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Selling Your Self:
Online Identity in the Age of a Commodified Internet
Alice Emily Marwick
A thesis
submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
University of Washington
2005
Program Authorized to Offer Degree:
Department of Communication
Table of Contents
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. i
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iii
Introduction: A Brief History of Online Identity Scholarship ............................................ 1
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1
Contemporary Internet Life ............................................................................................ 7
Thesis Structure ............................................................................................................ 12
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 15
Chapter One: Identity Scholarship, Cyberfeminism, and the Myth of the Liberatory
Subject............................................................................................................................... 16
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 16
Identity .......................................................................................................................... 16
Online Identity and Identity Online .............................................................................. 21
Early Cyberculture Studies ........................................................................................... 23
Queer Theory and Post-Human Subjectivity ................................................................ 27
Critical Cyberculture Studies ........................................................................................ 37
Authenticity................................................................................................................... 47
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 51
Chapter Two: Internet Commercialization and Identity Commodification ...................... 52
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 52
Internet History ............................................................................................................. 54
Early Internet Culture ................................................................................................... 61
Mosaic and the Expansion of the Internet..................................................................... 64
The Boomtime .............................................................................................................. 67
Contemporary Internet Era ........................................................................................... 70
Commodification of Identity......................................................................................... 74
Identity and Commodification ...................................................................................... 86
The Digital Divide ........................................................................................................ 92
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 94
Chapter Three: Self-Presentation Strategies in Social Networking Sites ......................... 95
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 95
Social Networking Services .......................................................................................... 96
Social Network Analysis............................................................................................... 97
Social Networking Sites .............................................................................................. 101
Self-Presentation in Social Networking Sites ............................................................. 104
Authenticity................................................................................................................. 108
User Presentation Strategies ....................................................................................... 110
Application Assumptions ............................................................................................ 116
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 122
Chapter Four: Xbox Live and the Political Economy of Video Games ......................... 123
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 123
Introducing the Xbox .................................................................................................. 125
Ms Pac Man to MMO‘s: A Highly Abbreviated Video Game History ...................... 129
i
Identity Presentation in Gaming Environments .......................................................... 134
Xbox Live .................................................................................................................... 141
Xbox.com and Gamertagpics.com .............................................................................. 145
Xbox 360..................................................................................................................... 148
Framing Gaming as Commodity................................................................................. 152
Conclusion: Reflections .................................................................................................. 155
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 155
Authenticity................................................................................................................. 156
Back to Theory............................................................................................................ 159
The Evil Empire vs. The Creative Commons: False Dichotomies in Cyberculture
Studies ......................................................................................................................... 162
Identity Management Moving Forward ...................................................................... 164
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 167
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 170
ii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Top 10 Parent Companies of Popular Websites in the United States, Home
Panel .................................................................................................................................. 71
Figure 2: Example of an Authentic profile ..................................................................... 111
Figure 3: Example of an Authentic Ironic profile ........................................................... 112
Figure 4: Example of a Fakester profile ....................................................................... 113
Figure 5: Ad placement based on search results on MySpace ........................................ 121
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1
Introduction: A Brief History of Online Identity Scholarship
Introduction
Conceptualizing online identity has been a key part of cyberculture scholarship
throughout the history of the field. Indeed, mediated communication has long held a
fascination for writers and researchers interested in how self-expression may change as it
moves through a telephone line or fiber-optic cable. Marshall McLuhan and Neil
Postman,1 for example, both wrote of the shift from a literate culture to one mediated by
television, and how the presentation of information altered as the medium through which
it was transmitted changed. This presentation includes the way the author or originator of
the information is represented. A sense of self or authorship is conveyed differently in a
telephone conversation, a hand-written letter, a printed book, a home movie or an inperson meeting. These concerns are equally applicable to internet and computer-mediated
communication. The increased interactivity and creative potential of the Web has brought
issues of identity and self-representation to the forefront of cyberculture studies.
Generally, early cyberculture scholars regarded online spaces, such as MUDs,2
bulletin boards, chat rooms and text-based adventure games, as sites in which users could
play with aspects of their identities that, in meat-space, would generally be viewed as
fixed, such as gender. This idea of the internet as a site for identity play assumes that
users can and do represent themselves online in ways that do not map to their physical
bodies. Freed from the constraints of the flesh, users could choose which gender or
1
See McLuhan, M. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) and
Postman, N. Amusing Ourselves to Death. (New York: Penguin Books, 1985).
