Questions & Responses on Chapter 9: Writing the Self
I found the author’s thoughts on how “electronic writing do not determine how we think or how we define ourselves. Rather, they participate in our ongoing cultural redefinitions of self, knowledge, and experience,” particularly interesting. The idea of technology influencing so much the way we think, we feel the need to redefine roles (of self, knowledge, and experience) is quite interesting.The fact that artificial intelligence is so high, yet no computer has ever passed the Turing test is fascinating. The blurred lines of public and private hypertext also seem to be increasing. Audiences can be few to millions. Since the author states that the inner self and outer persona are closely connected because of this (private and public writings), do you think that this is entirely true? Just because people write “blogs,” couldn’t these be works of fiction as well? Does this create more questions about the inner self and its relationship to the outer persona? Are they more connected or more disconnected with the increase of hypertext? Carrie
I thought this chapter was a little hard to read only because the author uses philosphical concepts that I have never heard of. The author seems to assume that the reader is aware and knows of the inner workings of these philosphies already. I thought the debate on identity in the electronic age was an interesting one. There were various arguments for and against it but I tend to agree with Sherry Turkle who thinks that the internet will help us develop a new more flexible self rather than the "real" person than we are. There are pros and cons to being a "self" on the internet. First of all you develop a newer identity. Mabye you are your true self but in a chat room you admit you inner love of baroque music that you never would to your real friends. Perhaps that is where you develop a collection of cyber friends who love it as well. The question is always going to be with cyber people is the people you are chatting with the real deal are they hiding parts of their identity as well? I think the cyber self as an interesting exploration in pschycology and what peoples personalities behind the computer screen. The question also then becomes how stable is the cyber self after all it appeared one day it can easliy dissapear and come back in another form of a different cyber self. That also brings up the area of being consumed by cyber and real self it is like being a schizophrenic. If you have multiple cyber self does that take away from the real person that you are? Does the real person change into their cyber self? Those questions get a little off topic from the chapter itself. I think that their interesting ideas and challenges that the chapter has brought to light. Hannah K
The author briefly mentions the blur of private and public texts. With hypertext, private writing, such as blogs or personal home pages, can instantly become public. While this is quite the luxury for some authors, it also brings up new concerns. For instance, it seems that writing hypertext on the Web can now be dangerous. An author's target audience won't be the only people reading his or her works; malicious people can also view "private" works and learn personal information about the author. Should there be restrictions on the information authors can provide? Should there be an age limit for hypertextual authors to make it more difficult for people to find out personal information of junior-high and high-school age kids? Jim
On page 194 Bolter writes "To think is to write in the language of thought and to remember is to search the space of our memory until we find what is written there." I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding Bolter or just disagreeing with him. I think I just have a different view of writing and the mind then he does. I think until we truly understand the power of the written word do we being to truly understand ourselves and find our voice. When we are young we do not really have a voice in our writing tone. Our teacher tells us what to write and how to write it. We are learning the power of words. We may personalize our writing style by making our letters look different, but we are still not creating a voice. Not until we see that writing forms opinions do we begin to form our own voice. It's almost as if inside our mind we need something to respond to and that's when we begin to write. Until we find an issue that we want to write about do we define our voice. Throughout our lives we are redefining the voice that is inside our head. The outside world influences our thoughts. Our thoughts go into our mind and our voice might change. Through experience we find our voice. I think the key to writing is that it's our memory. It's also debatable of how accurate our memory is. We may have manipulated the text within our minds to create scenarios that really didn't happen the way we write it. That's my opinion on writing the self. Megan
On page 198 the book states that the sole purpose of chat rooms is the construction of and experimentation with the user's identity. This sentence is very simple but yet has a lot of truth with in it. When a person enters a chat room they are entering as if they were personally walking into a room and talking with others, except through this concept they are using a computer to communicate. The book also states that those who participate in electronic environments are suggesting a new set of cultural uses for the computer....we are reasoning our ideas and thoughts to others online with the use of the keyboard. Sometimes, however, the problem of the other person not understand exactly how you meant what you said; this can cause confusion. Stacey |