ABSTRACT

What is identity? If we agree that it is who or what a person or thing is, how is digital identity different? Where is it taking us?

We establish who we are in the physical world by means of presence, location, relationships and links with others and through our physical and mental attributes. On-line we are able to give our digital selves identity in terms of an e-mail address, a home page, through membership of discussion lists, as a participant or character in a virtual world or as a name in an on-line chatroom and in these subtle ways we achieve a presence and location in cyberspace.

Cyberspace also offers anonymity and therefore new possibilities for identity; for multifaceted personae for each of us. This has led to relationships which are often conducted in a more direct and intense form than in real life. In the digital realm we are absolved of the real life burdens we carry - those of judgements made by others of us, according to criteria such as physical make up and social class. Furthermore, issues such as gender, sexuality, age or handicap cease to exist. Our participation in on-line life liberates our minds from our bodies and encourages us to explore new forms of communication, community, identity and presence. However, the liberation we have experienced, particularly in terms of fluidity of identity may be short lived.

E commerce demands a more stable identity, as does successful on-line community, which has grown up sufficient to expect and demand a fundamental level of responsibility alongside identity. Flame wars and criminality on-line have ensured that the identity of every on-line user is once more important.

As new methods of confirming identity emerge and are debated, so the ground shifts once more to other matters, such as the speculation about the evolution and development of a connected or ‘hive mind’i of which we all might be a part - an intelligence far greater than we can thus far comprehend.

Concurrently, the increasing ability of the web to support multimedia is encouraging the restoration of a co-joined mind and body. Our missing physical elements are already re- appearing with streaming sound and video. Web cams abound but the effect of displaying ourselves to a potential audience of millions has yet to be explored. We should consider more carefully who we are and how we portray ourselves. Virtual celebrities already appear on-line, and although they are long dead, offer their services alongside the digital video star, and the teleconference participant - the unreal almost indistinguishable from the real.

Photography has always sought to give us truth. The move towards the photo-realistic image on our computer screens and away from games technology, is I believe, assisting in the demand for reconfirmation of our physical identities and a demand for their realistic duplication in cyberspace. I suggest though that this new union is also transitional and that we are rehearsing digital human form through art and film as a prelude to moving on and examining and experimenting with post-modern identities. The virtual environments assist and permit us to rehearse the possible scenarios.

In experimenting with digital identity, we are considering a new immortal self; a merging between nature and technology - the preparation perhaps for a cyborg future.

Experiments in Art and Medicine best illustrate the exciting possibilities of interaction between us and technology. To date Art has permitted us to rehearse the marriage between flesh and technology without fear. It has permitted us to explore new boundaries, new visions, and new behaviour in a gloriously impermanent way

The early lessons learnt from our brief liberation from the body in cyberspace are important in helping us towards a new understanding and honesty about the human condition; not least in an acknowledgement of our limitations and an acceptance of who we really are. Negreponte suggests we might all be grateful to be‘nobodies’ in the emerging technological world.ii

We may be giving details of ourselves away too freely on-line, perhaps without due consideration of ways in which this information might be used. Are we sharing personal detail with bots that we wouldn’t dream of sharing with a person we had never met? We are learning to accept that in return for personal information, bots may assist us in ordering our lives. Is this a healthy way to live? Who are we in cyberspace?

In the end it is possible that we might conclude that we cannot live because we cannot die . Perhaps death will be unimportant, superseded by permanent representations of the self in digital life to come. What laws will govern these representations of ourselves and how will we seek to define and protect the ‘original’?

These are challenges I investigate and far from sensational, I suggest that in considering these matters, a new rationality and reality is emerging. It brings with it a restoration for the value of humanity and human life. We are moving towards a new perspective - a wired world in which we shall all have a global life with global responsibilities.

Far from moving away from nature, the digital may restore us to an understanding of the very essence of the human condition and most importantly to a recognition and understanding of ourselves.

‘We are but whirlpools in a river of ever flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetrate themselves’ Norbert Wiener 1954.1

What is identity? What is self?

In the physical world we might take Einstein’s summary as a starting point :

‘A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.’2 We might add that this existence is also dependent on the body’s location for identity. As Rheingold points out,

‘The physical world ...is a place where the identity and position of the people you communicate with are well known, fixed and highly visual.’3 Donath reminds us that

‘In the physical world there is an inherent unity to the self, for the body provides a compelling and convenient definition of identity. The norm is one body, one identity. Though the self may be complex and mutable over time and circumstance, the body provides a stabilising anchor’.4

Mind Not Matter

If we agree with Einstein who saw our condition as ‘a kind of prison for us, restricting our personal desires and affections for a few persons nearest to us’5, then so now, in the digital arena of cyberspace, we must seek to confront our individuality and be liberated from it. Taking our identity on-line gives rise to a number of problems, not least what to do with the body. The first response obviously was to leave it behind.