2
―MUDs‖ is an acronym which stands for either Multiple User Dungeons or Multiple User Domains,
depending on who you ask.
2
sexuality to perform, or create entire alternate identities nothing like their ―real-life‖
counterpart, even in online environments where play was not presumed. This idea held a
great deal of fascination for scholars and journalists alike. For example, Sherry Turkle
devoted a chapter of her influential work Life on the Screen to gender-switching in
MUDs, interviewing users who ―play‖ a different gender online than they perform in real
life.3 Similarly, Howard Rheingold, in The Virtual Community, writes ―the grammar of
CMC media involves a syntax of identity play: new identities, false identities, multiple
identities, exploratory identities are available in different manifestations of the medium.‖4
Inevitably, this ability of users to consciously perform identity in a flexible, nonfixed way was viewed as liberatory, as a way to break down the traditional liberal
humanist subject as one ―true identity‖ grounded in a single physical body. Allucquère
Rosanne Stone writes in The War of Desire and Technology:
The cyborg, the multiple personality, the technosocial subject... all suggest
a radical rewriting, in the techno-social space, of the bounded individual
as the standard social unit and validated social actant.5
For Stone, the ability of users to change their performative identities at will, or to perform
a series of differing identities simultaneously, is representative of a larger breakdown in a
singular concept of self. Frequently, thinking about selfhood in these terms is intimately
tied to the deconstruction of fixed conceptions of gender and sexuality. Turkle writes:
―like transgressive gender practices in real life, by breaking the conventions, [online
3
Turkle, S. Life on the Screen. (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1995.) See also Bruckman, A. ―Gender
Swapping on the Internet.‖ In Proceedings of the Internet Society (INET '93) in San Francisco, California,
August, 1993, by the Internet Society. Reston, VA: The Internet Society.
<http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/old-papers.html#INET> (18 February 2004).
4
Rheingold, H. The Virtual Community: Homesteading On the Electronic Frontier. Revised Edition.
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000) 152.
5
Stone, A. R. The War of Desire and Technology. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996) 43.
3
gender play] dramatizes our attachment to them.‖6 As feminist postmodern scholarship
was deconstructing gender as a social construct expressed through a series of
performative actions,7 the ability of users to self-consciously adopt and play with
different gender identities revealed the backstage choices involved in the production of
gender. Cyberspace, then, became a site where previously fixed categories of identity
could break down altogether, freeing up offline personas from the suffocating boundedness of rigid categories of gender and sexuality.
Donna Haraway‘s cyborg was the preferred metaphor of this new way of looking
at identity. Her widely cited essay ―A Manifesto for Cyborgs‖ posited the cyborg subject
as a site where formerly oppositional concepts could simultaneously reside, thus breaking
down entire dichotomies. Haraway certainly did not locate her cyborg in an inherently
liberatory place- for one thing, she recognized the patriarchal and militaristic overtones
inherent in the metaphor. As easily as the cyborg could convert rigid categories into rich,
mestiza8 sites, it could simultaneously become ―the final abstraction embodied in a Star
War apocalypse waged in the name of defense, about the final appropriation of women‘s
bodies in a masculinist orgy of war.‖9 Despite Haraway‘s recognition and warning of
6
Turkle, 212.
There are key differentiations to make here between the idea of performance and performativity. I‘ll use
gender as an example: playing with gender online would be performance while the day-to-day performance
of gender in real-life illustrates gender‘s performativity. The distinction between the two involves how
agency plays into the performance. A person interacting as an alternate gender online is conducting a selfconscious, deliberate performance (for whatever reason). Alternately, a woman living daily life as a
woman, whether online or offline, is, most likely, not making strategic choices about enacting and reenacting her gender in her daily life; she is not self-conscious about performing as a particular gender.
However, whether or not a person performing gender is aware of the performance of gender does not
change the fact that gender as a concept is performative: that is, a non-essentialist, constructed category reinscribed and bounded by actions that are invoked and reinforced socially and temporally.
8
Following Gloria Anzaldua, a borderland, mestiza consciousness is a subject position of inherent
multiplicity that is tied to the post-colonial and globalized agent rather than the cyborg. For more, see
Anzaldua, G. Borderlands/La Frontera. (San Francisco, CA : Aunt Lute, 1987).
