The Internet and Identity Fragmentation
Or: The long version of why I am deleting my Facebook profile
It has been argued, by people smarter than I, that the human identity, as it exists in its current state, is fragmented due to a variety of forces of our social environment. Some people say that we are post-modern selves; fragmented, lost, and ruled by a highly advanced capitalist logic. Some people say that the Internet perpetuates the emergence of a post-modern self which will eventually lead us to a dytopian land that exists somewhere between Oceania and the Brave New World. Personally, I am uncertain of what the future will hold for the indiviudual identity. I can see many possibilities and prefer not to be so deterministic. However, I can see, and rationalize, how the Internet is going to shape that future of the human identity.
It’s hard to decipher the nuances of a concept like identity on a collective level. Identity is a multitude of things. And while I could go on and on about the many different ways in which the concept of identity has been interpreted, I would prefer to just discuss the widely accepted psycho-social notion of roles (a la Goffman)
We each exist in a variety of headspaces, as interactors with our environment. We are shaped and informed by physical things – like hormone levels (moods and personality); how we physically feel (sickness and health); and where we are physically loacted (at home, at school etc); by social things - like education and law and media; and by that final mysterious ingredient of cognition, being and knowing. As we interact with things in these areas of our lives, we create states for our selves to exist in. These states are the roles we assume when given the particular mash-up of all of the variances occur in conjuction with aforementioned triggers.
I’ll use myself as an example to try and make this point clearer:
My role as a Woman - the state in which I exist is shaped by the physical traits that make me a woman. This state is also influenced by social expectations in behaviour and demeanor, and being a woman means that I know woman.
My role as a wife – the state in which I exist due interactions with my physical self (for survival and reproductive purposes), where I am being perceived as being a wife (at a bar, at a family gathering) the social expectations that are assumed when one chooses to be a wife, and that mysterious element of love and bonding.
Get it? The list (for me) can go on and on… I am a mother, I am a student, I am an employee, I am a writer, I am a theorist, I am a realist, I am an advocate, I am a moderate, I am a radical… Social roles don’t really exist on thier own, as isolated fragmentations of the self, they work with one another towards a unity of me.
Sometimes, though, my roles are not harmonious and balanced. Sometimes, I have to interact with physical, social and internal roles that conflict with one another. This has been called Role Strain, and it occurs when demands of two roles need different things, but they are occuring in the same context. For example, working mothers are often known for suffering from role strain, where their “duties” of the mother role and their “duties” of work often conflict and cause stress for the self.
But role strain can only exist when we, as individuals, are susceptible to being ruled by external forces. Because if we do, in fact, have pure free will, it is the self that should be negotiating the duties of the role.
But I digress.
Different from role strain, but connected to it all the same is the problem of Role Confusion. Role confusion is where an individual is put in a situation where they are uncertain of which role they are supposed to play when the possibility of many roles is present.
The Internet, as I see it, can work to minimize the stress of role strain as more and more people use the virtual to negotiate thier identity, as a personally defined set of roles and duties, rather than the externally defined set that comes as a result of social institutions. I think that it also could work to minimize role confusion, as users can streamline interactions within managed online settings. This, though, unfortunately works better with detatchment from those real-life things that can cause strain and confusion in the “real-world.”
And now I’m going to rant a bit about Facebook and how all of this relates to why I am deleting my Facebook profile.
While when I first started using Facebook, I was taken in by it. I loved the idea of having an online venue to “play” with my real-life friends. Since I was so active on MySpace, I thought I would love it. But then I started adding (and inviting) people into that “play” area of my life where I exist as another role. While I wasn’t feeling so much role strain… I was experiencing a lot of role confusion. And even though there are no personal specific examples I can put my finger on to illustrate what I mean, the role confusion was causing me great anxiety.
I know that this is not a unique experience for me. I’ve heard of teachers who are one Facebook to “play” have parents of their students send them friend requests… I’ve heard of old friends coming back into lives and messing up stability in relationships… I’ve heard of people being denied jobs and opportunities because of photos and notes and wall-writings.