Early pioneers of cyberspace as Roy Ascott described,‘ Cast off their physical restraints and fulfilled that profound human desire to transcend the limits of the human body, time and space; to escape language, to defeat metaphors of the self and identity that alienate and isolate, that imprison the mind in solipsistic systems.’6They recognised a need to

‘ reach out, to touch , connect - to expand our consciousness by a dissemination of our presence, to distribute the self to a larger ‘society of mind’ It suggested the possibility of an intelligence to which we were all contributory, made possible by its electronic base, free of time and place.

These cyberplayers explored a new reality in which they were liberated from the shackles of prejudice and control. Through the arenas of email, bulletin boards, IRC, discussion lists, on-line gaming and virtual worlds they went ‘in search of dreams, insights and connection’.7 They found a place on-line where they were able as reported by Rheingold, ‘to live in each other’s brains, as voices, images, words on screen, ‘we are multiple personalities and we include each other’.8

The desire to promote Cyberspace in the imagination as the land of fulfilled dreams was due in part to the acknowledgement that this alternative life was, in many ways a mirror existence of Real Life, heightened by a childlike expectation of the scope of its promise and possibility, the desire, as Seabrook commented, for ‘a vision of the world looking the way you wished it looked’.9

The lack of unitary identity on-line opened up the possibility of exploring the self, the multi-faceted elements of both the conscious and unconscious self - a process often compared with therapy. The most seductive experience of all was anonymity. Cyberspace permitted the laying aside of public responsibility and accountability. It provided the opportunity not only to be true to oneself, but to explore the ‘ other’ selves, the multi-personae lurking in the dark corners of the mind’s eye. Gender became flexible, as did truth. Selves were acknowledged to be multiple and multifarious. The suggestion that the self might have multiple drafts (Turkle, Dennett), that might be called upon as required is difficult to oppose. It offers each of us a range of roles without any permanent expectation of any - it is a ‘catch all’ solution to a lack of stability or commitment to the self.

Haraway, however, commends instead the ‘knowing self’, which is ‘partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly; and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another.’10 Initial concern at loss of identity was soon replaced , with a vanishing notion of self, replaced as Gergen noted by a ‘state of relatedness’.11

Yet for all the liberation, all the joy of interacting with like minded individuals on-line, joining communities to mirror one’s interests, kinship of a utopian kind, distanced from real life with all its disagreeable elements, all was not well in cyberspace. Mike Godwin was quick to notice the problem, ‘the medium is too intimate! Flames are the friction born of minds rubbing too closely together... the problem of flaming is not that we don’t understand each other. It’s that we understand each other all too well. We’re mainlining each other’s thoughts.’12

He was right. Communication in Real Life is governed by carefully adopted and accepted convention. We are conditioned into considered, discrete, mannered responses. Online communication is raw, we feel its emotion and import in much more direct and unanticipated ways and react accordingly. We are learning a new code of communication and with it a variety of acceptable modes of response. To complicate matters still further, what might be acceptable in one group discussion may well offend another. The problem can most closely be allied with defining cultural boundaries, but is a great deal less easy to decipher . As yet we are second guessing the way; the appropriate language or metaphor is not obvious, and the resultant elaborate dance means mistakes are frequent. The upside, however to this, is that when we do get it right, the quality of discourse can be equated with talking to yourself- there is no barrier, just pure understanding.

Alongside the increasingly frank environment of online life, a less attractive ‘low life’ was rapidly evolving, which was every bit as unpleasant and disruptive as its counterpart in real life. Seabrook found accounts of ‘ espionage between groups - there are spies, backstabbers, extortion, scapegoating, lying stealing and a lot of colluding. . . we operate much like a city gang would. We have hangouts, we have enemies, we have other gangs against us’.13

In Real Life, community demands accountability and as cyberspace grew up, so did virtual community. It demanded, and required of necessity some sort of stability of identity and code of behaviour, which became essential rather than just desirable.

A new code of identity was emerging. Those that live in cyberspace are not without markers- from signatures to game names, from chat style to discussion list id - the real was emerging. As one cyberanalyst noted , ‘The on-line and off-line world aren’t staying

in their boxes like I thought they would. They’re bleeding together.’14 The popularity of home pages fleshed out the bones so to speak- often giving real world clues of location, employment, marital status and sex, and tags were as discernible in some quarters (email address, list membership) as in real life.

The difficulty of email addresses and signatures as an identity is, of course that they are simply machine ids. Without previous experience of the sender’s style, evaluating the content as coming from the person it purports to have come from is impossible. One cannot be too rigid in interpreting the clues, Clues such as ‘ac’ from an academic are fine, but should a person claiming to be an academic communicating from a less obvious email address be automatically suspect? The continuing lack of accountability had become a much greater problem than could possibly have been envisaged.