9
Haraway, D. ―Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980's.‖
Socialist Review 80 (1985), 78.
7
4
these contradictions, other scholars took solely the redeeming qualities of the metaphor,
and the resulting scholarship on identity adopted the breathless tones of the convert in
describing the internet as a panacea.10 The idea of technology as inherently progressive11
was applied to identity and combined with the cyborg to create the ―post-human‖ subject
position that would allow humanity to progress to a more flexible, mutable stage of
development. Although concepts of ―identity‖ were simultaneously being rethought and
re-configured by postmodernist theorists, social activists and writers, this body of
knowledge was often ignored once the online realm came into play. Rather than looking
at the ―virtual‖ or ―online‖ sphere as another social space that the ―offline‖ self passed
through, it was treated as revolutionary and entirely separate from ―real life‖.
Eventually, the view of the internet as inherently utopian came to be critiqued,
particularly when it came to ideas of technology as ―transcending‖ race, class, and
gender. Beyond simply the Digital Divide,12 a significant amount of scholarship has
examined the assumptions built into internet technologies. Ellen Ullman located
programming, coding and the technology industry as a whole in an inherently masculine
space. She warned in her 1995 essay ―Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming
Life‖ that the new, interactive internet could reproduce and re-enact ―life as engineers
10
See Hayles, N. K. How We Became Posthuman. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) and
Badmington, N. Posthumanism. (New York: Palgrave: 2000), for more on the liberatory nature of the
cyborg / posthuman subject. For more general scholarship on the internet and gender, see Cherny, L. and
Weise, E. R., eds. Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. (Seattle: Seal Press, 1996).
11
See Hamilton, S. ―Incomplete Determinism: A Discourse Analysis of Cybernetic Futurology in Early
Cyberculture.‖ Journal of Communication Inquiry 22, no.2 (1998): 177-206 for an interesting exploration
of the evolutionary metaphor as it applies to information technology and cyberculture in general.
12
The Pew Internet and American Life Project found a ―Digital Divide‖ between people with and without
access to the internet; this divide was mapped along lines of race, gender and class. However, assuming
that internet access will continue to grow, and especially considering the high penetration rates of internet
technologies among teenagers across race, class, and gender lines, I am more interested in looking at the
underlying assumptions of the technologies used. This is discussed in more depth in the second chapter.
5
know it: alone, out-of-time, disdainful of anyone far from the machine.‖13 Beth Kolko
examined the lack of racial descriptors in particular text-based interactive worlds, and
what this revealed about the ―assumptions technology designers carry with them as they
create virtual environments.‖14 Similarly, Lisa Nakamura, analyzing the formation of
racial identity in LambdaMOO, uncovered the way that race is written (or designed) out
of the system and then re-inscribed using stereotypes.15 But while a minority of scholars
were locating cyberspace within an assumed narrative of white male technological
subjectivity, the ideal of multiple, flexible identity remained.
In the late 90‘s, the American internet changed in two significant ways. The first
shift was modal. The early internet was solely text-based, accessed through command
lines and green-screen terminals. Starting in the mid-90‘s, internet users browsed web
sites and applications that included pictures, photographs, and eventually audio, video
and interactive media. The internet became visual and multi-modal. The way that
information was presented changed, and, as a result, the types of information that could
be presented changed. Much as the shift from the command line-based operating system
to the graphical user interface helped to fuel the home computer revolution of the 1980‘s,
the shift to a more visual way of representing information made the web and the internet
as a whole more user-friendly and, as a result, more popular.
13
Ullman, E. ―Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life.‖ In Resisting the Virtual Life, ed.
Brook, J. and Boal, I. A. (San Francisco: City Lights, 1995) 143.
14
Kolko, B. E. ―Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face.‖ In Race in Cyberspace, ed. Kolko, B. E.,
Nakamura, L., and Rodman, G. B. (New York: Routledge, 2000) 225.
15
Nakamura, L. "Race in/for Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet."
Cyberreader, ed. V.J. Vitanza. (Needham Heights, MA, 1999) 442-453. See Silver, D. ―Looking
Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000.‖ In Web.studies: Rewiring Media Studies
for the Digital Age, ed. Gauntlett, D., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 19-30 for another discussion
of this piece.
