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To Thine Own Selves Be True

A Review of Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen

The computer world has no shortage of pundits, people willing to hold forth at length on how computers are changing the ways in which we think and live. Of these, one of the most original and interesting is Dr. Sherry Turkle, clinical psychologist and professor of the sociology of science at MIT. Turkle’s Life on the Screen, published in 1995, is a fascinating amalgam of Postmodernist theory and observations of people’s lives online, especially in those peculiar parts of Cyberspace known as MUDs (Multiple-User Dungeons, Domains, or Dimensions). Turkle strikes her major theme early in the book: 
    In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I lived in a culture that taught that the self is constituted by and through language, that sexual congress is the exchange of signifiers, and that each of us is a multiplicity of parts, fragments, and desiring connections. This was the hothouse of Paris intellectual culture whose gurus included Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. But despite such ideal conditions for learning, my “French lessons” remained merely abstract exercises. These theorists of poststructuralism and what would come to be called postmodernism spoke words that addressed the relationship between mind and body but, from my point of view, had little or nothing to do with my own. . . . 

    [M]ore than twenty years after meeting the ideas of Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari, I am meeting them again in my new life on the screen. But this time the Gallic abstractions are more concrete. In my computer-mediated worlds, the self is multiple, fluid, and constituted in interaction with machine connections; it is made and transformed by language; sexual congress is an exchange of signifiers; and understanding follows from navigation and tinkering rather than analysis. And in the machine-generated world of MUDs, I meet characters who put me in a new relationship with my own identity. (14-15)

Modernism and Postmodernism

Abstract terms for intellectual movements are notoriously nebulous, and the terms Modernism and Postmodernism are among the most nebulous. Here’s a stab at an explanation consistent with Turkle’s book: Modernism, the intellectual movement that dominated the first half of the twentieth century, was the culmination of Enlightenment thinking. It was associated with the notion of abstraction. The central figures of the Enlightenment were scientists like Newton and Kepler who showed how complex surface phenomena, such as the motions of the planets, could be explained in terms of underlying laws that were both simple and abstract. From scientific abstraction it was but a short step to abstraction in the arts—to Futurism, Cubism, and Primitivism, for example. Turkle associates Modernist thinking with structured programming (in which programs are carefully planned according to hierarchical, top-down rules and in which recurring functions are handled by self-contained subroutines) and with rule-based AI (the kind that gives us expert systems, which are systemizations of knowledge into logically connected propositions—if P and Q and not R, then Z). 

Postmodernism is a reaction against the Enlightenment-era scientific agenda. This movement, originating in France and now dominant in American universities, sees not a single, unitary reality to be analyzed to discover its underlying rules, but rather a lot of shifting realities that are no more than linguistic constructs that people create and recreate when “reading” themselves and the world. Turkle associates Postmodernism with various trends in contemporary programming, including shifting linkages among objects in hypertext environments and so-called “emergent AI,” in which unpredictable characteristics of a program emerge from the interactions of many component parts with a fluid, changing environment. Examples of such emergence can be found in so-called “genetic algorithms,” bits of code that mutate, breed with other bits of code, and adapt to their task environments through successive generations. 

These parallels between contemporary approaches to programming and Postmodernist theory provide the backdrop for Turkle’s examination of the ways in which people’s ideas of self are changing in response to living lives on the screen. In particular, Turkle is interested in the challenge that life in Cyberspace presents to the idea of a unitary, continuous conception of self. As Turkle puts it, 

    MUDs are dramatic examples of how computer-mediated communication can serve as a place for the construction and reconstruction of identity. There are many others. On the Internet, Internet Relay Chat (commonly known as IRC) is another widely used conversational forum in which any user can open a channel and attract guests to it, all of whom speak to each other as if in the same room. Commercial services such as America Online and CompuServe provide online chat rooms that have much of the appeal of MUDs—a combination of real time interaction with other people, anonymity (or, in some cases, the illusion of anonymity), and the ability to assume a role as close to or as far from one’s “real self” as one chooses. (14)