Jaron Lanier perceptively noted that ‘People will pay to know what’s real’.15

He was not referring to e-commerce, rather to the unsettling nature of fluid identity.

As Hertz points out,

‘There are so many bogus identities around here its hard to believe anything all the way. It’s not real, in the usual sense of the word. And so most of the time I just ride the channel wherever the narrative goes...with email it’s all above board. If you lie in e-mail then you are flat out lying. But the further you stray from the net’s Real World applications, the foggier it gets. Whole boroughs of the net seem specifically designed for theatre as much as straightforward communication’.16

The importance of identity cannot be denied in successful community. Not least because imitation online is unlikely to be a form of flattery. As Donath reconfirms

[In] assessing the reliability of information and trustworthiness of a confidant, identity is essential. And care of one’s own identity, one’s reputation, is fundamental to the formation of community...Identity clues are sparse in the virtual world, but not non-existent. People become attuned to the nuances of e-mail addresses and signature styles. New phrases evolve that mark their users as members of a chosen subculture. Virtual reputations are established and impugned..’17

What was the real attraction of this medium, aside from lack of accountability? Simmons reported that Cyberspace was both psychologically invasive, and guilty of infantalizing us. We are certain only that we are experimenting. We are trying out another life, rehearsing new rules, new codes of conduct which are neither fantasy nor reality, but located somewhere in between. In all arenas the digital has allowed the unthinkable to be thought, the unreachable to be reached. Initially we are experimenting with the psychological changes as rehearsals to the physical. Consider sex, what we have is

‘a gender laboratory for the twenty-first century. . . It’s sex without guilt. Fantasies without pain. Freedom to experiment with fresh ideas without harming anyone or getting arrested...you are who you portray yourself to be.’18

Convenient though this view is, it is not wholly correct. When the intent in cybersex is misleading or players mismatched, the virtual encounters can be just as harmful as in the Real World. Playtime in Cyberspace is becoming limited. E commerce, cyber-rape, impersonation, flaming - all contribute to a call for accountability and a delineation between areas of cyberspace set aside for fantasy and those whose content could be considered constant and secure.

Return of the body

Following the ‘mind games’ of the text web, the introduction of multimedia on the web propelled identity changes towards greater sophistication. First graphics replaced text, then 2D graphics started to be replaced by animation, web theatre, digital film and 3D avatars .The advent of sound on the web brought further new challenges for identity, as did the enthusiastic adoption of web cams. I believe that we were experiencing a desire (perhaps unconsciously) to reunite with our bodies.

The initial desire to explore the mind in cyberspace had led to claims that, ‘Cyberspace is acorporeal spiritual space. It is space where one may work or play in solitude, alienated not simply from others but from one’s own physical and emotional self...when the body does appear, it is in the context of taboo and transgression’. 19 Cybertheorist Katherine Hayles challenged this view, noting that‘ (although) Cyberspace, we are told is a disembodied medium ...in fact we are never disembodied.’20 The body refused to go away. John Perry Barlow famously commented that in cyberspace he felt ‘ my everything has been amputated‘.21 The body was seen by Richards as ’the cross-roads where the psychological, material and virtual intersect’.22

There would appear to be a natural desire to be appreciated for oneself inclusive of body. A common element of on-line relationships is the desire after an initial bonding period to progress to a face to face meeting. The perceived disappointment that the physical reality might bring is under emphasised. Whilst cyberspace turns usual rules of attraction on their head by making spiritual attraction take precedence over physical attraction, physical attraction does not disappear. In his researches into virtual sex, Branwyn reported that ‘while most of the people I talked to use fantasy personae on occasion, more than half reported that they basically stick to the facts’ 23. As one of his respondents commented, ‘I find it much more of a turn on to think someone is aroused by the real me’24. The meeting of the ‘whole’ person, the co-joined mind and body might be perceived as a ‘coming out party for the body.’25

Why should this be? Not only has it become clear that it was difficult to throw away the physical attributes we are accustomed to being identified by, but our bodies offered clues we were unaware of. It emerged that ‘The role of the body as an interpreter and integrator of information and behaviour is paramount. Meaning is achieved by the combination of verbal and sensory inputs. The meaning of what we see and hear is the result of the synthesis of sensory components, semiosis and contextualzed data processing...we can achieve this either on our mind or through use of our body in context or by a combination of both.’26

It may well be that we have embraced playing with our minds because initially we could not work out how to digitise the body. However we are forced to join Stone in concluding that ‘no matter how virtual the subject may become, there is always a body attached. It may be off somewhere else - and that "somewhere else" may be a privileged point of view - but consciousness remains firmly routed in the physical’. Historically, body, technology and community constitute each other’.27

Virtual Humans

Virtual reality has blurred the sense in which we inhabit our own space and that of others. Indeed the Placeholder experiment28 of Brenda Laurel and Rachel Strickland in Banff allowed visitors to assume the character of one of four creatures, (a Spider, Snake, Fish and a Crow) inhabiting a virtual world and to experience its visual perception, locomotion and voice.

