[Air-l] Re: New Theoretical Approaches to the Self in Cyber-Culture

[Christian Nelson]

danah boyd wrote:

> Please disagree with me because i am really interested in this
> conversation...

Wish I could oblige, danah, but I can't, at least as far as current
cyber-reality is concerned. You've nicely summarized the approach to the self
and its presentation that I've developed for myself (primarily from my reading
of Goffman's _Presentation of self in everyday life_.)

However, I do think, that the internet has, or seems about to, change our
notions of the self in that it is going to enable us to create social selves
that might be said to act on their own and yet might be argued to be a part of
our self. It seems likely that computers will enable us to create web-resident
or external-robotic agents that will interact with others at our bidding, and
thus represent us, but based on programs for the conduct of social interaction
that are not of each of our making. Our identity may, then, become defined at
least in part by the actions of these agents, but problematically so. I
suspect that followers of Bruno Latour might argue that this is already the
case. Certainly, he argues very powerfully that certain technological
phenomena (even as humble as a door butler) interact with us in a social
fashion. However, I don't think that any of us feels that such interaction is
going on when it occurs, nor do I think we think of door butlers and the like
as representing someone, and thus holding their makers or users responsible
for specific actions of these devices. On the other hand, robots and at least
some kinds of web agents could easily engender a sense of social presence.

Christian Nelson