I may return to Facebook, under a pseudonym, and only add those people that I have a contextual, and real-life social “play” connection to, because ultimately, I think that a social networking site like Facebook is a great idea, and believe that virtual communities can enhance real-life ones… but in the end, I have to agree with my husband Dave, that the coming together of all of these individual communities that I have belonged to in the past and present, is wierd, and unnatural for the current social conditions that we live in today.
Facebook feeling MySpace’s heat…
By most accounts, MySpace continues to dominate the social networking scene. Though I suppose that all depends on how you define dominate. It has the most users, yes… my MySpace profile shows 179 million in my network alone. However, Beebo had the biggest traffic increase in the last year, up 184% if Hitwise is to be believed. In these days of rapid change to the social web, stats like that might be the most important in terms of determining the next big online social networking site.
In the same article linked above, it was found that 25% of all social networking traffic was generated from offsite clicks off MySpace compared to only 3% of Facebook. This is mostly due to the fact that MySpace, being an open kind of network, facilitates offsite clicking, in fact, it encourages it and provides the user with a number of options to do so, including the partnering with other sites to integrate their software with the MySpace platform.
Facebook hasn’t been doing this as readily, and they think that if they start, it is what will help them become the major-domo SNS.
This is Facebook’s goal, if Facebook’s developer, 23 year old Mark Zuckerberg is to believed and actually still has a say in the direction that Facebook will take in the coming months. In Zuckerberg’s ultimate fantasy, Facebook becomes “the social operating system” for the Internet, wanting to do for the Internet, what Microsoft did for the PC with Windows. They are opening up the network to integrate offsite widgets and personalized html codes.
Anyone who knows anything about such things knows all of the reasons why this is concerning. One of the joys of social networking online is the variety in platforms. No two social networking sites are the same, and the idea of a Facebook homogenization of online social networking is not exactly in keeping with the spirit of social media.
I’m kind of puzzled as to why Facebook thinks that becoming more like MySpace will be beneficial. I mean, yes, successful business models feed off of one another, company X is doing this thing that makes it really popular so company Y decides to co-opt some of that magic into their own, but one of the things that makes Facebook more appealing than MySpace for most users, it’s functionality and practicality and minimal third-party advertising. In my opinion, Facebook could possibly be screwing itself by trying to be more like MySpace, who already has a loyal user base, why would MySpace users become Facebook users if it offers the same services and features?
One of the headline’s regarding this new Facebook development was “Not your older brother’s Facebook” which immediately made me think of Big Brother and Facebook privacy issues all over again. This is another element of potential concern with opening up and connecting the Facebook network to other websites. Of course, the “potential concern” is turned into a real concern if the connection between Facebook and DARPA is real (which I am uncertain of).
What I am relatively certain of is, and wrote a little while ago regarding Facebook and Privacy was: the money which funded the initial startup of Facebook (which is reported to be 13 million bucks) came from a major networking firm called Accel Partners (which also have interests in BitTorrent, Real Player, and Macromedia) Major players from Accel sit on the board of directors for an organization called BBN Technologies. Jim Breyer, for example, also sits on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The Board of Directors of BBN Technologies, by the way, is made up of many Internet pioneers; those responsible for the ARPANET and the firm which has created the web-crawling and computer connecting software (known as XML) used by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agecy). Here’s a clip from the 2002 New York Times article “Many Tools Of Big Brother Are Now Up And Running“
“The first generation of the Internet — called the Arpanet — consisted of electronic mail and file transfer software that connected people to people. The second generation connected people to databases and other information via the World Wide Web. Now a new generation of software connects computers directly to computers.
Total Information Awareness also takes advantage of a simple and fundamental software technology called Extended Markup Language, or XML, that is at the heart of the third generation of Internet software… It is XML, a refinement of the Internet’s original World Wide Web scheme, that has made it possible to consider welding thousands of databases together without centralizing the information.
This, however, is one of those dualistic things about the Internet, and more specifically Web 2.0, or as I have been preferring to call it, the Social Web. It’s a cost benefit anaylsis. Do the costs of privacy, by creating a massive database of online use, outweigh the potential benefits of the formation of a virtual collective consciousness? This question, along with many others, will only be answered in time… and hopefully not before it’s too late for those benefits to get some real-life teeth.
