Decentering the Self in the Technological Age Essay -- Communication I

Decentering the Self in the Technological Age In a beautiful park, at the gazebo, stand my two friends, Avatar and Lewia. The wizard is performing the ceremony, and all is going very well. After many hours of intimate chat and romantic evenings together, today Avatar and Lewia are to be married - on the internet. This is the height of immersion to MUDlife. Life on the internet is affecting more people than many of us like to admit. I am interested in discussing the reasons for and repercussions of this sort of immersion. The above description actually did occur, several years ago. It was around the time of the first real explosion of the world wide web, when the internet was reserved for "computer geeks" like myself. The internet offers hundreds of "virtual spaces" called MUDs for "Multi User Domain". Within these MUDs, users create characters for themselves and virtual worlds for their characters. Interaction is purely text-based, with few rules. The worlds are controlled by "wizards", users who have the power to "toad" or delete characters that are abusive or unruly in some other way. My (real life) friend and his girlfriend used to frequent "The Resort", a MUD for general discussion that has since been closed. My personal interest was quite limited, but I had to attend the cyber-ceremony out of respect. My internet personality, or i-dentity, was, after all, BestManChris. Inspired by a similar net-event described in Sherry Turkle's Life On The Screen, I have recently reflected on the reper cussions of that net-wedding. For people as young as we were, twelve years old, the internet and chat rooms are an escape from the control of parents and teachers; they were a chance to be more "grown up" than real life ... ...he commonly held view that communication will become increasingly personal as technology advances is challenged by the popularity of IRC as a new form of communication. People form virtual communities with loose social structure and rules in which the residents all have something in common, whether it is a wedding ceremony, hobby, or a sexual interest. The growth in the number of IRC users is too large to be ignored, and I think it is going to be central to the recreation of communities as postmodern gathering places and the continued decentering of self as electronic communication becomes more prevalent in the years to come. Works Cited Reid, Elizabeth M. Electropolis: Communication and Community On Internet Relay Chat University of Melbourne, 1991. Turkle, Sherry. Life On The Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet New York: Touchstone, 1997.