Computer animation, new motion control techniques (using body scanning and digitally recorded movement) take a route that gives rise to virtual humans, which are much more sophisticated than the cartoon characters of the games culture. We have always warmed to animated characters because we find the subtlety and range of expression within this form allows us to suspend disbelief. Film and photography, in contrast always set out to imitate the real and the desire for photo-realism on-line grows apace. With Virtual Celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and W.C.Fields already on-line and the renewed interest in 3D digital film, we are creating some convincing models for virtual humans.

Nadia Thalman’s MIRA Lab is working towards implementing truly virtual humans or actors, having taken as it’s starting point ‘realistic modelling of people’s behaviour, including interaction with each other’ and’ with the human user and realistic modelling of people’s visual appearance, including clothes and hair’.29The declared ultimate objective being to ‘ Build intelligent autonomous virtual humans with adaption, perception and memory. They should be conscious and unpredictable. Finally they should reinforce the concept of presence.’30

Digital technology has made these aims possible. Ultimately the digital world permits anything that can be coded to be stored, to be copied, to be replicated and to be manipulated. The certainty is if it can be done, it will be done ...

We are surprisingly willing to accept and evaluate virtual humans as equals. In July 1999, the Elite model agency announced that it was going into the virtual model business, promoting its virtual models in the same spheres as its human ones - in advertising, promotions and so on. Most revealing however, was not the announcement of its first such model, but that the virtual models would command a commercial rate equal to that of their real-world counterparts. To value real and unreal equally is a decision of some magnitude. If the marketplace accepts this status quo it will indeed be significant - for the first time a Virtual human will be valued equally with a ‘real’ human.

In promoting virtual deceased celebrities we are re-creating physical attributes and adding to the original spiritual or ‘known’ mind. Speech and movement is being re-invented by copying from the legacy of film, but the better we become at recreating the physical, the greater the void of the spiritual becomes. Somehow, although WC Fields looks the same, sounds the same and moves the same, that certain something, which we shall call the soul, just isn’t there. This weakness has not been overlooked. Peter Cochrane of BT is reported to have forecast the possibility in the not too distant future of a ‘soulcatcher’ chip. It is suggested that this chip might be ‘implanted behind the eye, used to record our every experience, from sight, thought and sensation, from cradle to the grave’.31

Suddenly dying becomes rather complicated. Who is the virtual re-created celebrity? Is it the original revisited?, Is it a child of the original? Is it a copy recognisable as such, or is it considered to have original status of its own? The question of identity and accountability becomes extremely difficult. If my virtual ‘look alike’ commits a crime am I still liable? More boundaries...more definitions to find...challenges for us all.

Post Modern Bodies and Cyborgs

Rather than the revolutionary concept of throwing our bodies away, proposed by Moravec 32, we should consider the evolutionary route. How do we adapt the body for this new technological age? We observe that ‘ The post-modern body is neither stable nor singular. Like multiple selves and appearances, it is transformed and transformable.’33

Art, medicine and virtual worlds have been rehearsing new body experiences for us. The obsession with beauty, obtained through surgery and body piercing is now common experience . Body enhancement is the privilege of the rich, the dissatisfied, and artists and pioneers such as Stelarc. Alongside with concerns with our physical appearance we have been experimenting with new boundaries for the body- pushing it to its physical limits in bizarre sports such as bungee jumping and in Art with techno-body installations such as Stelarc’s performances in which the body is suspended by hooks inserted into the skin . Virtual worlds have shown us that our perspectives can be changed.

We are seeing a human need for a re-definition of our physical being. Have we reached a point predicted by de Kerckhove where the loss of precise personal boundaries means ‘we can’t be sure any more where we begin and where we end ?’34

There is still more to consider. Biologically we are also challenged. The quest to code all human life in the human genome project will produce the genetic mapping and code for mankind. An embryo has already been successfully cloned. There are far reaching consequences. We already live in a world of distributed body parts, from blood banks to organ and tissue depositories. As Levy pointed out,

‘Flesh and blood, now shared, are stripped of subjected intimacy and move outside us...Just as we are able to share our intelligence and our vision of the world with other who speak the same language, we can now virtually participate in a communal body, along with those who belong to the same technological and medical networks.’35

 

Meanwhile the techno-prophets declare that

‘after the age of the animal organ transplants comes the age of the transplant of technical devices whereby the mixing of technology and life, the organic heterogeneity no longer has anything to do with an alien body introduced into the body of the patient, but is comprised of an alien rhythm, the purpose of which is to make the body vibrate in harmony with the machine.36

The same scenario was imagined by Paul Virilio who wrote presagingly of the ‘colonisation of the body’ underway today - the attempt to conform the body and brain to the ever increasing mechanical demands of the post-industrial society’.37

Medicine has been rehearsing the marriage of human and technology for some time.

