Digital Technology and Identity
Postmodern thought challenges traditional concepts
of identity. From the Enlightenment on, Western culture fought to
establish the individual as a unitary, volitional entity with powers of perception and action. Its literature glorified the
individual’s metamorphosis and acts of self-assertion and identity.
Critical theory suggests a less romantic, more complex view, in which an individual’s identity is fluid,
shaped by circulating narratives of gender, class, nation, history, media, and situation.
Digital technology accelerates the process and provides a laboratory
for experiments in identity. The digitalization of information
provides great flexibility in representation, while
telecommunications and on-line environments sever the connection between physical persons
and their communications. Theorists have sought to elaborate on
these new views of identity and to analyze the impact of digital technologies.
Bill Nichols sees the self as a potentially outdated concept. The
old unitary self may have lost its relevance in a world dominated by digital
representation and interdependency: Liberation from any literal referent beyond the simulation, like
liberation from a cultural tradition bound to aura and ritual, brings the actual process of constructing
meaning, and social reality, into sharper focus. This liberation also undercuts the Renaissance
concept of the individual. “Clear and distinct” people may be a prerequisite for an industrial economy
based on the sale of labor power, but mutually dependent cyborgs may be a higher priority for a
postindustrial postmodern economy. There is an analogy between modern physics and identity in the
digital world. Personal identity can be viewed as confluent
densities of information, just as physical reality can be viewed as
the density of matter points. The virtual body acting in virtual space transgresses traditional
notions of physical-body boundaries and location. In this fluidity
it more radically challenges the basic Western notions of dualistic
demarcations, which underlie some concepts of identity. Virtual on-line communities invite experimentation with identity.
These worlds are often constructed on the ?y by participants and allow people to
present themselves in any way they want. They are freed from the physical body cues of
gender, age, and appearance to enact various personas. Anonymity allows for people to
try out idealized or negative identities, to cross genders, or to manifest as multiple
identities. Commentators draw parallels between on-line and physical
life. Sandy Stone, well-known for her writing and creative work related to identity experimentation,
describes the experimental possibilities of on-line representation: “They learn how to
manipulate those personalities—take them out of the box, dust them,
run them, put them back in the box, put them away, take out another one.” On-line communities functioning as places to experiment with
identity, much like psychotherapy. There is a connection between the
on-line experiments with multiplicity and contemporary notions of the fluid, postmodern self: Virtual personas are
objects-to-think-with. When people adopt an on-line persona, they
cross a boundary into highly charged territory. Some feel an uncomfortable
sense of fragmentation, some a sense of relief. Some sense the possibilities for self-discovery,
even self-transformation. Many manifestations of multiplicity in our culture, including the
adoption of on-line personae, are contributing to a general reconsideration of traditional,
unitary notions of identity. Contemporary psychology is being
challenged to conceptualize healthy selves which are not unitary but
which have flexible aspects to their many aspects.