Lost in the crowd?

In his 2004 book 'Distraction', author Mark Curtis argued that our sense of self - or personal identity - can become confused or challenged when we habitually use digital technology. He made several interesting points about the blurring of boundaries between public and private (think of webcams and Facebook status updates for example) and that technology tends to distract us from 'who we are'. There has been some debate over whether or not people should combine their personal and business social media identities.

Curtis argues from the position that identity is malleable, rather than fixed, and that we learn from a very early age that we can be someone else through role playing, imagination or masquerade. Our immersion in media, he argues, provides us with a myriad of alternative role models we can adopt or adapt. By the same token, social media also give us endless opportunities to engage with others, including sports stars, entertainers, politicians and other celebrities. The Curtis position is that other people's lives are more glamorous than our own, and therefore we wish we could be them to escape from the mundane, if only for a while. All very well, but I'm not convinced that this argument is applicable to everyone. Does wishing to be someone else mean that you actually adopt their identity? I think not.

Curtis also seems to be implying that people are often unwilling or at least unconscious participants in the digital obfuscation of their identities. Again, this is a far from convincing argument, but even if it were true, would it really so much of a bad thing that we are able to engage in multiple online identity performance? What dangers might there be? Also, do we really find ourselves forced into performing multiple identities against our will?

Those who follow this blog or my Twitter accounts (yes, plural) will know that I am very willing to experiment with multiple identities, because I am fascinated by the possibilities and intrigued by the psychology behind personal use of social media. However, I engage with this through choice, and I feel fully in control of what is broadcast/published.

Immersion in environments such as virtual social worlds (Curtis uses Habbo Hotel as his example) are also argued to be a means where the boundaries of identity can be blurred. He makes a useful point that in such environments you don't necessarily know the people you are interacting with, because they often hide behind pseudonyms and always represent themselves as avatars. This does not necessarily mean though, that your identity is being changed or that you are 'losing control' of who you are. It may mean though that you open yourself up to identity theft or manipulation of your public facing image by others. Curtis also makes a useful point that managing multiple identities can demand a lot of effort and therefore becomes a distraction. I have discovered the effects of this personally, because I maintain six Twitter accounts. I therefore need to be very careful especially when using Tweetdeck that I check carefully which account I'm using before I hit the send button. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Reference
Curtis, M. (2004) Distraction: Being Human in the Digital Age. London: Futuretext.

Image source


Lost in the crowd? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Fall guy

My 50th birthday bash last night went off well - several old friends turned up, each with a bottle of wine for me (are they trying to tell me something...?) and a splendid time was had by all. Yesterday it was raining again, as it has every day since I got back from Bella Italia. It's been so bad (you know, raining Japanese car components) that a guy two doors down from me is actually building an Ark. Persistently precipitating. Not June weather at all.

So it was, in a slightly damp and depressed mood that I decided to venture off for a while into my Second Life to cheer myself up. All was going well until I fell off the side of a cliff, and tumbled down over into the side of a log cabin. It hurt! Not physically of course - I'm still able to walk without a limp. But it hurt psychologically. I wouldn't have believed it until it happened to me. But there you have it. Second Life and other 3-D virtual worlds can be damaging to your sense of well-being. The embodied mind does extend beyond the physical body and into the technological extensions we employ, whether mobile phone, blog, or avatar. I recall reading Andy Clark's book 'Natural Born Cyborgs', and he voiced similar ideas. Well, I'm not disagreeing with him, now I have the mental contusions as evidence....

Access Andy Clark's musings here.

Larry Snotter and the Virtual World

Tragically, trainee chat room Wizard Larry Snotter has become addicted to Second Life. His avatar, a disturbingly thin blonde woman with a twisted smile, has begun to dominate his life. His irritating little friend Nobby (himself a reformed Internet addict), takes it upon himself to help Larry to quit…

LARRY: You don’t understand Nobby. I've got to keep going back. I don't belong here in RL. I belong in your world – in Second Life. It's the only place I've got... friends.
NOBBY: Friends who don't even text Larry Snotter?
LARRY: Well, I expect they've been.. hang on, how do you know my friends haven't been texting me?
Guiltily, Nobby produces Larry’s SIM Card.
NOBBY: Larry Snotter mustn't be angry with Nobby -- Nobby hoped if Larry Snotter thought his friends had forgotten him... Larry Snotter might not want to go back into Second Life, sir...
LARRY: Give me that. Now.
Nobby frowns sadly, then runs out the bedroom door. Larry desperately chases Nobby, dashing headlong down the stairs and into the kitchen. As Larry races in, he finds Nobby standing on the bench top, waving his arms. Larry’s personal computer floats into the living room, hovering 8 foot above the parquet flooring.
LARRY: (Horrified) Nobby... Please... No...
NOBBY: Larry Snotter must say he's never going back online.
LARRY: I can't. Second Life is my home.
NOBBY: (With a tragic expression) Then Nobby must do it, sir. For Larry Snotter's own good.

Nobby snaps his fingers. The computer plummets to the floor, and smashes, sending shards of glass and pieces of plastic flying.

In a fit of rage and grief, Larry turns Nobby into a toad.

Second Life again

Found an interesting article about Second Life and other MMORPGs and their use for learning today. It was published in 2006 in the journal Educational Technology and Society by Aaron Delwiche and is entitled: 'Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in the new media classroom'.

Here's the abstract: Recent research demonstrates that videogames enhance literacy, attention, reaction time, and higher-level thinking. Several scholars have suggested that massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) such as Everquest and Second Life have educational potential, but we have little data about what happens when such tools are introduced in the classroom. This paper reports findings from two MMO-based courses in the context of situated learning theory. The first course, focused on the ethnography of on-line games, used the game Everquest as a vehicle for teaching research methods to 36 students in an undergraduate communication course. The second course used the game Second Life to teach the fundamentals of video-game design and criticism. Synthesizing comments from student web logs with data collected from followup surveys, the paper highlights key findings and offers concrete suggestions for instructors contemplating the use of multiplayer games in their own courses.

The author concludes...

Recommending that potential virtual environments be selected on the basis of genre, accessibility, and extensibility, it is suggested that game-based assignments are most effective when they build bridges between the domain of the game world and an overlapping domain of professional practice.

Over the Horizon...

By this time tomorrow I shall be airborne, over the horizon and headed north to the frozen wastes... I'm back working in Sweden for a few days. In some ways it will be nice to get away for a short while, because my house is currently in uproar, downroar and sideroar (as Spike Milligan once said...!) Let me explain - for the past 3 weeks, we have foolishly let the builders into our home to demolish a wall, convert our garage into a study, and generally spread a thin layer of fine dust over everything, including the children. While my poor wife remains at home to cope with all this, I'm swanning off suavely to Sweden (she will appreciate the alliteration if not the sentiments...)

But the building work got me thinking - it takes a while for tradesmen to make good something as lacklustre as an old concrete walled garage. By the time I get home on Sunday night, they will have plastered the walls (the builders, not the children), and then it's over to us to paint and carpet the room, and make it homely. It also takes a long time to establish new technologies in the classroom or learning setting. The recent Horizon Report attempts to set the scene for the wide adoption of new technologies into teaching. One of their predictions is that time-to-adoption of virtual worlds will be 2-3 years. I'm not so sure now...

Recently several new innovations have humanised Second Life further. Sloodle, a mashup between Second life and Moodle, and most recently, 'Voice in SL' have been launched to the consternation of some and the delight of many others. Time will tell whether such new bolt-ons will attract serious educators in greater numbers to set up operation in SL, but I have a suspicion that 2-3 years is now a conservative estimate for widespread adoption of virtual worlds in education.