A friend of mine suggested a Facebook-MySpace merger called MyFace… but the invite email might throw people off a bit… “Won’t you to come on MyFace with me?”
Is Resistance Futile?
I’ve made a promise to both my boss and my husband to not enter Second Life. They fear that they will lose me forever to the interface. Their fears are just. I am prone towards virtual obsession. I almost gave in today… I started to fill out the registration but literally backed out before the payment information screen. It’s not time yet.
When I first discovered Sim City, I would spend hours constructing and managing big cities. One thing noted in that though… the running of a successful Sim City is not nearly as stimulating as the running of one that’s falling apart.
After a computer upgrade, I started fooling around with The Sims. I even went so far in that I was downloading objects and outfits and new avatars to play with, grabbing cheats off messageboards. The Sims entertained me, but playing with yourself will only take you so far. I never ventured into The Sims Online, and the fad passed.
I enjoyed the subversive humour of the Sims. My favorite example being the brand “Soma” on the electronics that you could purchase. Soma is also the name of the braincandy dispensed like Advil in Brave New World…”a gramme in time saves nine”
Virtual Worlds like Second Life intrique me. The notion of recreating your self as a walking, talking, three dimensional being is exciting to me. Perhaps the crux of reflexive self-expression. Not necessarily who you are… but who you would ideally like to be. That it is set in a world that is socially and economically structured like the real world is dissapointing though. Community participation may be highly participatory, but with the same social structures and institutions in place, it seems more like a world that is trying to replace this one.
Entropia, the virtual world with a growing buzz around it, recently sold a whack of pawn shop licenses to the tune of $404,000. It is in the process of tendering 5 bank licenses as well, the first one being awarded for a cool ninety grand. People believe in Entropia…
Entropy is a term used in physics that is the “measure of the disorganization or degredation of the universe, resulting in a decrease in available energy” (Oxford Dictionary of Current English 2nd Edition, paper version, p 290). So I wonder if Entropia is responding to or creating the degredation. At this stage in the game, it’s difficult to say.
For now, unless I can secure a grant to conduct research in a virtual world, I think I’ll opt for less personal abstraction than more. Though the more my brain thinks about it from the outside, the more it wants to engage it on the inside.
conTEXTual mash-ups
I’m feeling silly…
Splace… as early noted, Web 2.0 is neither a space or a place, but at the same time it’s both… it is a splace.
Youser… pronouced user, or you-ser. Many people have written theoretical books where the term “user” as in ”computer user” has connotations of mindless automaton drones, using the technology as if it were heroin. Youser tries to bring humaness back to the word.
Netizen… okay this one isn’t mine. It belongs to Howard Rhinegold one of the godfathers of Internet Theory. He is also, incidently, the coiner of the phrase “Smart User”, though he has broadened that concept to the Smart Mob. I don’t have to explain that one do I?
Feed me with more, preferably of your own creation… *Gulp*
You may have noticed, the blog has a new look, in response to numerous eyes unable to read my long and lengthy diatribes with white text on black back. This is a tad more friendly anyway… no?
What are social media and Web 2.0? « The ACSIS Blog
Some of my ideas on the newly launched ACSIS Blog. I could say that it is a work in progress… but all blogs are works in progress!
Virtual capital?
There are many types of non-economic capital that people use in their daily lives to leverage their positions in society (remember Bush’s statement about “political capital” after the 2004 election?). In terms of trying to gain a visible online presense in the sea of disembodied words and profiles, it is these non-economic forms of capital that can get you noticed on these Internets.
The concept of social capital has to do with the non-material resources that you exchange while you are in relationships with other people. These resources can include (but are not limited to) education, ideas, affiliations with groups or clubs, identity or personality… anything which has social value, but is not necessarily based on what you own (materially) but what you are. The theory goes that social capital is transferrable, or convertible into material resources, like money from employment gained through a friend or relative, “deals” on goods, or gaining customers from a solid reputation of trustworthiness.
There are two types of social capital… bonding social capital (which occurs among and between member of ingroups, like family or religious organizations) and bridging social capital (which occurs across and between these groups). It’s basically you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. But it’s placed into a framework that has implementable and planned strategy.
