The quest to "find one's self" is a journey that has become as ingrained in our culture as the legendary quest for the Holy Grail. Personal identity is the filter through which the individual both perceives and interacts with his or her surroundings. It is an abstract concept difficult to define, and existing definitions become outmoded as perceptions of identity continually change. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines identity as "the condition ... of a person ... being that specified unique person ... especially as a continuous unchanging property throughout existence." This definition stresses the importance of thinking of the self as fixed and static. It is a definition that I saw as outmoded, but no new definition seemed readily available to replace it. The original intent of this thesis was to come up with a new definition of identity. It was to be a definition based in the new, more fluid perception that has accompanied the birth of postmodern thought and the advent of computer-mediated communication. However, through the course of my research, I began to see the act of defining as inherently limiting. It is a way of fixing things; forcing them into static modes that go against the dynamic theories with which I was coming in contact. For this reason, the final document became more of a layering of metaphors than an attempt at a concrete definition. In many ways, the document itself has become both definition and metaphor for the uncertain, transitional concepts of identity that I was studying.
Much of this thesis is based on the work of Sherry Turkle, a sociologist at MIT. She refers to transitional periods such as the one I had noticed as "liminal moments," a phrase she adopted from anthropologist Victor Turner. She describes liminal moments as "moment[s] when things are betwixt and between, when old structures have broken down and new ones have not yet been created." She finds such moments exciting, "shimmer[ing] with new possibilities" that make the static periods of fixed understanding in between seem dull and lifeless in comparison (McCorduck 109). Through the work of Turkle and others, I have come to recognize the importance of boundaries and their blurring. As Neil Stephenson writes in his novel Snow Crash, "... interesting things happen along borders - transitions - not in the middle where everything is the same" (122). Paying attention to the places where boundaries are becoming indistinct is a critical step in discovering where change is about to occur.
The document itself is an excellent metaphor for many of these concepts of fluidity, flux, and border transgression. I chose to my paper as a web page, rather than the traditional paper, as a way of further exploring ideas of computer-mediated communication and non-linear thinking. The document is divided into several categories, each category examining identity from a different perspective. A category may have as its nucleus the work of a specific author, a key concept, or method of communication. I tried to design the categories so that each can be read independently of all the others, yet there are still concepts that flow through all, tying them together. The document is non-linear, so there are several possible paths to explore, depending on which categories are read and what order they are read in. One could simply read the section dealing with Cyberpunk Identity as an independent essay examining concepts of identity in cyberpunk literature. Or, begin with the section discussing computer-mediated communication, move to Sherry Turkle's examination of CMC as a metaphor for identity, focus specifically on Donna Haraway and her cyborg myth, counterbalance this with Rheingold's warnings in his discussions of virtual communities, then end with an analysis of my own experiences with computers and how they've affected my view of identity. The document is dynamic. There are many sections I would like to add to it, and several may disappear as my interest change. These are all options that a bound paper document lefts unavailable.
Those that are reading the bound copy of the thesis may be put off by the disjointed nature of the work as it translates to the printed page. Keep in mind that what you are reading is an artifact - a document out of context. I have chosen an order for the various sections arbitrarily, but it is not necessarily the best one for you. The document was designed with the ability to jump from point to point, and encourages browsing. If it seems like a concept is not explained as fully as it should be, check the other sections. It may be I explained it elsewhere and simply placed a link to it in the current section. Such links are obviously untranslatable to the printed page without constructing a complicated index. It may be easier to explore the web page, which was located at the following URL as of the time of this writing: http://www.iacnet/~longshot/thesis. Keep in mind that the World Wide Web is a dynamic entity, and the page may have moved since the time of publication.
This thesis, for me, was an opportunity to play with several concepts that have interested me during my years of studyat Northern Kentucky University: computer communication, cyberpunk literature, web publishing, human/computer interfacing, and of course the quest for personal identity that is at the heart of anyone's young adulthood. It was also an excellent opportunity to peak into the fringe of computer culture and see how it is influencing us at least as much as we are influencing it. Computers offer a new way of looking at ourselves and a new opportunity to analyze what "self" is really all about. It is in computers and computer-mediated communication that we may find the new definition of identity necessary for survival in a postmodern world.
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