In 1995 Donna Haraway considered that ‘about 10% of the current US population are estimated to be cyborgs in a technical sense, including people with electronic pacemakers, artificial joints, drug implant systems, implanted corneal lenses and artificial skin.’ 38Her Cyborg Manifesto leaves no doubt that

‘By the late twentieth century in United States scientific culture, the boundary between animal-human is thoroughly breached...the second leaky distinction is between animal-human (organism) and machine. Late twentieth century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert’.

New Beginnings

So what is the digital domain? Is it machine power? What does it have in store for us?

We are at the forefront of human evolution and what we notice is that ‘strange new breeds of consciousness have begun to flourish outside our heads on the Net: real time, self adjusting databases; distributed parallel processing of convergent data structures; intermediate, anonymous, synchronous and asynchronous mind collectives on muds and moos; intelligent avatars meeting real humans on 2D and 3D webs.’39

We should be concerned. We should be working out a strategy for dealing with this new consciousness. Kevin Warwick indeed has a point when he summarises our condition thus: ‘We humans are presently the dominant life form on Earth because of our overall intelligence...It is possible for machines to become more intelligent than humans in the near future...Machines will then become the dominant life form on Earth...As the human race, we are delicately positioned’40

As we move into the 21st Century, we look towards a new definition of identity and self. The representations of new worlds which we will have been permitted to rehearse in cyberspace will, according to Laurel, ‘Blow a hole in all our old imaginings and expectations, through that hole we can glimpse a world of which both cause and effect are a quantum leap in human evolution’.41

As we change our environment , so also we produce a desire to change ourselves. The question uppermost in our minds should be whether good citizenship is passed from Real Life to the Virtual. ‘Do virtual personae inherit the qualities and responsibilities of their creators?’42 where does accountability lie? Talbot correctly concludes that personal responsibility must force each of us to ‘look within (myself) and learn a most delicate skill: how to identify my own reflection in society and society’s reflection in me’.43

The pitfalls are much imagined in science fiction literature. The dangers to both mind and body are much reported. Gwyneth Jones points to Pat Cardigan’s book, ‘Fool’ in which several characters inhabit the same mind , warning us of the fragility of the mind,

‘Celebrities sell copies of their public personalities under franchise, so fans put on a the persona of an idol for a while...a mind can be stolen, stripped of identifying marks, dismembered, parcelled out, copied and fenced like pirated software....at the end of the novel a single protagonist, her multiple co-selves benignly suppressed makes a determined resolve to extricate herself from the organisation: to live her own single life’44

The virtual body may fare no better. Indeed Kroker believes that digital technology works to discredit bodily experience. In his view it makes us ‘ feel humiliated and inferior to the virtual rendering of the body in its different electronic formats, from computers and television to the glitzy and vampirish world of advertising. Digital reality has given us artificial life.’45. How ironic !

Gwyneth Jones would concur with that view and was quick to alert us to the threat noting that ‘the cyberspace era has room for synthetic humans as comfortingly inept intellectuals, overtly respected and covertly awarded the comic pathos of the tin man in the Wizard of Oz (Data in Star Trek). The legal status of the software-entity criminal can be debated. AI’s can be pets, toys, guardian angels, fairie, folklore monsters. Fully aware biological manufactured humans can be enslaved in their millions’. 46

How can we move forward? The successful digital self will be the understood digital self. Firstly we must observe and critically measure our reactions to the changes around us - not passively, but as concerned individuals ready to discuss and to share our misgivings.

Turkle was first to note that

‘those who are able to make the most of their on-line experiences are those whose approach them in the spirit of self-reflection. Without a deep understanding of the many selves we express in the virtual, we cannot use our experiences to enrich the real. If we cultivate our awareness of what stands beneath our screen personas, we are more likely to be successful in using virtual experience for personal transformation’.47

The requirement for personal transformation is not new. All cultures embrace a mythology of adventure, insights, renewal, enlightenment and revisitation . Role rehearsal in virtual worlds prepares the mind for multiple states in the same way as the ability to trade virtual costumes and bodies prepares us to accept new challenges to come- perhaps with disposable bodies, a step towards Moravec’s dream. We are preparing ourselves with VR, virtual worlds and 3D Film for newly fashioned sensorial experience, and beyond that, perhaps for a cyborg future.

What of responsibility? I believe that these rehearsals make us more aware of the need for care in the real world, both for our environment and for our behaviour within it. The digital realm permits us to look at biosphere and see the cataclysmic routes we are taking through nature to destroy our planet. The alternative is to cease to inhabit much of the planet and to experience a world shrunk to the virtual, to fit our immediate space and requirement. We would cease to encounter the world at first hand and experience it only in ‘on demand’ format.

