Is the computer a valid medium for conveying identity? While most people are in agreement that the computer is a powerful tool for conveying information, the question of identity communication is a lot slipperier. Part of what makes it so tricky is that computer is not so much a communication medium in and of itself as a foundation for many different forms of communication, much like the printing press before it. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a term Howard Rheingold uses to describe all the communication methods that have their technical basis in "computers and the switched telecommunication networks that also carry our telephone calls" (5). Transferring documents by modem, exploring pages on the World Wide Web, corresponding through email, "chatting" on America Online or IRC, and participating in a Multi-User Dungeon or Quake Deathmatch all fall under the broad category of CMC. While it is often convenient to deal with CMC technologies as a single medium, it is much like trying to lump together television, radio, telephone, and all print media into a single category. These are all technologies that have, in some way, been accepted as valid media for conveying identity, but by different people to different degrees. The same is true for the various technologies that fall under the broad category of CMC.
The telephone is an excellent model of an existing communication technology that has slowly been accepted as a medium for identity. Of all communication technology it has gone furthest to permeate the boundary of acceptance as a medium of complete identity communication. It is one the few forms of communication that gives one a real sense of presence as anyone who has spent hours talking on the phone to someone who they could just as meet with in person can attest. Encounters over the phone have been accepted as real. But the acceptance of the telephone is not a conscious, worldwide agreement, or one that even remains uniform from individual to individual. Sherry Turkle relates a story about the family she lived with studying in Paris who did not use the telephone for intimate communications but preferred the more "personal" method of sending handwritten notes by pneumatic tube. Turkle places this story directly after one involving a high-school junior who is bemoaning the diaspora of her friends to the Internet saying, "It used to be that things weren't so artificial. We phoned each other every afternoon" (237).
Since many forms of CMC have their roots in earlier forms of communication, it is safe to assume that their levels of acceptance and affect on identity will mirror the technologies from which they are derived. Web phones and email are two examples of this type of CMC. However, there are forms of CMC that are unlike anything we have experienced before. Virtual communities such as the WELL, Internet Relay Chat, and MUDs all allow for a new, world-wide many-to-many text based communication. The World Wide Web provides for the global publication of documents by anyone with a computer. Such technologies have no previous model to use as a guide, and are therefore it is much more difficult to determine how they will be accepted as media for identity communication.
Virtual communities are an aspect of CMC that Howard Rheingold is particularly interested in. Rheingold is a long term member of the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) which he claims to have linked to for at least two hours a day, seven days a week since 1985. American Online, Prodigy, and more recently the Microsoft Network, are other examples of such "social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on public discussion long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships" (Rheingold 5). Most of these communities are held together by a combination of electronic mail, bulletin board conferencing, and electronic "chat" rooms. These "rooms" and "conferences" are grouped by subject matter, acting more as cognitive or social spaces then geographic ones (Rheingold 63) People are identified by handles or pseudonyms, but there is always a way to trace comments back to an individual, so no one is truly anonymous. Also, in most communities all comments are stored for later retrieval, making for a sort of long term community memory. This means that in a virtual community each member leaves what Sherry Turkle describes as a "virtual trace," a record of all his or her interactions within the community tied to whatever name he or she has chosen to use (205). However, nothing is to stop this individual from changing his or her name and starting fresh.
This leads to one of the more intriguing aspects of virtual communities. Since individuals are identified only by the name they choose and way they interact, much is left up to conjecture. As Rheingold puts it
"Because we cannot see one another in cyberspace, gender, age, national origin and physical appearance are not apparent unless a person wants to make such characteristics public ... The medium will always be biased toward certain kinds of obfuscation." (26-27).
For some, this is bias toward obfuscation is the most frustrating aspect of virtual communities, seeing their virtual identities as extensions of their physical ones, but for others it is very freeing, allowing them to explore identity and social interaction in a way no previous medium has.
Multi-user dungeons, frequently referred to as MUDs, are excellent examples of virtual communities where the ability to recreate and expand identity is taken to its highest level. MUDs are a combination virtual community and group authoring project. They are virtual worlds that, like virtual communities, are text-based, but unlike virtual communities, are contrived to be completely fictional. Each MUDder must create his or her identity before entering the virtual world, choosing a name, gender (or lack thereof), and description for the persona they will play. In many ways MUDs are the text-based equivalent of Snow Crash's Metaverse, where an individual can be "... a gorilla, a dragon, or a giant talking penis" (35-6). Users interact by describing their speech and actions using set commands, such as SAY, WHISPER, or EMOTE. Some also allow interaction with the environment, using other commands to manipulate objects within the room. The original MUDs were designed to mimic Dungeons and Dragons, and play much like "roll-you-own slasher movies" as Rheingold puts it, while others focus much more strongly on creation and social interaction (162). Some are themed around a particular movie or book, such as Anne McCaffrey's Pern books or Star Trek. Many allow the inhabitants to add to the world, creating their own rooms and objects that others can use and explore. MUDding is real-time role-playing in the tradition of improvisational acting, but on a massively parallel level. Multiple non-linear narratives unfold simultaneously in the various rooms and spaces that make up the MUD.
MUDs are marginal structures that straddle the borders between art and life, literature and role-playing, oral and written traditions of communication, "... [blurring] the boundaries between self and games, self and role, self and simulation" allowing people to play not just with the medium, but with their own identities (Turkle 192). Such identity play leads to many questions. What relationship do these constructed identities have with the individual's identity in real life. What is the effect "if a persona ... drops defenses that the player in real life has been unable to abandon?" (Turkle 185).
The World Wide Web is currently the most widely known and most publicized aspect of the Internet. Its ability to combine images, sound, animation, text, and interactive programs gives it a certain level of glitz and flash that catches people's attention. It is, of course, primarily a publishing medium made up of many separate hypertext documents like this one, all linked together into a single informational structure where theoretically any one page can be reached from any other. The Home page is the primary building block of the Web. An individual's Home page is the designated starting point from which all other pages within the site can be reached, as well as providing external links to reach other home pages. For Sherry Turkle the Home page is an excellent metaphor for exploring concepts of identity, including concepts of multiplicity. Home page construction is an act of weaving, "assembling virtual objects that correspond to one's interests" to create a page that is representative of the individual (158). It is therefore a cyborg art and an oppositional art, creating identity out of what is not other, defining identity by what it is not. The documents themselves are dynamic and interactive, but usually allow communication with the individual only in the sense that most pages have an email link. They serve more as a shrines to the individuals than active dialogues of identity.
While the forms of CMC listed here are by no means representative of all the methods people are using or will use to communicate using computers. CMC based communities and person-to-person interaction occur in all sorts of contexts, some where they were never anticipated, like the Clans that have built up around the video game Quake. But virtual communities, MUDs, and Home pages are all communication methods rich with metaphoric possibilities for exploring the nature of identity.
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