6
The second shift, then, was social. The invention of Mosaic and, later, Netscape
made the World Wide Web available to more than just hobbyists, geeks, and academics
tied to their .edu accounts. This expansion in popularity came hand-in-hand with
increased commercialization of the internet. The rise of name-brand portals and shopping
sites gave birth to an enormous variety of dot.com ventures, some of which generated
intense speculative wealth for their inevitably photogenic, brash young (male) CEO‘s. As
stocks soared, Time and Newsweek ran hundreds of inches of column space on the ―dotcom revolution‖ and internet use skyrocketed. While early cyberculture scholars were
examining a medium populated mostly by early adopters and ―edge cases‖, the modern
internet has become, for Americans, almost as ubiquitous as cable television (which is
now digital, broadcast in HDTV, and augmented with TiVo and burned DVD‘s). Current
estimates of worldwide internet users put the number somewhere between 800 and 900
million, with more than 200 million in the United States alone.16 Penetration rates are
likely to rise as the net-savvy under-35 population ages; the current UCLA Internet
Report, for example, puts internet use by American teenagers at close to 97 percent.17
Compare this to the (admittedly imprecise) demographic reports from 1995 and 1996,
16
Estimating the number of internet users is notoriously difficult, however, there are several online
resources which can help to paint a rough picture of the current online population. See ClickZ Stats staff.
―Population Explosion!‖ ClickZ Trends & Statistics: The Web's Richest Source. 16 March 2005,
<http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/article.php/5911_151151> (30 March 2005) for current
statistics culled from the CIA World Factbook and the Nielsen/NetRatings audience measurements. See
also Miniwatts International. ―Internet Usage Statistics for the Americas.‖ InternetWorldStats.com. 2005,
<http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm> (30 March 2005), which estimates audiences by country.
The Center for the Digital Future‘s Internet Project (formerly the UCLA Internet Project) is a yearly report
with comprehensive statistics on American internet user behavior. See The University of Southern
California. ―Surveying the Digital Future: A Longitudinal International Study of the Individual and Social
Effects of PC/Internet Technology.‖ Center for the Digital Future. 2004,
<http://www.digitalcenter.org/pages/site_content.asp?intGlobalId=22> (2 July 2005).
17
The University of California, Los Angeles Center for Communication Policy. ―The UCLA Internet
Report, Surveying the Digital Future, Year Three.‖ Center for the Digital Future. February 2003,
<http://www.digitalcenter.org/pdf/InternetReportYearThree.pdf> (30 March 2005).
7
which estimated the number of internet users worldwide to have been 16 and 36 million,
respectively.18
These two changes in the scope of the internet are crucial, and we must recognize
them if we wish to create cyberculture scholarship that is relevant to the realities of
online life today. Turkle‘s musings on MUDs seem quaint when confronted with
Everquest, a ―synthetic world‖ with an economy that rivals Bulgaria.19 Likewise, how is
Rheingold‘s discussion of the WELL relevant to LiveJournal, a blog-based community
with more than two million users with an average age of 18? The explosion in internet
usage and applications requires a re-examination of presumptions about online life.
Contemporary Internet Life
The massive increase in internet use among Americans was contemporaneous
with the widespread commercialization of online life. Despite the collapse of the dot-com
bubble, the colonization of the internet by major corporations continues. No longer
Rheingold‘s wild frontier populated by hardy homesteaders, the Web is used by more
heartlanders than hackers. Today‘s American internet user buys access through his cable
or phone company, starts her session at a portal run by Yahoo!, MSN or AOL and runs
instant messaging software complete with banner ads promoting reality television shows
and just-released medication. EBay and Amazon.com, the two major survivors of the
dot.com bust, are robust and reporting quarterly profits, and online shopping has become
normative, if not preferable, for most people. As I write this, the 2004 holiday shopping
18
Miniwatts International. ―Internet Growth Statistics.‖ InternetWorldStats.com. 1 July 2005,
<http://www.internetworldstats.com/ emarketing.htm> (3 July 2005).
19
Castronova, E. "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier."
CESifo Working Paper Series no. 618 (December 2001): <http://ssrn.com/abstract=294828 > (18 February
2004). For more on the economies of synthetic worlds, see Dibbell, J. ―The Unreal Estate Boom.‖ Wired 11
no.1 (January 2003), < http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/gaming.html> (30 March 2005).