Computers and Multiple Selves

Contemporary cognitive science sees the brain as a collection of interacting, independent processors (see the articles “Engineering Intelligence: Computers and the Cognitive Revolution in Psychology" and "If Two Minds Are Better Than One, Then How About Two Thousand?"). Turkle briefly mentions two examples of this approach, philosopher Daniel Dennett’s “Multiple Drafts” theory of consciousness, in which realities are constructed at various depths of processing in the brain, and artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky’s “Society of Mind” theory, which sees the brain as a group of interacting, semiautonomous agents. Both of these theories, widely influential in contemporary cognitive science, present challenges to the idea of a unitary self. The bulk of Turkle’s book, however, deals with ways in which online experience becomes a crucible for practical exploration of the notion that the unitary self is an illusion. The book is full of quotations from Turkle’s interviews with MUDers who assume various identities, or avatars, in online worlds. Here, for example, is a woman enjoys logging onto a commercial network service in the role of a gay man: 
    I have always been so curious about what men do with each other. I could never even imagine how they talk to each other. I can’t exactly go to a gay bar and eavesdrop inconspicuously. [When online] I don’t actually have [virtual] sex with anyone. I get out of that by telling the men there that I’m shy and still unsure. But I like hanging out; it makes gays seem less strange to me. But it is not easy. You have to think about it, to make up a life, a job, a set of reactions. (213)
Here is Turkle’s description of a child who regularly logs onto MUDs as different people: 
    “I don’t play so many different people online—only three,” says June, an eleven-year-old who uses her mother’s Internet account to play in MUDs. During our conversation, I learn that in the course of a year in RL [real life], she moves among three households—that of her biological mother and stepfather, her biological father and stepmother, and a much-loved “first stepfather,” her mother’s second husband. She refers to her mother’s third and current husband as a “second stepfather.” June recounts that in each of these three households the rules are somewhat different and so is she. Online switches among personae seem quite natural. Indeed, for her, they are a kind of practice. (256)
One of the recurring themes of Postmodernism is that the self is multiple. Turkle contends that in providing an opportunity for people to explore alternate identities online, the Internet is a “technology that is bringing [P]ostmodernism down to earth” (268). The conclusion of her book is ambivalent about the meaning of this phenomenon. On the one hand, she welcomes “the culture of simulation [that] may help us achieve a vision of a multiple but integrated identity whose flexibility, resilience, and capacity for joy comes from having access to our many selves” (268). On the other, she fears the possibility that “People can get lost in virtual worlds” (268-69). Turkle deserves much credit for raising the question of the impact of such exploration of multiple selves online. MUDing, IRC, chatrooms, bots, and avatars are very recent cultural phenomena. As yet, they are still used primarily by a handful of devotees (some of whom, quoted in Turkle’s book, much prefer Cyberspace to the real world). However, one can reasonably expect that as the technology improves, more and more people will be making the explorations that Turkle describes. Bruce Damer, author of Avatars! Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet, points to Alphaworld (at http://www.activeworlds.com), a virtual reality world that in late 1997 had over 170,000 inhabitants, and makes the claim that 
    The surface area of virtual worlds (if an avatar’s height is taken as a unit of measure) will probably exceed the surface area of the Earth within a couple of years.” (xix)
As it becomes easier to build three-dimensional virtual worlds like Alphaworld and Worlds Chat (at http://www.worlds.com); as more and more software becomes commercially available enabling people to build their own personal representatives, or avatars; as bandwidth increases and compression becomes better; as online virtual worlds grow to become more than the clunky, flat-surfaced, polygonal spaces they now are; then people will increasingly make the sorts of explorations that Turkle describes, and the social impact of such explorations may turn out to be enormous. Here are two possibilities, one ominous, and one hopeful: 

