Cyberspace & Identity

554 Words2 Pages

In "Cyberspace and Identity: The E-Mail Revolution", Sherry Turkle focuses on the virtual world, how she perceives it takes place in today's society. Turkle also focuses on the psychological impact that living in the virtual world has on our current reality.

Turkle, currently is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She also is the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts in the co-construction of identity (http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/techself). In addition, Turkle is the author of Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution (Basic Books, 1978; MIT Press paper, 1981; second revised edition, Guilford Press, 1992); The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (Simon and Schuster, 1984; Touchstone paper, 1985; second revised edition, MIT Press, forthcoming); and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paperback, 1997). One could say Turkle is an expert in predicting behavior when technology is concerned.

In Turkle's current assessment, she states that most people, when they are in the virtual world, assume different identities based on their mood or persona. I tend to agree with this assumption. One reason being that I know many people who have based a screen name or handle on just the mood they were feeling for that day. Some felt like being women, some men, some a fantasy character. These days, the diversity of personalities seems to never end in this fast evolving virtual world.

Turkle also believes that cyberspace has a range of psychological effects (273-74). She stated that for some people, it is a place to "act out" unresolved conflicts, to play and replay character logical difficulties on a new and exotic stage. I agree with this assumption as well. The only way some people may know how to deal with emotion, or cope with a situation is to escape for five minutes to a different reality. A reality that with the click of the button, can be created as calming of an atmosphere when needed.

Erik Erikson believed that people had to achieve something personally in order to move ahead in life. To not do so would bring complications through adulthood (274).

Open Document