8
season has just begun, and reports from Goldman Sachs indicate that online shoppers
spent more than eight billion dollars online in November alone, a sixty-two percent
increase from the previous year.20 Total online retail spending for 2004 is estimated at
$75.7 billion, 6.6% of total US retail revenue.21
Despite the increased emphasis on online consumption, many popular internet
applications are focused on social relations. Online personals, for example, are now the
most lucrative form of content on the Web with $418 million in revenues in 2003 and 45
million projected users.22 Social networking sites, weblogs, online journaling applications
and instant messaging provide internet users with still more ways of meeting and
interacting with others. It is likely that the options available for users to communicate
with each other will continue to increase as mobile devices become progressively more
Web-enabled. As companies continue to make money from online social interactions, the
motivation to commercialize offline social interactions will escalate. The increase in
communication options and the resulting convergence of offline and online social life
implies that companies will focus on replicating and then ―monetizing‖ offline social
structures as they move to the Web. How the complexity of online identity interacts with
this process remains to be seen.
However, the internet is now located temporally in a post-boom paradigm. In
order for such new applications to be financially successful, they require ways to target
and sell to people moving through them. Think of Microsoft Passport, which asks users to
provide personal information as a pre-requisite for using a variety of free Web
20
Reuters Limited. ―E-shoppers spend more this holiday season.‖ MSNBC.com. 8 December 2004, <
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6661308/> (10 December 2004).
21
The E-Tailing Group. ―E-Facts.‖ E-Tailing.com. 2004, <http://www.etailing.com/newsandviews/facts.html> (20 December 2004).
22
Egan, J. ―Love in the Time of No Time.‖ The New York Times Magazine. 23 November 2003, 66-128.
9
applications. Similarly, social networking sites like Friendster provide a unitary profile
per person, which is then analyzed for commodities, such as music, movies, and books,
which can be advertised directly to the user. Gmail, a free email service, mines user email
for keywords and targets ads based on interest. Thus, as people move through internet
structures, they are increasingly tied to unitary, and immediately commodified, concepts
of identity.
To the corporation, the unitary identity is more reliable than the multiple.
Amazon.com recently instituted its ―Real Name‖ program, which privileges users who
contribute content (reviews, etc.) to the site. The catch is that they must use the same
name that appears on their credit card. The Amazon.com site describes this program:
A Real Name is a signature based on the name entered by the author as the
cardholder name on his or her credit card, i.e. the author represents this name as
his/her identity in the "real world." An author willing to sign his or her real-world
name on a piece of content is essentially saying, "With my real-world identity, I
stand by what I have written here." Real Name signatures therefore establish
credibility much as reputations built over time in the Amazon.com community,
and just as high-reputation authors and their works receive badges, authors who
use Real Names receive badges.23
If, to amazon.com, a ―Real Name‖ is a sign of credibility, it follows that the use of a
pseudonym is a sign of dis-credibility, or, indeed, dishonesty. The multiple identity works
against corporate interests. A flexible, mutable online self can neither be pinned down
nor sold to; neither can its demographic information be captured, packaged, and added to
a marketing database. This privileging of the unitary is deliberate, strategic, and
necessary to commercial interests.24
23
Amazon.com. ―Your Real Name™ Attribution.‖ Amazon.com. 2005,
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/12986081/102-2706979-1350564> (1 July 2005).
24
It is interesting to note that this shift to a unitary and commodified identity comes at a time when people
are increasingly encouraged to adopt identities by purchasing products, and purchasing products that will
allow them to adopt multiple consumer identities based on fads and fashion, at that.
10
It is important not to see internet structures and technologies as monolithic,
however. As much as major corporations and software development companies wish to
target the user, the anarchic spirit of early users of the Web does remain. A combination
of technologies (open source software, encryption, filesharing) and organizations (the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, downhill battle.org, the ACLU) provide a minority of
users the ability to opt-out of this widespread shift to a wholly commercialized internet.
These structures, then, do not affect everyone the same way. A stratified class structure
divides users based on technical knowledge and ability.
Returning to the single, commodified user profile, I posit that this concept of
identity assumes that the singular profile is authentic in nature. In other words, as Jane
Doe moves through the internet with a single name, address, and Passport, her online
identity should presumably map correctly on to her body, gender, location,
socioeconomic status and earning potential. The single user online becomes the actual
user offline; we return to the ―single body unit grounded in self.‖25 Without this
authenticity, she cannot be commodified and her singularity becomes useless to corporate
interests.