Langdon Winner points out that ‘ a recurring pattern in modern technological and cultural transformation is that, as new technologies are invented, the kinds of people who will be using them are also invented.’48

Taken to its logical conclusion, our current physical doesn’t fit with technology, so instead of changing technology, we will change our bodies instead. Margaret Morse sums up the situation in observing that

‘Travellers on the virtual highways of an information society have, in fact one body too many - the one largely sedentary carbon based body at the control console that suffers hunger, corpulence, illness, old age and untimely death. The other body, a silicone-based surrogate jacked into immaterial reels of data, has superpowers, albeit virtually and is immortal, or rather, the chosen body, an electronic avatar, "decoupled" from the physical body is a program capable of enduring endless deaths.49

May we no longer die? May we like the virtual celebrity no longer control our own likeness? Who owns the body? Can its likeness be licensed, borrowed or stolen? How can we defend the body and mind in the digital realm?

Performance art has always taken man into uncharted territory to experiment with emotion and push the boundaries of taste and decency. This important search for boundary is crucial as we attempt to define limits of ourselves and our identity, whether co-joined with the body or not.

The debate for acceptability and ethics will be led by what is perceived to be unpalatable and undesirable in virtual life - the theatre of on-line worlds and virtual reality spaces all contribute to our tentative exploration of ourselves. However, once we find truly transparent technologies with which to play, the battle for the self, real and unreal, analogue and digital, biological or technical, will begin in earnest. It is therefore important that we embrace the opportunity to play with the possibilities within the technologies we have and do not dismiss performance art too lightly; there are valuable lessons inherent in these arenas to be learnt.

The Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria is at the forefront of this battle, declaring

‘we are a museum with a didactic approach. We want to inform people about what impact technology will have on their lives.’ 50 Art is important in making concepts accessible to people.

Rotzer Florian pointed out that ‘Artists are making increasing use of brain activity registered as electroencephalograms (EEGs) to control computer programs. The incorporation of other physical conditions such as skin resistivity, heartbeat and so on is being tried out in the name of intensifying experience and recording reactions.’51

What, do we conclude, can be said of the digital self? The theorists disagree and at this point all views are equally valid. Kroker’s view is that ‘Electronic technology terminates with the radically divided self: the self, that is, which is at war with itself. Split consciousness for a culture that is split between digital and human flesh’.52This need not necessarily be a problem, Heim questions whether we are ever fully present, ‘We are typically elsewhere, divided, on the way somewhere. We’re going towards, underway or wishing we were’.53Turkle meanwhile is concerned by the proposition that ‘we can be multiple and coherent at the same time? 54She turns to Robert Jay Lifton’s warning against embracing the fragmented self which he warns may result in ‘fluidity, lacking in moral content and sustainable inner form’, instead he promotes, and is supported by Turkle in suggesting ‘ a healthy protean self, which is capable like proteus of fluid transformations, but grounded in coherence and moral outlook. It is multiple, but integrated, you can have a sense of self without being one self’. 55 This seems to me to be the re-emergence of Haraway’s ‘knowing self’, once more.

That we can judge at all is a moot point. Bruce Damer suggests that ‘our sense of reality is a creation of our conscious minds in the particular circumstances we find ourselves in’56. He suggests and I agree, that ‘One of the greatest talents of the human species seem to be our ability to accept and digest new realities’57.

It may be a much needed skill. We can hope against hope that ‘by attempting to program intelligent behaviour into a computer, we might better understand our own’.58

Are we just patterns? Mankind has always craved immortality. The digital age offers us just that, ‘The contrast between the body’s limitations and cyberspace’s power highlights the advantages of power over presence. As long as pattern endures, one has attained a kind of immortality.59

We have the opportunity, as never before, to communicate with our fellow human beings. We can debate globally, engage in spiritual renewal and support. That we have but one life may no longer be true. There may be rehearsals, multiple experiences of ourselves. Those experiences might take place within a co-joined body or within a customised receptacle for the mind; we cannot foresee how we might deal with the carbon in future. I am certain however, that something profound is occurring and to misquote Churchill, ‘this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But perhaps it is the end of the beginning.’ 60Adaption is the key.

We must be mindful of the responsibilities we carry with us as we enter the new Millennium, never forgetting the cautionary words of George Lakoff and the technophobics amongst us, who remind us that ‘the more you interact not with something natural and alive, but with something electronic, it takes the sense of the earth away from you, takes your embodiment away from you, robs you of more and more embodied experiences. That is a deep impoverishment of the human soul.’61

Conclusion

Rather than living, obsessed with how we are perceived by others in Real Life, or how we present ourselves to other humans beings, we should be considering how it is that we are present and represented in machines. The digital self is already in process. We cannot stop it. We can however prepare, and in this rehearsal, let us remember to be true to ourselves. We should not view life as the ‘theatre of the absurd’62, but in the digital age, let us regard life as a series of patterns which we recognise and can identify with, which perpetrate themselves for the good of all.