The Ominous Scenario. All social interaction depends upon the abilities of people to make contracts, large and small, explicit and implicit. A contract, or, if you prefer a less legalistic term, a bond, depends on the tacit assumption that each person entering into it is a unified, relatively continuous self. To recast Nietzsche’s famous statement about God, if there were not a unitary self, we would find it necessary to invent one. When a spouse says, “I don’t know you anymore,” it doesn’t take a psychotherapist to explain that the sentence means, “You’ve changed. You’re somebody else. I made a contract with that other person, and not with the person you are now, and so I have the right to disavow any obligation that this different you might think exists between us.” What is true of a marriage bond  is true of all other relationships, personal and professional. The unity of self is fundamental. The sociologist Eric Erikson coined the term “identity crisis” to describe the period in our teens when each of us struggles to dissociate from his or her parents to form a unique, stable identity. The successful resolution of the identity crisis results in the formation of a stable, unitary personality that we carry into adulthood. When people fail in this establishment of a personal identity, numerous pathologies ensue. The pathological liar, the promiscuous teenager lacking in self-esteem, and the excessively dependent adult who cannot make decisions on his or her own are all examples of people who have failed to resolve this identity crisis successfully. If, in the future, hundreds of thousands of people begin living multiple lives online, and if many of those people are teenagers and young adults already confused about who they are, then we may be in for trouble. Turkle, though largely positive about the online experience, cites an example of a marriage that broke up as a result of the online promiscuity of a husband’s avatar and points out that multiple personality disorder, once considered rare, is now a common diagnosis. 

The Positive Scenario. In today’s world, people have to be flexible. Our professional lives depend upon being able to interact successfully, in team efforts, with people who are very different from ourselves. Many of us no longer live in isolated, stable communities, with shared values, but rather in large, fluid, cosmopolitan communities in which we come in regular contact with people whose backgrounds and values are very different from our own. In the past, stability of the self was a paramount virtue, but perhaps, in the modern world, flexibility, the ability to accommodate to diversity, is more important, and perhaps assuming roles online will help us to develop that kind of flexibility. Professional actors have the experience all the time of assuming characters different from themselves in their work. Many report that doing so teaches them more about themselves and about others, making them more understanding and empathetic. All of us, increasingly, are called upon to play many roles (sibling, parent, student, mentor, employee, employer, and so on). Maybe assuming different online identities can teach us how to be flexible, creative adults, more tolerant of diversity and more capable of personal growth. 

How much of our lives, in the future, will be lead on the screen? What effects will living multiple lives on the screen have on our sense of identity, on the integrity of our own personalities? These are deep and difficult questions. Sherry Turkle is to be commended for raising them. 

References

Damer, Bruce. Avatars! Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet. Reading, MA: Addison, 1998. 

Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. 

Minsky, Marvin. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. 

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. 
 
 
 
 
Questions for Discussion and Review 

The following questions are based on the preceding text. Clicking on a question will take you to the place in the text where the question is discussed. To return to these questions, simply click the "Back" button in your browser. 

1. According to Turkle, in what ways do the lives that people live "on the screen" provide concrete examples of concepts central to the intellectual movement known as Postmodernism? 

2. What was Modernism? 

3. Why does Turkle associate structured programming and rule-based AI with the movement known as Modernism? 

4. What is Postmodernism? 

5. With what trends in contemporary computing does Turkle associate Postmodernism? Why? 

6. According to Turkle, what effect does living lives on the screen have on the concept of a unitary, continuous self? What aspects of people's online behavior present challenges to this concept? 

7. What two contemporary psychological theories challenge the notion of a single, unitary consciousness? 

8. What two examples of people assuming different online identities are mentioned in the essay? 

9. In what way, according to Turkle, does the Internet bring Postmodernism down to earth? 

10. What positive and negative consequences does Turkle see as possible results of habitually assuming other identities online? 

11. What claim does Bruce Damer make about the size of online virutal worlds? 

12. Under his "Ominous Scenario," what negative consequences does the author of this review see as possible results of habitually assuming other identities online? 

13. According to the author of this review, on what do contracts and social bonds depend? 

14. Under his "Positive Scenario," what positive consequences does the author of this review see as possible results of habitually assuming other identities online? 
 
 
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