As so many people go on and on about how the internet breaks down geographical boundaries, it seems that companies are looking at building walls. Beyond the ‘need’ for legislature governing gambling laws (I still cannot win an online contest in the US because I live in Quebec!), I wonder why companies such as MSN and Yahoo are pushing the geographical definitions of self onto their users.

Case in point (that annoyed me). I live in Canada but like to read the headlines from both Yahoo.ca and Yahoo.com. When I went to Yahoo.com recently, I got a pop up message saying something along the lines of “We noticed that you are Canadian user, please go to Yahoo.ca…. blah blah blah – click here to go to Yahoo! Canada or click here to ignore and continue”. I was irritated at this pop up as it delayed my three minutes of browsing, but also because I felt like I was not welcome at the US site since I was not “from” there. I know that this was more than likely not their intention – is probably meant to help those who do not know better, and if they want to shop in CAD funds, or read CAD headlines – but still – I felt that my boundariless internet had fences being built.

Second case in point – we recently upgraded our children’s computer, and so IM had to be reinstalled. My daughter was miffed when she tried to download MSN and got a pop up telling her that her IP was a canadian one and she was promptly redirected to MSN Canada. Although she doesn’t know what the difference is (neither do I) in terms of messenging services, she felt annoyed that she was shipped off by geographical affiliation.

As I have been pondering my to-do list, a new opportunity has come my way. I have been invited to write a short chapter on the history of online games for an upcoming anthology titled “Video Game History: From Bouncing Blocks to a Global Industry” edited by Mark J.P. Wolf. I am happy to share the pages with Dominic and other friends from the Ludicine research project headed by Dr. Bernard Perron as well as many other fine authors that I have read in the past.

I never thought I would make a facebook profile. I am not quite sure what compelled me today – surely some email or other.. but I did. I was surprised how fast it all came together – I have a bunch of friends already, a relatively full profile and carry on a few conversations via ‘messages’ and ‘the wall’. I am scared that I will become addicted to it – as I am with checking my blog (for the never posted comments) and my email (grateful that I belong to several mailing lists!).

What I did find interesting, is how you create your profile – how it asks what you are looking for (in a ‘i’m available’ kinda way). It struck me as odd that my choices were limited to LavaLife type categories – even the “friendship” tag seemed loaded with inuendo. Where is the “to create a visual mapping of my social friendships” tab? If the site is academic in its nature (so i remember at its inception), why are all the profile categories so typical (interests, hobbies, books, shows, music, movies etc..). I don’t know – I am not sure what I was hoping for. I always feel weird sharing what I watch on television – as I watch SOME reality television, but have a distinct line of ‘too much’ and ‘lame’ even within the reality television spectrum. But when I read my “friend’s” profiles, reality television is often ridiculed – so do I lie, and make fun of it too or do I admit my guilty pleasure of reality television along with tubs of Haagen Daaz and beer + hockey? Like this blog, it is always a struggle between what to share, and what to keep to myself – except here, I don’t have a concrete reader list, so I can pretend no one reads. Enough of that derailed train of thought.

It is strange to see who my friends are in the way they are layed out and categorized by institution, affiliation and relationship. And how ‘friend’ is defined in the context of the site. Most are classmates, acquaintances and people I aspire to get to know better.

Contextualized identity … those who are not on facebook are not included – so the picture of who i am in terms of my network is skewed…at least to the outside world. Is this a meaningful space for me? Or just a mapping? Can I develop relationships here with colleagues that I may not have in other forums (email, mailing lists, the conference ‘circuit’ as my partner calls it). It offers more information about me than I may have shared with some people, while not enough I would have shared with others.

I don’t know how long I will maintain my FaceBook space .. the representation of me that talks for me while I am away… It is strange to watch everyone else’s business. I can see all the activity of my friends too – who they become friends with and what they’ve added or removed from their profiles. For this reason, my daughter is still contemplating whether or not to add me to her friend list. I know that she has my friend’s son on her list too … I could see his activity with her… The web that this all weaves may be too sticky.

Sunday night, as good of a time as any to take stock of what is on my plate for the next few weeks, and the year’s bigger plan. Now that I have happily procrastinated over the last 3 weeks (a few god books scratched off of my ‘to read’ list), I have to look at what’s left and what is coming.

