Technology and the Self

Technology and the Self

1. Identity

   • Introspection
     • Individual's conception of themselves as a discrete seperate entity
   • Personality (Eynseck, Erikson)
     • Enduring characteristics and behaviours
       • Individual differences
       • patterns
       • thinking, feeling, behaving
       • Personality 'trait' scales
         • Meyers-Brigg
         • 'Big five' personality types
           • OCEAN - Openness; Conscientiousness; Extraversion; Agreeableness and Neuroticism
       • Disposition and determination
         • likelyhood of criminality, leadership etc
   • Social Roles
     • Category based expectations and norms
   • Performance
     • Ongoing presentation of consistent selves
   • Mediated performance
     • Presentation afforded and constrained through technology
   • Social vs individual

2. The Social Self (Mead)

   • Away from concepts of 'internal' selves
     • Towards a concept of the relationship between self and society born of social interaction
       • I-Me concept
         • Gergen: the I-thou concept - relational being
         • Me: the self as object and known, the socialised aspect of a person
         • I: active/creative part of a person, 'self as subject' the knower
         • The socialised me comes first, the individual perception of I second.
         • Thought is internalized and self reflective
           • A dialogue between the 'I' and the 'Me'
         • Society: externalised reaction between self as agent
           • and society as structure
             • Seperation of person and performances, 'I' and 'Me'

3. Social media and identity

   • Social gaming: talking while playing
   • 'Simple' communication
     • SMS, we chat

4. Goffman's performance

   • One of the first to be interested in the organisation of everyday life
     • Social actors playing social roles
     • impression management
       • What happens when our image is threatened?
     • Self presentation - 'maintain face'
       • We are all playing parts we want to be taken seriously
     • The dramaturgical self
   • Life as performance
     • Performance as any activity that influences other participants
     • expressions given (Deliberate) vs given off (unintentional)
     • Impression management
       • Where/when
       • Audiences (singular, multiple)
       • 'Collision management': the multiplicity of expectations
   • Components of the dramaturgical approach
     • 'Stage'
       • As region: where impressions of self are managed
       • As performance: attitude of the 'really real' belief in part one is playing
     • Front: where the action is
       • as region: where we expose ourselves to scrtiny of others, behave according to expectations
       • as performance: stage props
     • Back regions: as region, hidden from audience
       • as performance: preparing for 'front' stage'

5. Dramaturgy of social media

   • Front stage, back stage, 'oversharing'
   • Mobile phone talk
     • 'Inconsiderate disturber'
     • 'Communicating exhibitionist'
     • 'Absorbed communicator'
   • IRL: the face to face
     • Online: persona to persona

6. Identity curation

   • Performance is synchronous and situational
     • Exhibitions: logged, static collection
       • Hogan - Curation of self
         • 'Accumulated digital stuff' as performance?
   • Third party curation

7. Kenneth Gergen

   • Social psychologist
     • Social constructionist
   • Gergen, K (1973) 'Social Psychology as History'
     • Technology and community: the saturated self
       • Expectations of people heighten due to IT
       • The historical self: self accumulated over time
         • Strategic manipulator
           • Regards all senses of identity as role-playing games
         • Pastiche Personality
           • Does not see 'one' self, individual playing in situations, becoming roles they play
         • Relational self
           • Abandoning all sense of exclusive self
   • Relational self: I link therefore I am!
   • From bounded to relational self
     • Bounded self: most important things to us are 'within'
       • Self replaced by the reality of

8. Symbolic Meaning of the Body

   • Through the body or lived body
     • This is percieving body

9. From bodies to hands to technologies

   • The hands as haptic devices
     • piano playing, texting
   • The body as instrument
     • 'Body technique'
     • Passive manipulation
     • 'Carriage' of body
     • Addition of instrument 'into' carriage

10. Embodied experience and technology

    • Raymond Tallis
      • 'The knowing hand'
        • has knowledge of the size/shape of what it manipualtes
    • Richard Sennett
      • The Craftsman
        • 'Making is thinking'
          • Dialogue between concrete practices and thinking
            • habits and problem solving
          • 'grasp something' - reaching for it
    • Prehension
      • movements in anticipation of something about to happen
    • We are all craftsmen through using tools (Sennett 2008)
    • Digital global environments - we handle connections with other places by carrying objects (Habitele - Dominique Boullier)