The concept of social captial was formulated by Pierre Bourdieu, who developed the concept of cultural capital as well. Cultural capital has to do with the material than social capital does, but the two exist in a fairly symbiotic relationship. Cultural capital is the things you get, usually due to your family’s socio-ecomonic status; a degree, golf club membership, brand name clothes… things that make it visibly known that you are of a particular class. For the most part, social capital is thought to be largely dependent on the cultural capital you possess… but that doesn’t really apply today… especially with the rise of computer-mediated communication. Because online, you can fake… or embellish… or write code to produce cultural capital out of nothing (of course, you need a certain element of human capital to be able to have the skills to be able to do it online).
Human capital is the labour conversion of social and cultural captial… it is the marketable non-material capital and has to do with the skills and knowledge a worker brings to the labour force. All of these types of capital are usually spoken to alongside the concept of social mobility. That is, they can all be used to transcend traditional societal barriers of class (even though many of them are easier to acquire for the upper class).
I would argue, however, that identity capital is more important than human capital in terms of trying to establish a visible online presence. Identity Capital is a lesser known form of non-economic capital from critical sociologist James Cote. The identity capital model is based on personality (who we are), interaction (how we present ourselves) and social structure (how we are socialized).
In modern times (or late-modern or post-modern times, however you identify the current social context) identity capital has to do with the particular individualization trajectory you choose for yourself. Cote simplifies these trajectories into “default” - having your identity passively flow along a pre-defined or designed lifestyle choice, where individualization is merely a facade based on consumer choice – and “developmental” – actively forming your identity by interacting with yourself and others and your environment towards a reflexively formed individualized lifestyle.
So identity capital is a fantastic model to apply to the Internet. Since personality, and interaction are mediated through a computer interface, it makes those aspect of identity management quite easy, especially if you understand your audience. The lack of hierarchical structure on the Internet minumizes the importance of how your socialized (which ties into social, cultural, and human capital), and the power of your thoughts, and your knowledge, and how it is presented, becomes more important than the amount of degrees you have hanging in your office, or the kind of car you drive, or the number of ”clubs” you belong to. However, if you believe in reflexivity, as I do, these things are all bundled up with your identity management online.
Taken together and applied to the principles of Web 2.0 and online networking, I propose that this bundle of concepts can be viewed as a form of Virtual Capital. Where your hyperlinks and email contacts and public profiles and blogs, etcetera etcetera… can be transferrable and convertible into real-world benefits, and society perks. Internet campaigning and advertising is far more influential these days than traditional campaigning and advertising. Plus, everyone who has access to the Internet, has access to the free tools that can allow them to do thier own individual campaigning and advertising. Virtual capital has the potential to hierarchically organize the Internet though, by necessity those who have the most virtual capital would rise to the top of the balkinized networks. Second life has a lot of virtual capital embedded in it, as does YouTube and MySpace. They are networks at the top of the top of the food chain. Also the informalized network of the Blogosphere, which you can see a visual rendering of here… Graphical Representation of the Blogosphere
You can see virtual capital in action in virtual spaces like Second Life, where it is non-material resources that are far more relevant and useable than material resources. MySpace as well. Where your “popularity” is gained through how you present who you believe you are. Facebook is a little different, because of it’s heavy grounding in “reality” where the physical forms of these non-economic types of capital are embedded in a very real context of personal history. There are fewer ways to pull virtual capital out of the air on Facebook compared to an online context that brings together people without personal histories.
Anyway… I’m hammering these ideas out. Virtual Capital is one of those concepts that I have been indirectly writing and thinking about for a while now. This is the first time I’ve defined it as a particular framework, which is excellent, because I can now start writing the book…
Thanks for scanning… that is all…
Retaining Artistic Control of User-Created Content on Facebook and MySpace
So I think since my Facebook and MySpace posts are so popular, I’m going to do a series of comparison blogs between the different aspects of each. This one will be a comparison of each sites “Terms of Service” in relation to user-uploaded content. We’ll start with Facebook, since it’s “terms” are considerably vaguer than the MySpace policy.
