Week Four: Life Online: Digital Identity & Being Connected

The focus for this week is the contemporary conception of digital identity. Both selected readings, When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution by Jurgenson (2012) and Visitors and Residents: A New Typology for Online Engagement by White and Le Cornu (2011) spoke of the fallacy of digital dualism and argued for a more integrated view of the physical world and digital world. Jurgenson (2012) argued that the digital and physical enmesh to create an "augmented reality" (p. 84). While White and Le Cornu offered a replacement for Prensky's Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants in the form of a new continuum based typology. White and Le Cornu (2011) state, "our Visitors and Residents typology should be understood as a continuum and not a binary opposition" (p. 5). This continuum avoids the generalizations of Prensky's dualistic theory or we end up viewing the world as the film The Matrix (Jurgenson, 2012, pp. 84-85).

https://laurenbedfordportfolio.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/matrix-pill.jpg Technology will always shape the people in terms of relevance and applicability. If the technology is relevant to a person it will naturally be incorporated into their daily lives. As an avid gamer, born and bred in the warm glow of Nintendo games and the chime of dial-up internet, I am no stranger to technologies influence in my daily life. Social media exploded on the scene while I was in high school and quickly became a popular means to stay in touch with others. Now I have continual access to my smart phone, social media, online gaming, and video streaming. Upon reflection on playing Second Life, a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), I asked myself: Am I my user profile, username, or avatar rather than myself online. Sometimes I become my digital self, particularly when I am attempting to be articulate in a professional sense or when I am frustrated while gaming. Further, one should ask when engaging with social media: do you find your self-worth from social media or does it lift you up? It is a balance for me. I can not quit. For me, the digital and physical occupy the same realm and therefore my reality has always been augmented.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/76/1d/3f/761d3f8d82c7d4cc0e313a1f54bbca7a--cyberpunk-art-cyberpunk-design.jpg

Check out this incredibly succinct and thoughtful video:

Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? | Bailey Parnell | TEDxRyersonU

How Social Media Shapes Identity | Ulrike Schultze | TEDxSMU

Discussion in class focused on our redefined relations and identity online. How we portray ourselves online is often a reflection of our true self; an expression of freedom or professionalism. Unfortunately there are individuals that berate or belittle the works or ideas of others online; these individuals have earned the moniker troll. As Coles and West (2016) note, "'trolling' refers to specific type of malicious online behaviour, intended to disrupt interactions, aggravate interactional partners and lure them into fruitless argumentation" (p. 233). Trolling behaviour has the potential to great harm and is pervasive throughout online media (Coles & West, 2016, p. 233).

The world's greatest internet troll explains his craft

https://imgur.com/gallery/G0Zf8yi

Net neutrality is the concept that all data should be treated equally. Linked with net neutrality and under the umbrella of an "open internet" are the concepts of decentralization of technological power, social justice, lack of internet censorship, transparency, and open standards. Berghel (2017) rhetorically asks, "How does net neutrality fit within today’s neoliberal politics?" To which Berghel responds, "In short, it doesn’t" (p. 68)! Berghel uses, " neoliberalism to denote an uncritical vision of unregulated markets, privatization of public assets and resources, and antipathy to public support of social programs that’s affiliated with crony rather than laissez-faire capitalism. Under this definition, government largely serves the interests of the power elite and military industrial complex—through corporate welfare (government subsidies/subsidy economics), procorporate tax policies (for example, foreign investment credits), loose monetary policy (for example, quantitative easing), deficit spending, and pro-monopolistic practices—and its legitimacy is measured by its potential contribution to corporate profit" (p. 68). Neoliberalism in this regard is diametrically at odds with the concept of net neutrality and an open internet. There are ways as users we can fight back. Online tools like Disconnect and Ghostery or the search engine DuckDuckGo avoid and block online tracking. The conversation in class around net neutrality really got me thinking of the television show Silicon Valley and a concept the show introduced, that of a decentralized internet.

Here is an article from wired in 2017 on the new decentralized internet and here is one from 2018 on the arrival of a glitchy decentralized internet. We are achieving a free system but there is a long way to go in a neoliberalist system. 

We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads | Zeynep Tufekci

The reflection this week was exhaustive but offered plenty of conversation and insights.

Sources

Berghel, H. (2017). Net Neutrality Reloaded. Computer, 50(10), 68-72.

Coles, B. & West, M. (2016). Trolling the trolls: Online forum users constructions of the nature and properties of trolling. Computers in Human Behavior, 60(C), 233-244. Retrieved from CRKN Elsevier ScienceDirect.

Jurgenson, N. (2012). When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution. Future Internet, 4(1), 83–91. doi:10.3390/fi4010083

(note: this blog post might help with this - the original post where Jurgenson coins the term ‘digital dualism’: https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-augmented-reality/)

Sest, N. & March, E. (2017). Constructing the cyber-troll: Psychopathy, sadism, and empathy. Personality and Individual Differences, 119, 69-72. Retrieved from CRKN Elsevier ScienceDirect.

White, D.S. & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday. 16(9). Retrieved from https://firstmonday.org/