The world has fallen into a state where we are all identified by our "non-human" forms rather than our human selves. Rather than meeting people face to face, people are more familiar with people they meet and talk to online, and often, they don't physically go out and meet them in the physical world, preferring to keep everything physical. It's amazing what social networking has done to society.
I think it's very interesting that Facebook have said noticed this, and as McNeill (2012) said in her article, Facebook "insist(s) on identity being singular and 'authentic'". This all kind of ties into the fact that we are beginning to transition into a post-human society, a society that "challenges the boundaries between the human and the natural world and the mechanic and the technological" (Van Luyn, 2015). People are constantly meeting in this posthuman society, and it's not just through Facebook - every day, people around the world log on to gaming websites or gaming consoles which connect them to hundreds, if not, thousands of people around the world, and they all communicate and form connections and bonds with these people over a common interest. It is through that common interest that they create communities and identities for each other and themselves.
However, during this day and age, we know that creating an online identity can sometimes cause problems. Almost everyone who has access to the internet has come kind of email address, and those email address can be used to sign up for sites - unfortunately, fairly recently, a hack involving an affair website called AshleyMadison revealed many millions of email accounts and names of people who use the website, and this is where the internet identity that people create becomes a bad thing.
Many readers wrote in to websites that broke the story, and many of them were desperate people who wanted to keep their secrets hidden, so they were looking for "any scrap of information" (Abbruzzese, 2015). Even people who had "cheated on (their partners) during a rough patch but swore (they) had seen the error of (their) ways" (Abbruzzese, 2015).
In the end, people are putting themselves into places that they shouldn't be and it's crafting an identity, however no one is really sure whether it's their real identity or false.
References
Abbruzzese, J. (2015) Why the media can't tell you everything about the AshleyMadison hack. Retrieved on September 4, 2015 from http://mashable.com/2015/08/19/media-ashley-madison-hack
McNeill, L. (2012) There is no "I" in network: Social networking sites and posthuman auto/biography. Retrieved on September 4, 2015 from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Van Luyn, A. (2015) Our space: Network, narratives, and the making of place, lecture 5: Intertextuality [Powerpoint Slides] Retrieved on September 4, 2015 from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Image Credits
Robot Icon Facebook [Image] (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.justsimplyoutsourcingworldwide.com/icon-2/
I agree that the human-self definition has changed to something far less meaningless than say ten years ago. The technology has evolved so much that we have become in your words ‘non-human’ forms due to internet sites such as Facebook. The Profiles created produce someone who we project ourselves to be although this self may be a fake. Could we call our cyber creation a cyborg? The narrative we create for ourselves on our profiles between this human and computer-generated world is becoming something that will never be forgotten or deleted. The identity fashioned from our ‘want’ rather than from reality could definitely produce dangerous future insights. Who knows who will be looking through our profiles in years to come? Anything can come back to haunt us. Society is becoming too technology involved. Where is humanity going to be in 10 years to come? Will the rise of the robots “threaten even the nimblest and most expensively educated”? (Egrenreich, 2015)
ReplyDeleteEgrenreich, B. (2015) Rise of the Robots and shadow work. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/rise-of-the-robots-and-shadow-work.html?_r=0
As Vanluyn (2015) described, humans are beginning to blur the line between reality and technological identity. I agree with your argument that humanity is moving into its post-human era of society through mediums such as Facebook. In fact Mcneill (2012)argues that Facebook is distinguishable for its production of the modern cyborg due to the integration of online identity and its existence in reality. Your last sentence points out that humans are putting themselves into the wrong place, and I point it out because you don't clarify whether it is just through certain websites or through technology as a whole. I would argue that as humanity develops to incorporate technology in our daily lives, being on the internet is exactly where we need to be in terms of place.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Mcneill, L. (2012) There is no “I” in network: Social networking sites and post-humanism auto/biography: Winter, 35(1), 65-82. doi: 10.1353/bio.2012.0009
Van Luyn, A. (2015) BA1002: Narrative: A series of linked events, week 6 notes [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from www.learnjcu.jcu.edu.au