To contextualize the comparison, I’ll use photography as the case… since it is something that I have a little experience with on a personal level as well.
“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire.”
So I’m reading this legal mumbo jumbo as… Facebook can use and redistribute any photo you upload to their site. While it claims it is only for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof it does not clarify whether or not they will collect money for the use. Further, the term promotion could incorporate many types of use. For example, when the Virginia Tech Tragedy occurred, CNN did a “special” on it, which talked about how Facebook was used in the aftermath. They showed photos that had been uploaded to the Virginia Tech Facebook Group on the special. My question is… did CNN pay Facebook for the rights to show the photos, or, did Facebook grant the rights to use the photos without consulting the owners of the photos first? If either is true, then this is an example where the legal terms are actually detrimental to artistic-control.
Because of the qualifier publicly perform, publicly display, this allows Facebook to grant access to any of the images uploaded to Facebook, which will serve a promotional purpose for Facebook. But let’s face it… all press or media could be considered promotional.
Because Facebook’s privacy policy openly discloses that they only share proprietary Facebook information with third parties, and their privacy policy should actually protect someone who uploads an image that they don’t necessary want used in the media (including stuff like embarrassing or incriminating photos taken from High School), unless, of course, Facebook allows for the use of the photo.
Facebook is a closed network remember… it is not viewable to non-members (except when they “occasionally provide demonstration accounts that allow non-users a glimpse into the Facebook world. Such accounts have only limited capabilities (e.g., messaging is disabled).”). Therefore, theoretically and legally, what is on Facebook should stay on Facebook and only Facebook, unless a) the user grants permission for the use of the photo or b) Facebook grants permission.
MySpace is a different ballgame. Their terms on user-uploaded content are very clear and precise (this is largely thanks to Billy Bragg).
MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services…
The license does not grant MySpace.com the right to sell your Content, nor does the license grant MySpace.com the right to distribute your Content outside of the MySpace Services.
The first major difference is that the MySpace agreement is saying outright that user-content can only be used by MySpace on and within MySpace. The next major difference is that MySpace says outright that they are not allowed to sell user-content… or the rights to use user content to third parties (It’s not that the Facebook agreement says that it does; it’s just that it doesn’t say it doesn’t).
MySpace, however, is an open network. Therefore they are not able to retain as much control over the site as Facebook can. The user of MySpace can not assume as much artistic-control and privacy as the user of Facebook. A picture posted on MySpace would be subject to fair-use laws, if the picture itself became a media story (as with the case of that poor girl who got denied admittance to the Education program because of the drunken pirate picture).
For artists who wish to use these social networking sites as a potential space of professional development of their work, MySpace is perhaps the better of the two for exposure and getting their work out there. However, I suspect more meaningful business networking takes place on Facebook, in terms of networks which yield direct results or professional benefits. That would be something worth exploring anyway.
But back to the issue of artistic-control of user-created content… if users were smart, they’d start to take control of their content. For example, YouTube videos which hit CNN… CNN should have to pay royalties for if it is used without permission. I suspect that they have to get some level of permission anyway. But I’m not wholly sure of that whole process. It’s quite possible that people would be so happy to have their content reach a wider audience that they would volunteer it anyway (as is the case with the ireporter on CNN)… but that’s just the media’s sneaky way of getting free product. That is, the product of a media conglomerate is “news”… which traditionally is gathered by a bureaucratic type system. At each level of story production, or news gathering, the media conglomerate must output a certain amount of resources to create the product (paying reporters, cameramen, driving to the location of the story, etc.)… Gathering user-created stories and footage from the net means that the cost of production is vastly minimized… the events come to them, rather than them having to go to the event. So in getting 5 seconds of fame in this day and age, the user actually minimizes the need and necessity for “experts” in the news gathering and reporting area.
This line of thinking leads into a whole different diatribe of mine which critiques the concept of celebrity as a post-modern art form, which is a slightly divergent topic for this blog.
In any case, if you are a creator of any kind who is trying to make a living as a creator… it is important to be aware of the privacy policies and terms of service for the sites that you may be using to promote your work. That is all…
