[Week 11] Virtualities

This week's reading deals with how information technologies shape or alter traditional concepts of social identities such as gender, the 'self', and ethnic culture. Poster's article on the post-modernity and the decentralized fleeting identity is a typical approach to this. And a decade after his words, much of his theories have become commonplace. In Wikis where people have collaborative knowledge building systems completely devoid of personal identities, and in blogs where individuals strive to become instant celebrities among the vast mass of indistinguishable users. Though Poster does not talk about how resistance is possible in this kind of information dominance, I think the decentralized nature of this space already has the necessary elements. Whether people care to find them is not merely dependent upon information technology, but proper social education.

Eric Michaels' piece explores the cultural identity changes that went on with the introduction of vast new information flows. However, I think the crucial thing was not information per se, but whose information it was. In this case, it was the Western viewpoints on a large scale that overflooded the lifeworld of the natives. They were put to view themselves through other's eyes, which separated their identities from their world. The quest is to find out how mediated information and the actual lifeworld can be integrated into a organic whole.

Sadie's piece is less theoretically intriguing, but an inportant historical recap nonetheless. Though she focuses on the role of the females in the information technology, the same could be applied to a whole set of other identity clusters such as 'third-world' programmers, unknown websurfers for Yahoo! during its initial days, and so on. After all, Information technonogy is characterized by the white smart Sillicon Valley male programmer-enterpreneur image, marginalizing everybody else. If the information society is to affect the whole society, all the social identities in this society has its unique share in it.