But the authentic is not that simple. It is important to note here that I use the term
―authentic‖ throughout this paper to represent a series of problematic concepts.
Authenticity, itself, is context-dependent, and not something inherent or intrinsic to a
person, place, or thing. David Grazian writes in Blue Chicago that authenticity is defined
as ―to conform to an idealized representation of reality.‖26 In other words, an authentic
tour of Thailand would refer to certain assumptions, stereotypes and beliefs about the
25
26
Stone, 85.
Grazian, D. Blue Chicago. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) 10-11.
11
attraction held by the tourist and what constitutes an appropriate experiential model.
Thus, authenticity is always manufactured and always constructed ―in contradistinction to
something else‖27 – the inauthentic. However, because authenticity is imagined does not
make it imaginary.28 The idea of authenticity is very real, and it has real, practical
implications that play out online and offline every day.
Returning to the shifting concepts of online identity, Stone and Turkle‘s
conceptualizations of identity as flexible and mutable still remain useful and salient as a
jumping-off point. Turkle writes, ―Many more people experience identity as a set of
roles that can be mixed and matched, whose diverse demands need to be negotiated.‖29
Identity, rather than being a fixed, unitary label, is a series of performative acts that vary
depending on context and location.30 Similarly, the definition of authenticity changes
based on the location of the actor who performs it.31 Jane Doe might perform
authentically at work at a non-profit, in a rock club, or in her place of worship. These
performances may vary considerably from each other, yet be judged as equally authentic
by Jane and others.
Offline social situations allow Jane to choose how she authentically represents
herself at any time. In real life, there is multiplicity, but markers of authenticity such as
speech, dress, body language, and the like can all change based on context and personal
strategy. Naturally, some signifiers remain fixed for most people (gender and race, for
example, although the ability to pass in any given situation should not be discounted), but
27
Ibid, 13.
Gupta, A., and Ferguson, J. ―Beyond ‗Culture‘ : Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.‖ Cultural
Anthropology 7.1 (1992): 7–25.
29
Turkle, 180.
30
Goffman, E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. (New York: Anchor Books, 1959) further
discusses how these acts change strategically based on social situation, audience, and companions.
31
Grazian, 159.
28
12
overall, identity presentation is context-dependent and variable. However, it is important
to remember that this presentation is generally unconscious. Multiplicity, thus, is a
limited tool of resistance; the multiple subject lacks the agency to be deployed
strategically.
Singular, commodified concepts of online identity limit this ability to vary selfpresentation strategies. For most users, this will rarely become problematic. However,
there are key spaces that demonstrate how these issues become troubling for the user –
structures of conflict. More worrying is how these conflicts and spaces will change for
future users. Previous concepts of the multiple, flexible online identity are no longer
helpful when we deeply examine such issues.
Clearly, a new concept of identity online is necessary. This concept should not
assume that technology is either a panacea or inherently negative. It should acknowledge
the current commercialized version of the internet. It should also be an inherently useful
concept, one that is workable for both application designers and users as they move
through structures of conflict. A new paradigm of convergence emerges as the digital
citizen is transformed into the Passport-holding consumer. As social life increasingly
moves online, we (users, netizens, people) will find that more spaces have become
conflicting.
Thesis Structure
In undertaking this thesis, my goal is to examine identity within the context of the
modern-day, commodified internet, with the aim of creating a strong foundation for
future theories of how identity operates online today. I draw from both theories of
identity and discussions of the granular workings of contemporary internet structures in
13
order to show that previous scholarship on ―online identity‖ is no longer applicable
considering the major shifts that have taken place online in the last two decades. In the
first chapter, I look at previous work on internet identity, which generally viewed the
―internet‖ as a unique realm where identity operated differently than it did ―offline‖. In
other words, internet users were thought to be inclined to role-play different genders and
alternate personas, which theorists believed might help to illuminate the constructed and
performative nature of many categories which are generally taken as inherent. I hope the
reader will come away understanding why the idea of internet interaction as somehow
uniquely revealing was so appealing and influential to cyberculture studies in the 1980‘s
and 1990‘s. In the second chapter, I switch to a more pragmatic and historical view of the
internet. First, I provide an abbreviated history of the internet in order to demonstrate the
shift from an online culture influenced by academics and software developers to one
largely dominated by commercial enterprises. Second, I place identity within that culture,
showing how personal information has become a commodity, and how the emphasis on
unitary self-presentation strategies is directly linked to specific online business practices.
