A few hours ago, while discussing the symbiosis between identity and technology over MSN, a friend - and (not) incidentally a 'technophile' - remarked that:
“In the last ten years there have been unprecedented advances in technology.. look at our virtual online identities and how SMS has changed our basic language and communication...”
And so I thought I'd try to blog a counter-argument, for, as Melissa Gregg writes, "generalisations...serve to confirm ingrained notions" (2007), and even if a blog or discussion revolves around opinion; the ideas should (theoretically) be able to be discursively redeemed....in this blog.
Let’s deal with this in two parts.
What is technology? Notionally, it has been described by the United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organisation as:
“…the know-how and creative processes that may assist people to utilise tools, resources and systems to solve problems and to enhance control over the natural and made environment in an endeavour to improve the human condition.” (UNESCO, 1985)
This encapsulates a fundamentally defining feature of Homo sapiens as a species, namely our ability to make and use new tools, separating our otherwise unremarkable biology from other creatures. Feel free to investigate a wiki-fied history of technology since the Paeleolithic era up until the iPhone 4 software update 4.1. Seems pretty fundamental to our existence, no? Hell! It’s arguable that all we are is technology, because biology itself IS TECHNOLOGY!! I suppose evolutionist theory would perhaps intrinsically dictate these definitional elements of technology: nature’s utilisation of existing resources to improve the human condition.
“Come on!!! Texting is amazing. It’s convenient and it’s changed my English for the better! I now spell good and have gewd th1ngz 2 sai!"
Two words: Victorian Texting. Ie. Since around 1842 garbled messages of no consequence have been convoluting language standards and socially lubricating our relationships. (Also RE: the incestuous nature of technology note that the "Ascending" Nokia SMS tone is Morse code for "Connecting People," ie. the company's slogan.)
(B) Identity
Call me old-fashioned but - technology or no - I've always thought that I am who I am and I am me who is I who is me! This normalised technology doesn't change the game. I don’t believe that identity has been changed at all because of this kerfuffle, for as Locke said, personal identity “depends on consciousness, not on substance” nor on the soul. But maybe I just tell myself that every night as I drift off to sleep so that I don't have nightmares about MSN rendering me a Frankensteinian humanoid. As Waldby discussed in "The Instruments of Life: Frankenstein and Cyberculture", to reject Frankenstein's monster and Haraway's cyborg is to "refuse to engage with the consequences of shifting modes of embodiment, reproduction, and living process". And yet this progressivist discourse is entirely reconcilable with the aforementioned view of the innate technology that has always existed. It's just been tweaked.
Finally...I know it’s late, dear reader, but please - consider the metaphysics of identity! When thinking about the difference between our 'real-world' selves versus our 'virtual' identities, consider the fundamental questions of identity, such as the following:
What does it mean for an object to be the same if it changes over time? If x and y are identical (are the same thing), must they always be necessarily identical?
Etc.
Okay maybe this is a bridge too far and rife with conceptual landmines for us to delve into these metaphysical quandaries. Let’s just say that before you squawk about 'changed identity' in the 21st century you should know what on earth it ever was. For starters, compare qualitative identity (think two identical Ikea tables। Identical!) with numerical identity (consider yourself without a hat. Consider yourself with a hat. Identical!) and then realise that at the end of the day “I think therefore I am” seems to explain it all in a roundabout and semi-satisfactory way. Therefore, wherever I am, whatever I am, if the consciousness is there…then I guess it’s just me: the slovenly, verbose consciousness I've always been. And it's just you, too.
Goodnight!
(AG)
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