My thesis defense is in 9 days. I am oddly mellow about it, even though I have not really put any serious ink to paper. It’s not that I am not nervous – I am not looking forward to the whole song and dance. I am scared to be asked a question that I cannot answer, or that I get confused when answering it. But I am at a loss as to what exactly I shoud be working on.

Which brings me to the rest of my incomplete to-do list. I should also be working on my PhD thesis proposal due May 1st. I need to sit down, and think deeply about what direction I want to head in, as I apply to a Doctorate in Cinematography…

Shanly Dixon and I have to get cracking on reading a body of literature that neither of us are too familiar with for our recently accepted joint paper for AoIR 8.0. Outside both of our specific fields of study, we are looking at the social role of university course websites. The good thing is that both of us have used these sites as students and in teaching positions, so drawing inward an working out, we both hope it will be a fun learning experience about another facet of technology that impacts our lives.

Finally, we are gearing up to get a publication on the way from the Trials & Tribulations digital research methods symposium from last fall (the link is on the sidebar, I am currently too lazy to link it again). Hopefully my fall semester will leave me some time to do the side projects that seem to drive me.

In response to another post, I ask – Is the debate really about the origin story and a human desire to ‘control’ all that is outside of them? I have been thinking about this, and I’ve come to think that the majority of research is human-centric, not because of our desire to control, but our desire to understand. The research carried out – even if we are looking at two non-human entities, is still being viewed through a human perspective. Through all attempts to be objective, research is still filtered through the ideology of the researcher, the methods selected by the researcher and ultimately, by determining the results – which, in the case of non-human actors, is an imposed meaning by the human researcher based on the tests, experiments, observations and readings.

I am struggling with this as much as I seem to agree with it. The argument that has been put forth to me is that non-human agents have (potentially) an identity of their own. But from my definitional understanding, identity is attributed meaning attributed. From my understanding, identity – like meaning, is a human construct. A rock is a rock (in all its physicality) whether I say it is or not. It exists outside of my human intervention of definition. But once I call it a rock, I ascribe meaning to its physicality, as the word rock has meaning behind it. So, another question is, is the rock’s meaning inherent in its physicality? Does an animal see the same meaning (definitionally speaking of course) as a human would? And how do other rocks see it? I know I am pushing the example a little far, as I know that when my friend speaks of non-human agency and interaction (and identity) she is not really speaking of rocks. But I am having trouble moving away from the idea that as long as it is a human looking at something, it will inevitably be, at its core at least, be human-centric – but not for control, but mere contextualized understanding.

If we, for a moment, forget about origin stories – are we starting in the middle? How far back does an origin story need to go before it blurrs (or spoils) the true phenomena that one is looking to understand? Maybe these questions are contextual? Different answers for the hard sciences and social sciences – since origins may have more meaning, more relevance in one or the other?

I am comforted by the fact that some of the great philosophers spent their entire lives never finding the answers.

*Note: If prompted, I could find references to contextualize some of this – at the moment, it is just an informed, personal ramble.

Always something I have been uncomfortable stating – that I am a sociologist. But now that I am stepping towards convocation again, after 5 years of reading, writing and studying in one field I think I can say it proudly.

I have been working with digital culture and technology as a research focus, and have often read books about cyborg theory (Gray, Harraway, and Niedzviecki) which talk about the fusion of humans and technology. A friend of mine has been walking a slightly different path, looking at non-human agency in digital technology, and we have had many conversations about the possibility of identity and culture without humans. I have not read the literature she has, but my argument always comes back to the “but humans made the AI in the first place” argument, while her retort has often been “but moving past the human.. once it exists, there can be agency without the human”. I do not disagree with her, I just have not been wholly convinced yet.

Maybe its the anthropomorphic-centrism instilled in me by modernity, or maybe I’m just being difficult – either way, I stumbled upon an interesting passage last night while reading Hans Christian von Baeyer’s Information: The new language of science. Although my personal research interest lays in trying to remove the human from the absolute center of identity in the digital age, the following passage stuck with me – and reminded me that I am a sociologist, and (for now) I study people.

