Technology And Identity: What Is The Computer Doing To Us?
I wake up most mornings, make coffee, shower, shave, and go to my MacBook. I read news headlines, check email, go to Facebook and make a move in the online chess and scrabble game I am playing with my daughter, peruse my 40th HS reunion Facebook page, check my banking, possibly record a dream, and do some writing. My entire creative, personal, and professional life is stored on my computer and backed up on a hard drive. I ride this most seductive wave of technology as I submit my writing, research, memory, and social relationships to the structure of the computer and the extensive networking capacity of the Internet.
The more I outsource myself to the computer and the virtual world the better I feel. I spend more time with this marvelous machine than I do with any single individual. I love my MacBook more than I have ever loved any machine. And this love is a term of devotion to a quid pro quo unequalled in my other interactions. Most mornings the seamless Mac operating system carries me from one application to the next like the more than good enough mother I never had. The occasional appearance of the rotating beach ball that can signify a crash jolts me like the abrupt withdrawal of the nipple from a nursing infant. I feel that my Mac has made me a more effective professional, but is it making me a better person?
The easier it is to use technology, the more difficult it is to fathom.
Forty years ago Marshall Mcluhan presciently wrote, “The medium is the message.” This iconic phrase captures an essential aspect of technology. When we use a tool that extends our capacities and empowers us, whether phone, car, eye-glass, or networked computer, it also changes us. The process of change occurs subtly within the shadowy parameters of the “medium” that exert influence not directly as content often does, but outside awareness. The question that McLuhan poses is not what technology can do for us, but what is it doing to us.
Computers and the Internet have dramatically changed the architecture and geography of our culture. Since the adaptation of the Internet for public use in the 90’s, there has been massive transformation of society that has altered how we do business, how we get our news, listen to music, watch movies, and communicate with others. What is the effect of these macro changes on the individual’s private experience of Self, cognitive functions, and his/her interpersonal relationships? Mark Poster, in his book What’s The Matter With The Internet, states that “the Internet forebodes a reconstruction of the basic elements of human culture.”
“Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
Should we rest easy in this foreboding as the networked computer increasingly mediates our relationships to the world? Technological innovation historically has triggered two contrasting responses: one that idealizes the potential for change, and one that fears and resists change. Each position exerts a strong bias that interferes with a critical understanding of the impact of technology. To move beyond the limitations of this either/or perspective requires a dialectical approach that maintains the tension between these two opposing positions without prematurely resolving them, an approach that can see how the positive and negative are inextricably intertwined.
Le me pose some questions that will hopefully lead to discussions that will deepen our understanding of the impact of the networked computer and its supplemental technologies on our daily lives and internal states.
- How has technology changed the experience of and the conceptualization of identity?
- What is the transformative potential of virtual reality? Will it lead to a blended identity hinted at by the term cyborg?
- What are the most salient aspects of technology affecting individuals?
- What is the relationship between anonymity of online presence and what seems to be a compelling drive toward self-disclosure?
- How are cognitive functions and language structures being changed? Should we be concerned as Nicolas Carr provocatively asks in an article in the Atlantic Monthly, “Is Google making us stupid?”
- Has the Internet destabilized existing human experience and social-cultural modes of expression? In an article written by William Deresiewicz titled “The End of Solitude” he wonders if the power of Internet’s connectivity inadvertently leads to the “production of loneliness.”
These questions shift the focus of inquiry to the intimate relation between the individual and machine asking not what the machine can do for us or but what it is doing to us for better and for worse. To this quest we might heed the message in Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein. The great paradox of progress is that our efforts to master the environment often turn against us. If there is anything that we can be certain about as we proceed forward, it is expressed by Mark Poster in What’s The Matter With The Internet, where he states, “One rule that characterizes the development of technology is that the trajectory of new technology is unpredictable.”
Kim Scott, MFT
December 5, 2009
It’s Saturday (6 am) and I am at my computer; I guess my morning ritual is much like your. I enjoyed your musing on the impact of the internet and the questions you posed are certainly thought provoking. I wonder if technology is not so much changing our identity or “self,” but instead fulfilling basic human needs for communication and connecting? I also wonder if communicating via technology has expanded our ways to connect rather that limited them in some way? In being a parent of 2 “internet natives” it seems to me that their time on the computer and texting mirrors the time I spent on the phone at their age. Definitely an interesting topic to explore and I do believe that technology will change how we do therapy. I look forward to following your blog.
drbrooks
December 5, 2009
I am reassured to learn that I am not alone at a 6AM. I would agree that technology is fulfilling human needs and expanding or differentiating how we communicate. I have clients who are very strategic in what they communicate, through the different modes of communication: whether they text or call will signify an intentional distance or intimacy. But… I am also sensitive to the less obvious but equally likely possibility that we are changing, our experience of who we are, unwittingly through our use of technology. In my next blog I will be exploring this dimension. In the blog I write, Between the world of social networking that involves the establishment of a personal profile, a data centric image, and sharing and updating of personal information with a vast array of “friends” and virtual environments such as Second Life where individuals construct anonymous personas, avatars that work, play, and interact in a constructed online environment, there is a world of difference that speaks to the complexity of the phenomena of the Internet. We are ambling along a yellow brick road with multiple forks and multiple dimensions leading from each fork.
Howard Mangel, EdD
December 6, 2009
I enjoyed reading your comments and the reply. 1 concrete clarification, pls: didn’t see the name/theme of the conference you started discussing, could you please post that?
My personal use of the computer has increased since my first 15 lb. NEC laptop (!) in 1986 (grad school graduation gift). I have recently migrated to Mac too, and find its ease of use very good though I know there’s tricks and useful things to do on it that I haven’t found yet.
I find that the presence of the internet, either on my Macbook or my iPod Touch (what a marvelous device!) have a downside though, in terms of distracting me –even high minded distractions, like reading your blog and posting now, are keeping me from my intended work of this Sunday AM, billing and report writing. And though I am behaviorally oriented, I am having quite the difficult time getting and staying on task. Have actually thought about trying to figure out how to ‘lock up’ the wireless card or the hardwire internet link here at my office till I get work done. Yikes!
Howard Mangel
drbrooks
December 6, 2009
Howard
The conference is reflected on in the blog “How is technology changing the way we practice?” The description of the conference can be found in the Past Events Page.
Thank you for your encouraging comments.
I am not sure If I would consider distractions from billing anything but avoidance of a tedious but necessary task.