1. Wiener Norbert The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. New York Doubleday, Ch5

2. Einstein quoted in Eves H. Mathematical Circles Adieu Boston 1997 at

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Einstein.html

3. McLaughlin Margaret l., Osbourne Kelly K. and Ellison Nicole B

Virtual Community in a Telepresence Environment in Virtual Culture Identity and Communication in Cybersociety ed Jones Stephen G.Sage 1997, pg 146

4. Donath Judith S. Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community

in Communities in Cyberspace eds.Smith Marc A and Kollock Peter Routledge 1999 pg29.

5. Einstein ibid.

6. Ascott Roy , Connectivity: Art and Interactive Communications in Leonardo, Vol24, no 2, 1991 pg116 quoted in Seabrook John, Deeper - A Two Year Odyssey in Cyberspace Faber & Faber 1977 pg 88

7. Ascott Roy , Connectivity: Art and Interactive Communications in Leonardo, Vol24, no 2, 1991 pg116 in Seabrook John, Deeper - A Two Year Odyssey in Cyberspace Faber & Faber 1977 pg88

8. Rheingold Howard, The Well Conference on Virtual Reality vr.47.351,2 Feb 1993 quoted in Turkle,Sherry. Life on Screen New York, Simon & Schuster 1995 pg257

9. Seabrook John, Deeper - A Two Year Odyssey in Cyberspace Faber & Faber 1977 pg 53.

10. Turkle Sherry Rethinking Identity through Virtual Community in

Clicking In- Hot links to a Digital Culture Ed Lynn Hershman Leeson Bay Press Seattle 1996. pg 121/122

11. Gergen Kenneth The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, New York, Basic Books 1991 pg17 quoted in Turkle,Sherry.. Life on Screen New York, Simon & Schuster 1995 pg 257

12. Godwin Mike Wired quoted in Herz J.C. Surfing on the Internet- A Net Head’s Adventures On-Line Abacus 1996 pg265

13. Leonard Andrew. BOTS- the Origin of New Species Hardwired 1997 pg 112

14. Herz J.C. Surfing on the Internet- A Net Head’s Adventures On-Line Abacus 1996 pg 287

15.Brockman John Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite Hardwired 1996 pg170

16. Herz J.C. Surfing on the Internet- A Net Head’s Adventures On-Line Abacus 1996 pg 165

17. Donath Judith S. Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community

in Communities in Cyberspace eds.Smith Marc A and Kollock Peter Routledge 1999 pg30

18. Herz J.C. Surfing on the Internet- A Net Head’s Adventures On-Line Abacus 1996 pg 154

19. Simmons John, Sade and Cyberspace inResisting the Virtual Life :The Culture and Politics of Information Ed: James Brook and Iain A Boal City Light Books, San Francisco 1995 pg 154

20.Hayles N. Katherine Embodied Virtuality : or How to Put Bodies Back Into the Picture in Immersed in Technology Ed Moser Mary Anne MIT 1996 pg1

21. John Perry Barlow quoted in

de Kerckhove Derrick Connected Intelligence- The Arrival of the Web Society UK Kogan Page 1998 pg40

22. Hayles N. Katherine Embodied Virtuality : or How to Put Bodies Back Into the Picture in Immersed in Technology Ed Moser Mary Anne MIT 1996 pg23

23. Branwyn 1993 : 788=9 quoted in

Jordan Tim Cyberpower-The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet Routledge 1999 pg77

24. ibid.

25. Seabrook John, Deeper - A Two Year Odyssey in Cyberspace Faber & Faber 1977 pg208

26. de Kerckhove Derrick Connected Intelligence- The Arrival of the Web Society UK Kogan Page 1998 pg24

27. Stone 1991a; 111 quoted in Macauley William R. and Gordo-Lopez Angel J. From Cognitive Psychologies to Mythologies- Advancing Cyborg Textualities for a Narrative of Resistance.

in Ed Gray Chris Hables The Cyborg Handbook Routledge 1995 pg 434

28. Laurel Brenda, Strickland R Placeholder in Immersed in Technology : Art and Virtual Environments Ed Moser Mary Anne with McCloud Douglas MIT Press 1996

29. Thalmann Nadia M. and Daniel Artificial Life and Virtual Reality

Wiley 1994 pg2

30 ibid.

