Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

Chapter 10

The material below represents notes compiled by Robert Keel and Takako Nomi in their reading of Turkle's, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster, 1995.. They are intended for classroom use.

Identity Crisis

Key Words in The Post modern culture: Fluidity, Flexibility and Multiplicity

The self and Identities

• Virtual Identities as objects-to-think-with for the self "Saturated self" -- the idea that communication technologies have caused us to "colonize each other's brains"
• "They become part of us and we of them." Our existence--in a state of continuous construction and reconstruction, in negotiated reality.
• No centered self but the self as the "raptures of multiplicitous being"

Identities -- Multiple but Coherent

• The self/selves--not unitary, nor a stable entity/entities Integration of multiple identities, which constitutes the sense of self
• Home page as an-object-to-think-with for multiple yet coherent identities -- different home pages are brought together and become of a piece of the whole
• Flexibility of the selves -- the selves are changing through constant communication with one another
• The open communication -- respect for differences-- many within us and many within others
• Our existence -- in a state of continuous construction and reconstruction
• The self as "continuum of dissociation"
• A question -- accessibility between fragments. This may be the key in order to explain MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder)

Virtuality as a object-to-think-with about reality:

• "Virtual experiences become a part of the perceptual and emotional background that changes the way we see things," trying to unify the world characterized as fluid, flexible and multiple back together again
• Perception of the Internet -- like a giant brain, and people and computers are its neural net
• Perception of human -- composed of information (strings of codes).
• Computers as kin Perception of Cog (an artificial two-year-old) and reactions -- "I behaved as if in the presence of another being"

Our Life in Real and Virtual :

• Questions as to meanings of the culture of simulation
• "Will it be a separate world where people get lost in the surface or will we learn to see how the real and the virtual can be made permeable, each having the potential for enriching and expanding the other?"
• Dynamics of virtual experiences -- are they dangerous or beneficial?

The keys to the answers- whether virtual experiences are self-destruction or personal transformation depends on our awareness of what stands behind our screen personae

Possibilities: Virtuality as a space for growth

• "We don't have to reject life on screen, nor treat it as alternative life. We are in a position to be more aware of what we project into everyday life" Self-knowledge
• "The imperative to self-knowledge has always been at the heart of philosophical inquiry. In the twenty century, it found expression in the psychoanalytic culture as well. One might say that it constitutes the ethic of psychoanalysis. From the perspective of this ethic, we work to know ourselves in order to improve not only our own lives, but those of our families and society....Our need for a practical philosophy of self-knowledge has never been greater as we struggle to make meaning from our lives on the screen."