If it is true that the limits on information-processing will turn out to be more human than physical, technological or economic, it is ironic that popular usage makes so much of the prefix ‘cyber’, as in cyber-cafe, cybersex, cybercrime, and cyberworld. ‘Cyber’ was introduced into the English language back in the 1950’s by Norbert Wiener’s world ‘cybernetics’, which referred to the science of control over systems. He derived it from the Greek kybernetes for helmsman or guide – whose initial K appears in the name of the American academic honour society ΦΒΚ, an acronym for the Greek maxim ‘Philosophy, the guide of life’. As we surf the Web for the latest high-tech magic, it pays to remember the human roots of the word. A cybership without a human steersman is a vessel without control. [p. 8]

Indeed, it is human-centric – but for as long as I am studying cultures and identities (both human constructs) I think it’s ok to start from the inside out. This is not to say that there is not agency sans humans, but the question is, can culture and identity exist without the human? Perhaps I need to start with defining the difference between agency and identity – a task I have avoided until now.

The difference between face to face and digital identity construction has been my research focus for the past several years. As I finished reading Malaise of Modernity, I got to thinking about how identity constructed traditionally, in what Taylor calls a ‘dialogical’ process. Although not new to the idea of identity construction, he situates the process in contemporary society that is becoming increasingly individualised. The jist of the dialogical process of identity construction is that it is a two-way, reciprocal process between the self and the outside world. This follows the symbolic interactionist approach to identity construction as well.

The important point behind the dialogical process is that the individual is confronted with negotiating the actions and behaviors outside of themselves. They are influenced and affected by outside opinions, ideas and morals. The individual internalizes this information and in turn re-negotiates their identity. So far, nothing new here.

But what got me thinking, was Taylor’s focus on the alienated individual who becomes more and more seperated from outside influences, as individuals become less politically involved, less socially involved in an increase in self fulfillment over social fulfillment. This got me thinking about the role of blogging in Taylor’s view of modern society. It is also no secret that blogging has an impact on the blogger’s identity, often being seen as a public space for individuals to work out and negotiate elements of the self (think of Foucault, journals, essays and hupomnemata). But I wonder if blogging is a false dialogical process because of the blurring of the line of public and private within many blog spaces.

What I mean is, I sit here and I blog, knowing full well that it is a public space. Theoretically, I would be tempted to say that by blogging publically, I am participating in a dialogical process between myself and the outside world. But, seeing as there is little feedback in the blogging process, I am really only externally contemplating ideas and issues that are essentially internal – just in a public space. If this is the case, one could argue that blogging offers a false sense of exteriority, only really reinforcing the blogger’s position and therefore their identity. Is this a syndrome of an increasingly individualised society? I THINK I am having a conversation with the world, but really its all inside my head?

Well, it’s been a week since I submitted my thesis, and I suppose it’s time to move on. It took me a few days after submitting to calm down, get rid of the jitters that plagued me every day wondering how my committee was taking to it. A few good days of junk television and hockey games, and it’s time to get on with my academic life.

I started last night by tackling the stack of books that I have been buying during my “no read” time. Over the past year, I have been discouraged to read as I was forever being inspired and spiralling out of theoretical control, so in order to focus on narrowing my work, I read only what was necessary to complete my thesis. It was nice to pick up Taylor‘s Malaise of Modernity. It’s short, sweet and written in a simplified dialogue of sorts (it comes from the Massey Lectures).

I will write more on this text and how it sparks questions of contemporary identity and the desire to seek (or create)digital community and identity.

Indeed, before I start theorizing anew, I need to wrap up some gamecode projects and get my PhD apps out there! Ah how tempting procrastination is =)

A colleague and good friend of mine, Shanly Dixon; along with Dr. Sandra Weber have an edited volume due out soon called Growing Up Online: Young People and Digital Technologies available for pre-order over at Amazon.com.

From the original flyer:

In this cutting-edge anthology, contributors examine the diverse ways in which girls and young women across a variety of ethnic, socio-economic, and national backgrounds are incorporating and making sense of digital technology in their everyday lives. Contributors explore identity development, how young women interact with technology, and how race, class, and identity influence game play.

Looking forward to seeing it in print!