31. Jonscher Charles Wired Life Bantam Press 1999 pg 19

32 Moravec H Mind Children : The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence Harvard University Press 1988 quoted in Figueroa-Sarriera Heidi J Children of the Mind with Disposable Bodies - Metaphors of Self in a Text on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. in Ed Gray Chris Hables The Cyborg Handbook 1995 Routledge pg133

33. Clarke Adele Modernity, Postmodernity & Reproductive Process ca 1890-1990 or Mummy Where Do Cyborgs Come From Anyway in Ed Gray Chris Hables The Cyborg Handbook 1995 Routledge pg 147

34. de Kerckhove Derrick Connected Intelligence- The Arrival of the Web Society UK Kogan Page 1998 pg38

35. Levy Pierre Becoming Virtual : Reality in the Digital Age Tr. Bononno Robert Plenum Press NY 1988

36. Rotzer Florian Attack on the Brain Refelections on Neurotechnology

trans. Don Reneau in Clicking In- Hot links to a Digital Culture Ed Lynn Hershman Leeson Bay Press Seattle 1996. pg206

37. Rotzer Florian Attack on the Brain Refelections on Neurotechnology

trans. Don Reneau in Clicking In- Hot links to a Digital Culture Ed Lynn Hershman Leeson Bay Press Seattle 1996. pg288

38.a Haraway Donna J A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century in Simians Cyborgs and Women- The Reinvention of Nature

1991 Free Association Books, London pg151/152

38.b Hayles Katherine N The Life Cycle of Cyborgs- Writing the Posthuman

in Ed Gray Chris Hables The Cyborg Handbook Routledge 1995 pg322

39. de Kerckhove Derrick Connected Intelligence- The Arrival of the Web Society UK Kogan Page 1998 pg157

40. Warwick Kevin In the Mind of the Machine Arrow Books 1998 pg280,302

41. Laurel, Brenda Computers as Theatre Addison Wesley 1993 pg198

42. Donath Judith S. Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community

in Communities in Cyberspace eds.Smith Marc A and Kollock Peter Routledge 1999 pg29,30

43.Talbot The Future Does not Compute

44. Jones Gwyneth The Neuroscience of Cyberspace- New metaphors for the Self and its Boundaries in The Governance of Cyberspace ed Loader Brian D. Routledge 1977 pg56

45. Kroker Arthur and Mari Louise Code Warriors Bunkering In and Dumbing Down. in Clicking In- Hot links to a Digital Culture Ed Lynn Hershman Leeson. Bay Press Seattle1996 pg 251

46. Jones Gwyneth The Neuroscience of cyberspace- New Metaphors for the Self and its Boundaries in The Governance of Cyberspace ed Loader Brian D. Routledge 1977 pg54

47. Turkle Sherry Rethinking Identity through Virtual Community in

Clicking In- Hot links to a Digital Culture Ed Lynn Hershman Leeson Bay Press Seattle 1996. pg120

48.Winner Langdon in : Three Paradoxes of the Information Age in Culture on the Brink

eds. Bender Gretchen, Druckrey Timothy, Bay Press Seattle 1994 pg 192

49. Morse Margaret What do Cyborgs Eat?-Oral Logic in an Information Age in Culture on the Brink

eds. Bender Gretchen, Druckrey Timothy, Bay Press Seattle 1994 pg157

50.Wired News 19.May 1999

www.wired.com/news/culture/story/19767.html

51.Rotzer Florian Attack on the Brain Refelections on Neurotechnology

trans. Don Reneau in Clicking In- Hot links to a Digital Culture Ed Lynn Hershman Leeson Bay Press Seattle1996 pg 203

52. Kroker Arthur and Marilouise Code Warriors Bunkering In and Dumbing Down. in Clicking In- Hot links to a Digital Culture Ed Lynn Hershmann Leeson Bay Press Seattle 1996 pg247

53. Heim Michael Virtual Realism OUP 1998 pg194

54. Turkle,Sherry. Life on Screen New York, Simon & Schuster 1995 pg258

55. Lifton Robert Jay The Protean Self : Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation New York Basic Books 1993 pg 192 quoted in Turkle,Sherry. Life on Screen New York, Simon & Schuster 1995 pg258

56. Damer Bruce Avatars Peachpit Press 1998 intro

57. Damer Bruce Avatars Peachpit Press 1998 intro

58. Leonard Andrew. BOTS- the Origin of New Species Hardwired 1997 pg39

59. Hayles Katherine N Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers

in Electronic Culture -Technology and Visual Representation - Timothy Druckrey Aperture Foundation 1996 pg268

60. Churchill Quotation from Speech at the Mansion House London 10,Nov. 1942 Quoted in The Little Oxord Dictionary of Quotations OUP 1994 pg27

61. Lakoff George. Body, Brain and Communication interview by Iain A. Boal. in

Brook,James. & Boal Iain.A.., ed Resisting the Virtual Life San Francisco: City Lights Books 1995 pg126

62. Eiermann Katherine Existentialism and Samuel Beckett, Theatre of the Absurd at

http://members.aol.com/Katha.../private/philo/Existentialism/absurd.html

Ayres. Robert Listening to Stelarc Obsolete Body/Alternative Strategies -

Live Art Letters a Live Art Research Journal no 3 February 1998

http://art.ntu.ac.uk/liveart/index.htm

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