hello, and what are we today?

Mike Jones

Identity is the first thing you create when you log on to a computer service. By defining yourself in some way, whether through a name, a personal profile, an icon or a mask, you also define your audience, space and territory. In the architecture of networks geography shifts as readily as time. Communities are defined by software and hardware access. Anatomy can be readily reconstituted. (Leeson 1996 : 325)

When we log on to a computer network we are given the opportunity of putting our 'self' on line. The identity of that 'self' is as flexible as the users imagination, scanning electrons of crystallised thought, which can be as transient as thought. This essay will briefly discuss some of the debates surrounding the impact of technology on notions of the body and identity, with particular focus on the use of the Internet to create different personae and communities.

As it can be seen from the quote above there is a certain creative element to 'being' in cyberspace. This notion of creativity is evident on the World Wide Web, where people can create a space to represent themselves such as a personal homepage. These pages often list personal interests, aspirations and ideals, sometimes containing pictures of the person it is there to represent but frequently they are text and simple graphics. The person who authors the page decides how much of themselves to reveal or even to invent a self that bears no relation (apart from authorship) to their 'real' selves. Thus, as Baudrillard put it, "this body, our body, often appears simply superfluous... ...everything is concentrated in the brain." [i] So at the same time as creating a persona the user is distanced from their actual body, but, as Balso points out "'freedom from a body' [does not] imply that people will exercise the 'freedom to be' any other kind of body than the one they already enjoy or desire."[ii]

As well as the World Wide Web users can also log on to Internet Relay Chat, (IRC,) virtual areas which allow one to interact with other users directly through the keyboard, one types to 'talk'. Again the user creates a 'nick name,' effectively masking their identity. Once on a channel the user can take part in an 'open forum' type of discussion and can do so on several channels or open up several different 'private' channels (direct lines to other users on the same main channel.) Although the mode of communication is the same on all the channels the representation of the self can be individual to the channel. The real self then, becomes a node on a network of selves, often interacting 'In Real Life' (IRL) as well as via the computer, and often not as a primary self. The self takes on the function of multi-tasking sharing it's processing power with other selves in a constant round of switching to different channels, and yet there is some 'presence' left behind, even if it is only the users nickname in the channel window. This switching between personae seems decidedly at odds with Toffler's optimistic prediction that "computers can be expected to deepen the entire cultures view of causality... ...helping us to synthesise meaningful 'wholes' out of the disconnected data whirling around us. The computer is the antidote to blip culture."[iii] Rather it seems that computer networks are the facilitator of a blip consciousness, a conduit for even more "disconnected data" delivered directly to your desktop.

The notion of 'windows' is well known to the users of computers with the Microsoft Corporation software of the same name. originally conceived to help users switch between applications and work more efficiently, but Turkel contends that:

...windows have become a potent metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed "time sharing" system... The life practise of windows is of a distributed self that exists in may worlds and plays many roles at the same time. Virtual communities extend the metaphor. [iv]

It is easy to understand the attraction of the windows metaphor, as I have already indicated it is familiar to a large proportion of computer users. However I feel Turkel's contention that "virtual communities extend the metaphor" only seems to indicate the emptiness of the notion of community in virtual space.

Michael Heim argues that the membership of a virtual community would be a remedy for the "mean spiritual isolation"[v] of contemporary urban living, without restrictions of geography or temporality. Although this position presupposes a positive response from the communities one tries to join Heim does concede that the communities involved will become more intangible as the Net grows and the users connections increase. There seems to be another side to the idea of virtual community as a salve for urban alienation. The user is emphasising their isolation, their disconnectedness from the local community around them. The freedom to be what they want to be, whilst participating in a virtual community, may simply serve to throw up the inadequacies of their corporeal existence in stark relief. As one user of a MUD (Multi User Dungeon) put it "RL [Real Life] is just one more window , and it's not usually my best one."[vi]

Without any stable identities in these communities it is hard to envisage anything more than a surface contact between fragmented entities, partial selves peeping out from behind the mask of anonymity. Nevertheless, Howard Rheingold asserts that "some people seem to use these depersonalised modes of communication to get very personal with each other. For these people, at the right times, Computer Mediated Communication is a way to connect with another human being."[vii] Although he does admit that there is an element of doubt as to the authenticity of human interaction in computer mediated communications. Despite his reservations Rheingold remains enthusiastic about the opportunities for community on the Internet.

There seems to be some distance between Rheingold's positive ideas of virtual community on the Internet, and Leary's notion of the cyberpunk or cybernaut as individuals that think for themselves. Freebooting their way across a 'sea of data,' fishing for knowledge to "guide the gene pool to the next stage." [viii] These loners hardly seem likely candidates to belong to a stable community, it could be argued that the cybernauts that do think for themselves are more likely to disrupt communities than enhance them. There is the famous case of the male, New York psychiatrist, who posed as a mute, crippled female called 'Julie.' 'Julie' was popular with many people, especially other women, who trusted 'her' with their problems. When the truth was known, the reaction was varied, but some of the women who had shared their thoughts with 'Julie' claimed to feel violated.[ix] It is difficult to imagine those users affected by this view behind the mask, feeling as enthusiastic about virtual community as Rheingold. Equally, it would seem reasonable to suppose, that those women would still be happy to feel close to 'Julie,' if they had remained ignorant of 'her' gender.

The notion that the Internet is some kind of public forum, where ideas can be shared, and discussed by equals, behind a mask of anonymity is inherently flawed. The very fact that users are anonymous allows them to put forward opinions that do not have to be considered or informed. Any notions of democracy [x] on the net are similarly undermined, how would users vote without intrinsically fixing their identities? Without a fixed identity there is no safeguard against multiple voting. How can the disembodied and often dispersed, citizens of these virtual communities reach a consensus for non-virtual action? Poster contends that "Dissent on the Net does not lead to consensus: it creates the profusion of different views. Without an embodied copresence, the charisma and status of individuals have no force."[xi]

Rheingold and Heims ideas of community seem very utopic, however one soon realises that the models proposed are based in the corporeal world of relativley fixed identity. We must go beyond these models as Poster put it :

The challenge is to understand how the networked future might be different from what we have known.[xii]

Notes

i	Baudrillard J. in Foster H. (1985 : 129)
ii	Balso A. in Hodges M. at: http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_culture/Cyborg_anthropology/vr_and_human_body.article (hyperlink no longer valid)
iii	Toffler A (1981:185-6)
iv	Turkel S. in Leeson (1996: 118)
v	Heim M. in Benedikt M. (ed) (1994: 73)
vi	Turkel S. in Leeson (1996: 118)
vii	Rheingold H. Virtual Community at: http://www.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/vcbook5.html (Chapt 5)
viii	Leary T. in McAffrey L (ed)(1991: 225)(This model bears a striking resemblance to Leary's earlier conception of the Shaman as an individual who goes outside society to "bring back the jewel of knowledge lost at the beginning of time," by the use of hallucinogens rather than computers. [As featured on the CD the shamen/different drum 1993 one little indian: track 10] )
ix	Stone A. R. in Benedikt M. (ed) (1994: 83)
x	The modern usage - representative democracy.
xi	Poster M. (1995)in WIRED 3.11:idées fortes - "The Net as a Public Sphere?" at:WIRED 3.11:idées fortes - "The Net as a Public Sphere?" By Mark Poster
xii	ibid.