Identity in the Time of Net/Meskworks
Before we get serious, here's a question. Look up from the screen and examine the space you're in. From where you're sitting how many beverage containers can you see? I counted 14. If your number is above three there's a good chance you're in a design studio.
From: Bryan Boyer
To: Angie W.This may or may not be useful, but I wanted to articulate it better after our discussion the other day.
My thoughts started with a quotation from Esther Dyson:
"More fundamentally, as the world becomes more real-time and connected, the virtual and increasingly the actual configuration of the system is changing. There's a rich, complex, shared data store in the cloud, and mail is simply the passing of notifications and alerts that tell you to pay attention to/download specific items in the cloud that are new or changed or that someone wants to share with you. this creates huge challenges in version control, updating and permission management."The cloud she speaks of is the internet and, to some extent, the furthest reaches of human knowledge as it is recorded digitally. Because of the ease of connections that this technology affords us we are able to augment not just our daily lives but our actual way of being. It's not simply an issue of being able to check movie times online and thus saving a bit of time, but one of slowly incorporating these extended knowledge sources into our thoughts and actions. The same way that email in Dyson's example becomes a link between bits of content spread across the network, specific networks (cell, web, etc) become the link between us and the world of knowledge at hand. The more experience we gain with these technologies the more they become a natural extension of our lives-- the more people carry on SMS conversations concurrently with actual dinner conversations, lookup movie times on their cellphone, or use google to remind themselves of a word's definition. Concurrently with this ever-tighter integration, technology seeps out of the box and into our physical world. The cell phone was a big step, then the flatscreen LCD allowing computers to have ever-smaller profiles and even start to become fashion objects, ubiquitous ipods, car GPS systems, billboards made of LED instead of paper: it continues. A meshwork is forming that ties our minds to the data network and our bodies to the devices, all the while we're growing more and more comfortable with this augmentation. It's arguably no longer an augmentation but a modification of previous behaviors and conceptualizations of the world.
In some sense, humanity is meeting a new friend. The same way that we cautiously get to know a stranger-- first with a coffee, maybe dinner, long walks on the beach etc-- we are fumbling to get to know our technology. It's odd to equate geeks with the socially promiscuous of our society, but that's essentially what they are in this metaphor. In the manner than people rely upon their friends for advice in their areas of expertise, the geeks among us are now making use of external knowledge resources which are more and more often mediated by digital technology. One speaks to their neighbor about which mower is best, one calls their neighbor on the landline, one calls their neighbor on a cell from across the world, one simply asks the Great Google Oracle which mower is best.
This is more or less old hat to many people. There are plenty of us who already live like this and will continue to do so as the physical technologies integrate themselves into our lives even better. For me the interesting question is what does this do to our concept of identity? How do we reconceptualize ourselves as individuals within this network, or is individual even the correct term? The issues that Dyson mentions-- "version control, updating and permission management"-- are every bit as important to the fundamentals of individual identity as they are to the nature of email as a communication method. How do we deal with updates to the network or introduction of entirely new networks? How does one identify themselves in an existence predicated upon malleability, constant comparison and check-summing, and reconfiguration? Finally, and perhaps the issue we are already feeling the effects of most clearly, how do we make sure that whatever identity we create remains under own own control? I would venture to guess that similar to the way we have adopted a number of protocols for network communications, identity is undergoing a similar diversification. The way you choose to define yourself is structurally as important as the actual content you use to do so.
Yet it seems that we have not yet fully accepted this as a developing change to the individual psyche. It's still treated as an augmentation, an after factory add-on. Perhaps this is why the question of what networked life means for Identity is still an outstanding question.
--Posted 05/21/04 12:15AM