Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-hvd4g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-27T23:34:55.323Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Mask and Identity: The Hermeneutics of Self-Construction in the Information Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2009

By
Dorian Wiszniewski  and
Richard Coyne
Edited by
K. Ann Renninger  and
Wesley Shumar
Dorian Wiszniewski
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh Department of Architecture 20 Chambers Street Edinburgh EH1 1JZ United Kingdom Dorian.Wiszniewski@ed.ac.uk
Richard Coyne
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh Department of Architecture 20 Chambers Street Edinburgh EH1 1JZ United Kingdom Richard.Coyne@ed.ac.uk
K. Ann Renninger
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
Wesley Shumar
Affiliation:
Drexel University, Philadelphia
Get access

Summary

The issue of identity features prominently in discourses about information technology (IT). One conspicuous narrative presented in IT commentary is that the use of the Internet radically changes our perception of who and what we are. Apparently, in anonymous online chat groups you can play charades, wear a mask, and pretend to be of a different age, gender, or appearance (Turkle, 1995; Murray, 1999). It seems that we can accomplish this transformation of identity with great fluidity now. As the Internet and its successors become more pervasive and the technologies become more sophisticated and convincing, then presumably the issue of identity itself comes under review, as do related concepts: that against which we assert our identity (community) and the means by which one's identity is promoted and transformed (education).

We survey the debt owed by contemporary IT narratives and practices to certain intellectual positions as they pertain to identity. This analysis inevitably involves a consideration of change, community, and education. Identity implies continuity in a sense of the self, a constancy behind the ever-changing mask of appearances. In the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, which dominate in the western tradition, the changing nature of the sensible realm is contrasted with the invariance of the realm of the forms, the place of identity. Whereas we and other things change, through the forces of generation, destruction, locomotion, growth, and diminution (our hair turns grey and disappears, we gather wrinkles, stoop a little, and change our occupation), that which remains constant is our identity – the immutable part of our human being that participates in the realm of the forms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Building Virtual Communities
Learning and Change in Cyberspace
 , pp. 191 - 214
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, R. E. (1966). Greek philosophy: Thales to Aristotle. New York: Free Press
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Barthes, R. (1973). Mythologies (A. Lavers, Trans.). London: Paladin
Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and simulations. In Jean Baudrillard: Selected writings (pp. 166–84). Stanford: Stanford University Press
Benedikt, M. (1991). Cyberspace: First steps. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Black, M. (1979). More about metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 19–43). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press
Borgman, A. (1999). Holding on to reality: The nature of information at the turn of the millennium. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Caputo, J. D. (1987). Radical hermeneutics: Repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutical project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Coyne, R. D. (1994). Heidegger and virtual reality: The implications of Heidegger's thinking for computer representations. Leonardo, 27(1), 65–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coyne, R. D. (1995). Designing information technology in the postmodern age: From method to metaphor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Coyne, R. D. (1998). Cyberspace and Heidegger's pragmatics. Information technology and people, Special Issue: Heidegger and Information Technology, 11(4), 338–50CrossRef
Coyne, R. D. (1999). Technoromanticism: Digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Coyne, R. D., Sudweeks, F., & Haynes, D. (1996). Who needs the Internet? Computer-mediated communication in design firms. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 23, 749–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). London: Athlone Press
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1984). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H. Lane, Trans.). London: Athlone Press
Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Dery, M. (1996). Escape velocity: Cyberculture at the end of the century. London: Hodder and Stoughton
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Free Press
Dreyfus, H. L. (1972). What computers can't do: The limits of artificial intelligence. New York: Harper and Row
Dreyfus, H. L. (1990). Being-in-the-world: A commentary on Heidegger's being and time division I. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Herder and Herder
Fromm, E. (1942). The fear of freedom. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Gadamer, H.-G. (1975). Truth and method. London: Sheed Ward
Gadamer, H.-G. (1976). Philosophical hermeneutics (D. E. Linge, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press
Gadamer, H.-G. (1986). The relevance of the beautiful: Art as play, symbol, and festival. In R. Bernasconi (Ed.), The relevance of the beautiful and other essays. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–53
Gallagher, S. (1991). Hermeneutics and education. Albany: State University of New York Press
Gates, B. (1996). The road ahead. London: Penguin
Gibson, W. (1993). Neuromancer. London: Harper Collins
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Trans.). London: SCM Press
Heidegger, M. (1969). Identity and difference (J. Stambaugh, Trans.). New York: Harper and Row
Heidegger, M. (1971a). The origin of the work of art. In M. Heidegger Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, Trans.) (pp. 15–87). New York: Harper and Row
Heidegger, M. (1971b). The thing. In M. Heidegger Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, Trans.) (pp. 165–86).New York: Harper and Row
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). New York: Harper and Row
Heim, M. (1993). The metaphysics of virtual reality. New York: Oxford University Press
Hiltz, S. R., & Turoff, M. (1994). The network nation: Human communication via computer. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. (First published in 1978.)
Hume, D. (1975). Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of morals. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Jameson, F. (1972). The prison-house of language: A critical account of structuralism and Russian formalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Locke, J. (1960). An essay concerning human understanding (A. D. Woozley, Ed.). London: Collins. (First published in 1698.)
Marcuse, H. (1987). Eros and civilisation: A philosophical inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Marcuse, H. (1988). One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. London: Routledge
Moravec, H. (1988). Mind children: The future of robot and human intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Murray, J. H. (1999). Hamlet on the holodeck: The future of narrativity in cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Novak, M. (1991). Liquid architectures in cyberspace. In M. Benedikt (Ed.), Cyberspace: First steps (pp. 225–54). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Plotinus. (1948). The essence of Plotinus: Extracts from the six enneads and Porphyry's life of Plotinus (G. H. Turnbull, Ed.; S. Mackenna, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press
Pöggeler, O. (1989). Martin Heidegger's path of thinking (D. Magurshak and S. Barber, Trans.). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International
Popper, K. (1972). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. London: Oxford University Press
Ricoeur, P. (1977). The rule of metaphor (R. Czerny with K. McLaughlin and J. Costello, Trans.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Ricoeur, P. (1981). The conflict of interpretations: Essays in hermeneutics (D. Ihde, Ed.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press
Rousseau, J. J. (1974). Emile (B. Foxley, Trans.). London: Dent
Ryle, G. (1963). Concept of mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Schneiderman, B. (1994). Education by engagement and construction: A strategic education initiative for a multimedia renewal of American education. In E. Barrett (Ed.), Sociomedia: Multimedia, hypermedia, and the social construction of knowledge (pp. 13–26). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Snodgrass, A., & Coyne, R. D. (1998). Is designing hermeneutical?Architectural Theory Review, 2(1), 65–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stallabrass, J. (1995). Empowering technology: The exploration of cyberspace, New Left Review, 211: 3–32Google Scholar
Stewart, S. (1999). Sir Henry Wotton's The elements of architecture and the articulation of justice: A discourse on theory and practice.Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. New York: Cambridge University Press
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Virilio, P. (1991). The aesthetics of disappearance (P. Beitchman, Trans.). Brooklyn, NY: Semiotext(e)
Weiser, M. (1991). The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American, 265(3), 66–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, A. N. (1929). The aims of education and other essays. New York: Macmillan and Company
Winograd, T., & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding computers and cognition: A new foundation for design. Reading, MA.: Addison Wesley

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×