arise in this report. It bashes women saying that they reveal
way too mucha bout themselves on the internet which is extremely dangerous.
This is dangerous, because no true "animinity" can be established.
It also leads to another point that they make earlier about encryption,
"acess is free, but protection is not". There is no "original", and
a permanent record is made once online. I haven't done any research
on this issue about women tending to give more information about themselves
over the internet than men, but it doesn't sound true. There are
so many scares about privacy and protecting oneself while online, that
it doesn't sound likely that women would give out information so freely,
especially since most women know that they are natural targets for crime
and violence.
In closing, I would like to give
one final quote from this report, which I found extremely interesting.
"Virtual identification depends heavily upon the very
real physical infrastructure of the Internet. It may be true that
the Internet has no 'center' and constitutes a form of self organizing
system when its circuits are in order."
This quote was backed with Turkle defining the Internet
as a "new organism" with "no way to control it".
I liked this report, because it touch on some issues that I have never thought about. I introduces some interesting theories about the cyberself. I do not agree with all of them, especially the ones about women, because it portrays women as non-thinking brainless dummies only looking for romance. The report was really too long. They could have made their point in less words. the organization was very confusing. There were too many reference citations that were distracting. I got lost trying to figure out if the quote was something they supported or didn't support. The summary was much better. It was more clear with their points and issues clearly stated. I understood more of the summary than the entire report. That's it folks!