Communication, in its original context, has been concretely defined for years. However, in the age of computer-mediated communication (CMC), we as a society must redefine communication and its parameters. Originally, communication had been defined as either some kind of physical contact, as in face-to-face interaction, or as a verbal exchange, whether it is a spoken or a written verbal exchange. In the realm of CMC, on the other hand, we must redefine what communication is. David Chandler mentions how cyberculture offers possibilities both for the presentation and shaping of self which are shared neither by text on paper or face-to-face interaction. Therefore spoken words or physical interactions can longer solely be used to define communication. Cyberculture uses neither to simulate communication, and sometimes uses a combination of the two. In presenting an identity in cyberculture, one cannot simply speak or show to convey an identity. Identity, since it no longer is presented in the original realm of communication, must be defined in the way it is presented in cyberspace. By using post-modern techniques, web users present an image that conveys an identity, yet it is a limited and often blurred identity.
In a face-to-face interaction, an identity is seen while moving through the motions of a meeting or conversation. There is a flow that must be followed by both participants. The same applies to text. When reading a letter written to someone or reading a journal entry, the reader is confined by the order of the words on the page while trying to compose some sort of identity for the author. However, in the post-modernist world of cyberculture, identity is found everywhere except in solely written text or in face-to-face interaction. Instead of being focused on one outlet, in this case a face or a page of text, one must look everywhere within cyberculture to present and understand others identities. Spittle, commenting on Baudrillard in Is Any Body Out There? explains that there is a transition when moving from a modern to post-modern realm of identity. Once communication moves away from physical interaction to computers, the rest appears as some vast, useless body, which has been both abandoned and condemned. The real itself appears as one large, futile body. So where do we look in trying to piece together someones identity online? Spittle says we should look in every corner we find in cyberspace, because each holds another piece of information that adds to the whole of the identity of the author.
However, what a reader can pull from depends entirely upon what the author decides to place within the cyberculture. Reid, in Identity and the Cyborg Body, mentions that MUD players identities are entirely dependent upon information that they choose to give. The boundaries delineated by cultural constrictions of the body are both subverted and given free rein in virtual environments. Once we decide what information we choose to release into cyberspace, those bits of information are basically floating in cyberspace for someone else to piece together. We no longer restricted, she says, by our physical bodies in our interaction with others. Even talking and writing are body movements, yet CMC is presented through digital code.
In an environment where information are scrambled by the uncertainties of post-modernism, how are people supposed to present identities for others to recognize? Anneke Smelik explains, This medium (cyberspace) is the triumph of the image. Webpage and web journal authors present images for readers and browsers to interpret and put together some sort of identity for the author. In the realms of face-to-face interaction and written text, concrete words are interpreted and used to construct an identity. However, Alan Aycock explains that those concrete, physical objects are no longer available in cyberspace. Communication on the Internet consists of the use of words without things, in which the words themselves become resources for self-fashioning, Earlier in the semester, we discussed how people define themselves by what they buy. In other words, physical objects beside themselves define their being. Since the entire realm is digital, these concrete objects are no longer available in cyberspace.
When someone builds a web page, they use all different types of media to construct the page. Most use text and pictures, while some even use animations and sound to create an experience for the viewer. When the author then adds links to other pages, the identity begins to form in the context of other sites and other personal pages. The words Aycock mentions are presented to the reader or viewer through all of these different types of media. Now words no longer resemble written letters pieced together. They can mean anything in cyberspace from a link to a picture.
A reader must exhibit caution however when compiling an identity in cyberspace. After considering the post-modern nature of the multitude of images presented on a web page or within a web journal, the reader must consider if these pieces of information add up to the full identity of the author. In other words, is this what the author wanted us to think? Goffman describes two types of information found in face-to-face interaction. First, there is the given information, that is, information that is intentionally provided. The second type if given-off information. These bits of information leak through unintentionally, yet the other person still notices these bits. The same thing happens in webpages, he says. There is the information that is given, whether it be an all about me page or pictures shown on the site. The given-off information is information that the reader interprets through links to different sites and aesthetic qualities found within he site,
However, there is one important difference. Face-to-face interaction takes place during a continuing series of points in time, while a website only presents an image at one distinct point in time. In other words, during a conversation identities are fluid according to the mode of conversation. Identities could pan out over a few minutes, or however long the conversation lasts. A web page does not last through a series of moments, but last for only one distinct moment. Although the reader can look through a home page for an extended period of time, the author is presenting a snap shot of his/her identity.
Summed up, when considering all the intangibles such as time and information available to the reader, there is a blurred identity presented in cyberspace. By presenting images without immediate feedback, Goffman says there is a reduced possibility of clarifying misinterpretations through an exchange of communication. Instead of a face-to-face interaction where feedback is almost immediate, interaction in cyberculture presents a limit on how someone can present an identity.
Are identities found within cyberspace authentic? They can be, once we come to understand their nature. Many people, when they first begin to communicate with anonymous people on-line, automatically trust what the other person is saying. However it is not as easy to validate information than it is in face-to-face interaction. Once the sense of sight has been extracted from the process, we must learn to focus elsewhere for truth. Besides hearing, sight is probably the most important sense in a conversation. In cyberspace, however, we can no longer depend on it, and therefore our sense of identity has been blurred.