I feel it's our getting acclimatized to these virtual facets of ourselves, these 'new selves', that is the genesis of this cyberidentity crisis. I believe we feel that face to face (in the physical) we have a complete control over our interaction with others. (OK, except perhaps for those with Jewish mothers.) But think of a communication as a data set. In technology we speak of 'push' and 'pull' technology - data on instigation going in two separate directions. Same therein with physical communication - we have an underlying understanding of who we are as a 'self', and in the physical we have evolutionarily, societally, culturally, and psychologically come to understand 'separation'. And within that the ability to change the communication to push, pull, or null. When we use technology to relay segments of ourselves, I think we become new facets of 'self'. So with any new technology, even say the telephone we had to create new ways of understanding our new self; it's humanness, it's rights, it's understanding of separation etc. From these understandings come a culture, and then a cultural etiquette - but it starts with our being able to grasp these new facets of self. But, for example myself, I had to come to understand and integrate my physical self and being with my new telephonic facet of self and being in any push/pull/null communication when on the phone with my jewish mother I think we just have yet to get used to understanding and then integrating the same ways of being of our physical selves with our new multiple virtual selves. -Sharon Sharon Greenfield Digital Ethnographer GC Research On Nov 3, 2009, at 11:25 AM, Rhiannon Bury wrote:
Suzanne has hit the nail on the head not so much about the blurring of public vs private but about multiple identities. Remember the scholarship and commentary from the mid to late 90's? (I'm thinking Sherry Turkle in particular). ICTs (text-based back then) were supposed to let us get in touch with our postmodern selves. Cyberidentity was marked by fluidity and multiplicity. With FB, the opposite is happening--we are presenting a fixed "one size fits all" identity to a mixed audience. Someone else upthread said that she maintains three Twitter feeds for that reason. I have a limited profile of FB and keep it quite generic.
Rhiannon