Because I have just become part of a new (to me) “new media” it seems fitting to discuss the last section of Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other” in terms of the YouTube video I just posted. In the first section of her book, “The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies”, Turkle discussed the ways in which robots are designed to perform “as if”. This, of course, means that the robots have been designed in such a way that it is easy to forget that they are robots at all—they have the ability to act “as if” they care, “as if” they’re responding, etc. Oddly enough, in her second section, “Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes” she discusses (not in the same words, however) the ways in which people are becoming programmed to act “as if”. In our YouTube video, entitled “Framing Identity: Google + versus Facebook”, Antonio, Emily, and I discusses the ways in which Google + is superior to Facebook because you can “frame” your identity according to who will see the post. We point out (humorously, I hope) that Google +’s circle feature allows different aspects of your personality to be show according to who’s watching. Literally, one frames his or her identity in a circular frame.
Turkle acknowledges what she calls a “collaborative self” in which “all questions about autonomy look different [because] on a daily basis, we are together even when we are alone” (169). When choosing to create accounts on Google +, Facebook, Twitter, or any other number of social network cites, we choose to be not only “alone together” but we also choose to take part in a collaborative self. First, we create a profile for everyone to see. (We claim that these profiles represent the “real” us, but they are, as Turkle mentions, just another way of performing.) Once these profiles are created, we add friends and begin commenting, chatting with others, and creating status updates. (Once again, these status updates are carefully selected to portray the person we wish to be… acting “as if” we’re busy, “as if” we’re popular, etc.) Once these accounts begin to form, a collaborative self also is created. When looking at my profile, an outside viewer (perhaps a stalker?) no longer sees Kesha. The person outside looking in sees the statuses I’ve chosen (“sort of” me), and they also see with whom I’ve been talking. Judgments about a person don’t just come from the person’s own actions anymore. We can judge them based on what others have said about/to them. I imagine that, though this collaborative self appears to exist only online, the fact that we’re constantly updating these social networks proves that this isn’t the case—do we become our collaborative selves?
As I’ve hinted at throughout this blog, online forums are, I believe, one of the best places to experiment with identity. In our YouTube video, Antonio is able to experiment with a number of different parts of his identity: son, employee, and friend. Each of these parts of Antonio’s identity are actually part of a whole, but with social networking sites like Google +, there’s no need for anyone to be aware of the whole. Turkle writes that “the network’s effects on today’s young people are paradoxical. Networking makes it easier to play with identity (for example, by experimenting with an avatar that is interestingly different from you) but harder to leave the past behind because the Internet is forever” (169). Though the character in our YouTube video is able to express all these different parts of his personality in what seems like a safe environment, Turkle brings up the fact that it’s not as safe as it seems. Privacy policies, when it comes to social networks, are confusing things that we often simply ignore. Though we extoll the virtues of Google + in our YouTube video, in actuality there’s no real way to keep the people in other circles from doing some investigating and finding out the “truth” about our characters behavior. I’m sure that a simple Google search could turn up pictures that a social networker thought were available only to a select number of friends. Social networks give us a false sense of security. These networks, like robots and people, act “as if” they are safe environments. Google + performs as a more private alternative to Facebook, but only in an “as if” sense. Though, on social networking sites “one’s profile becomes an avatar of sorts, a statement not only about who you are but who you want to be” there will always be, if it’s been put online, a part of yourself that you wish to ignore. Furthermore, social networking never allows for the true self because, as Turkle writes, “whenever one had time to write, edit, and delete, there is room for performance” (180).
Questions:
How do social networks, robots, and humans all act as “as if” performers?
Following the question above, what are the implications of the fact that humans share qualities with these electronic devices?
How have our lives become illusions? (We’re given illusions of choices, illusions of feelings, illusions of real selves…)
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