Some Social Theory

Identity, Community and the Net

Net identity (Sherry Turkle) • Consequences for the self on interactivity on the net

(Turkle) • Virtual communites accept the constructed nature of

reality, self and the other• “RL is just one more window, and it's usually not my

best one.“• "You are who you pretend to be.“

See “Virtuality and its Discontents-Searching for Community in Cyberspace” by Sherry Turkle http://www.prospect.org/print/V7/24/turkle-s.html

On being Digital (Negroponte)• Interactivity at a distance

– Immersion– Choice– Affect (it gets to you) & effect (you can get to it)

• virtual space (cyberspace) is as real as the actual– Almost every aspect of community is being virtualized – eg Universities – what will they be like in 20 years time?– Virtual world doesn’t always follow the same ‘social

rules’ as ‘real world’

Hypertext

• Hypertext is a dynamic referencing system in which all texts are interrelated

• Shift from page to screen– Distance ceases to exist– More dynamic & interconnected

• Collective intelligence (the Borg)- eventual seamless connection of the Net to the world at large

• Effects on copyright and owning of knowledge

Bodies & Cyborgs

• The end of grand narratives – End of the enlightenment project– Simulations become the reality– Post modern condition (Lyotard)– Narratives: cultural elements that hold societies

together now fragmented

• Concept of human invaded by technology– Artificial life: consciousness as disembodied

information

Bodies & Cyborgs• Cyborgs: “cybernetic-organism”

– Blurring of organic & technological • Genetic engineering• Human genome project

– New materialism or information as new religion?

• Fear of loss of our bodies: – certainties of presence & absence replaced by

patterns of information/randomness– Information has got under our skin

Haraway’s Cyborg manifesto• Haraway’s cyborg

– shift from thinking of individuals as isolated from the "world" to thinking of them as nodes on networks

– no longer possible to tell where we end and machines begin

– “Drugs or no drugs, the training and technology make every Olympian a node in an international technocultural network just as "artificial" as sprinter Ben Johnson at his steroid peak.” (Kunzru)

Haraway’s Cyborg manifesto Haraway's world of hybrid networks

- part human, part machine; complex hybrids of meat & metal. Body an event rather than an entity

– No longer a neat ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’ distinction– cyborg constructions of people and machines, that surround

and incorporate us.– Networks are also inside us. Our bodies are fed on the

products of agribusiness, kept healthy - or damaged - by pharmaceuticals & altered by medical procedures (Kunzru)

– “we're constructing ourselves, just like we construct chip sets or political systems”

Haraway’s Cyborg manifesto

emerging technoculture:

– Body as ‘meat computer’– blurring of boundaries between good/bad,

nature/nurture, right/wrong, biology/society, male/female

– eg: Cyberfeminism - "an alliance between women, machinery, and new technology.” (Sadie Plant)

Body Parts• Manipulating the body

– genetic engineering – copyrighting living animals – Body as an event rather than an entity

• Mortality: – Death turns people into things – repect for the recently dead body (‘post person’) – Body parts as sacred, particularly children’s bodies– Doctors no longer trusted as mediators between life

and death eg: Alder Hey hospital body parts scandal; dead bodies in hospital chapel

Castell’s Network Society

• Society as a space of flows• Two forms of power

– Network– The self ( re-assertion of identity)

• Social groups increasingly fragmented• Self v network as replacing class struggle• Culture of creative destruction• “search for new connectedness around shared

reconstructed identities”

Living with the Virtual

• Not just the Net - Increase in ‘virtual presence’ with use of mobile phones

• Both utopian and dystopian visions– Education– Religion– Community

"fads swept the youth . . . at the speed of light; entire subcultures could rise overnight, thrive for a dozen weeks, and then vanish utterly."

William Gibson, Neuromancer