Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

This book taught me all I needed to know on what identity is behind the screen.

Sherry Turkle neste livro investiga o comportamento das pessoas frente ao computador e como este têm provocado transformações nas nossas identidades, quem podem ser mudadas, reconstruídas, multiplicadas e simuladas através dos meios digitais. Seriam essas novas formas de manifestação individual simples brincadeiras sem maiores conseqüências ou transformações identitárias significativas, proporcionadas pela vida através da tela do computador? O que seria esta nova individualidade quando multi-facetada, simulada? Que tipo de comportamentos teria? Estaríamos vendo ruir as fronteiras entre o virtual e o real? Seremos, cada vez mais, vários num só eu? São algumas perguntas que o livro tenta responder.

A autora procura refletir o computador na busca de entender como este interage nos paradigmas sociais e em que momento da experiência on-line parece ser real, vivo e inteligente. Confronta o pensamento linear (moderno) que tende a considerá-lo como uma super-máquina de fazer cálculos com o não-linear (pós-moderno) onde o computador é visto como um poderoso meio de simulação.

O livro de Turkle é um bom exemplo de como técnicas etnográficas (on-line e tradicional) podem se complementar e se fundir a outras metodologias para gerar um trabalho de grande fôlego.

Good overview of the intersection of identity and online virtual worlds. Turkle is focused on MUDs and MOOs in this book.

Turkle presents a complex interrogation of the messy intersection of real and virtual, raising key questions about the nature of embodiment and identity in a culture that is at once postmodern (the internet allowing for the fragmentation of an individual, making ‘real’ the loss of a unified subject) and modern (how do users relate these identities. She notes, “we have learned to take things at interface value,” “we are moving toward a culture of simulation in which people are increasingly comfortable with substituting representations of reality for the real” (23). A multifaceted view of the collision between real and virtual, Turkle’s meticulous research, conducted with internet users (but in her office), reveals the manner in which people both navigate and interpret cyberspace and identity within it.

(Thoughts on Chapter 10 - "Identity Crisis")

In a nutshell, Turkle is arguing that "the many manifestations of multiplicity in our culture, including the adoption of online personae, are contributing to a general reconsideration of traditional, unitary notions of identity" (260).

I have a really difficult time reading psychology-based literature. I don't get psychoanalytic theories. This made it hard for me to enjoy or really appreciate what Turkle is doing in this chapter. This chapter seems like a conclusion to the whole book, and what I am wondering about is if Turkle is positing a new theory for psychoanalysis that takes into account her ethnographies.

I also have trouble with thinking about "identity." I don't really believe in "multiple identities." I believe that they all tie together in some way, which made me receptive to many of Turkle's argument here about multiplicity, flexibility, and fluidity.

I really liked the paragraph on the bottom of page 267 that related what people are doing online with self-representation and how simulated science experiments, financial transactions, and digital art relate to each other. This could be turned into a whole book on New Media.

What is the relationship between identity and personality? Does Turkle use them interchangeable?

What the the properties of one's "identity" in various online environments?

Does she have a clear notion of what a "crisis" is (and by extension, what an "identity crisis" is)?