Similar to my previous post on the numerous chat programs I have, I also have numerous social networking sites on the go - some are more interactive than others...
...it would seem that there are many bits and pieces - snapshots & snipits - of our RL selves that make up our VR selves - although laid out like this, it may appear quite fragmented in a web of identity, there are icons that provide information for our presentation of self (Goffman) or online impression management.
or
...perhaps fragmented identity, which you might find in postmodern theory...
or
...as Giddens calls it 'dilemma of the self':
"Fragmentation clearly tends to be promoted by the influences emphasised hy Berger and others: the diversifying of contexts of interaction. In many modern settings, individuals are caught up in a variety of differing encounters and milieux, each of which may call for different forms of appropriate' behaviour. Goffman is normally taken to be the theorist par excellence of this phenomenon. As the individual leaves one encounter and enters another, he sensitively adjusts the 'presentation of self' in relation to whatever is demanded of a particular situation. Such a view is often thought to imply that an individual has as many selves as there are divergent contexts of interaction, an idea which somewhat resembles poststructuralist interpretations of the self, albeit from a differing theoretical perspective. Yet again it would not be correct to see contextual diversity as simply and inevitably promoting the fragmentation of the self, let alone its disintegration into multiple 'selves'. It can just as well, at least in many circumstances, promote an integration of self. The situation is rather like the contrast between rural and urban life discussed previously. A person may make use of diversity in order to create a distinctive self-identity which positively incorporates elements from different settings into an integrated narrative. Thus a cosmopolitan person is one precisely who draws strength from being at home in a variety of contexts."
From Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991, pp. 187-201.
posted by Netwoman @ 12:46 AM
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