The overall goal of both sections is to show how we must look at the political economy of
the internet if we are to examine identity.
The third and fourth chapters are case studies of particular structures where
commodification has directly affected the way that users experience identity and selfpresentation. Chapter three discusses profile-based social networking sites such as
Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook. Each of these sites assumes that a single user profile
is necessary in order to maintain the utility of the services as networking tools. However,
this fixity becomes problematic when the inherently flexible nature of offline identity is
14
considered. I maintain that as offline social structures continue to replicate online, these
types of conflicts will continue. As a result, users have adopted specific self-presentation
strategies in order to mitigate the privileging of a single, presumably ―authentic‖ identity.
In chapter four, I undertake a close examination of the video game industry. Much
scholarship around online identity has involved gaming, presumably since it is seen as
inherently playful and thus more suited to the flexibility of role-playing that ―online
identity‖ supposedly facilitates. However, looking at Microsoft‘s Xbox Live system, I
find that the same market forces discussed in the second chapter have effectively required
Live users to adopt a singular model of identity. Although previous studies of Live have
demonstrated that this singularity makes the service more usable and increases
sociability, my point is that even in the most playful of internet realms, multiplicity is, for
the most part, de-emphasized in favor of unitary, presumed authentic identity. Most video
games are no longer examples of technology where identity play is always encouraged
and promoted.
This thesis concludes with several guidelines that can assist in formulating future
answers to the question ―Given the changes in the internet over the last two decades, how
can we accurately conceptualize identity?‖ First, I talk about the ways in which
authenticity operates within the context of the commodified internet. Second, if we do
reconceptualize identity, I outline what must be taken into account. Third, I note how we
must be careful not to fall into false dichotomies when analyzing corporate sites. Finally,
given the current engineering developments in federated identity management, I stress the
importance of contextualizing cyberculture studies within the political economy.
15
Conclusion
In the current era of online interaction, where accurate personal information has
been transformed into currency for marketers and corporate interests, the early concepts
of multiple identities seem to regain some of their liberatory origins. However, while the
potential for resistive use may remain, the experience of the great majority of users no
longer fits within this paradigm. In this thesis, I hope to provide the foundations for a new
model of online identity that will advise not only scholarship, but the work of application
designers and users. As the internet has changed, so must our scholarship.
16
Chapter One:
Identity Scholarship, Cyberfeminism, and the Myth of the Liberatory Subject
Introduction
In this chapter, I provide a brief review of the literature I have drawn from to
inform my thesis. Two particular perspectives inform my research overall: theories of
identity and cyberfeminism. First, I outline theoretical concepts of identity as they
pertain to both the traditional essentialist notion of self and the post-modernist idea of self
as a project. Turning to identity online, I review early approaches to online identity from
the canon of cyberculture studies, specifically, Brenda Laurel, Sherry Turkle, and
Howard Rheingold. In looking at cyborg and post-human feminist theory, especially the
work of Donna Haraway, Allucquere Rosanne Stone, and N. Katherine Hayles, I use the
work of queer theorist Judith Butler to analyze the usefulness of these concepts in
examining the performative nature of self and identity. Next, I review some of the major
critiques of the liberatory idea of multiplicity online, particularly those of Lori Kendall
and Eleanor Wynn and James Katz. Finally, I problematize the idea of ―authenticity‖ in
order to provide a strong foundation for my next chapter.
Identity
Before we move to identity online, let us define what we mean by ―identity‖, as it
is not a simple concept to unpack. The traditional concept of identity, in terms of the
traditional liberal humanist subject, assumes that ―identity‖ consists of a ―clear, authentic
17
set of characteristics‖32 that is connected, presumably, to the essence of the self. This
identity operates as a coherent, singular, agented subject position. Thurlow, Lendal and
Tomic summarize the essential model of identity: ―identity was also believed to be
unitary (i.e. we each have one, ‗true‘ identity), fixed (i.e. it‘s established during
adolescence) and stable (i.e. it stays basically the same)‖.33
This concept of identity is current and popular in Western society. People tend to
think of themselves as a core self that remains constant and unchanging over time. We
tell stories about ourselves that inscribe our experiences within socially co-constructed
metanarratives. This allows us to interpret our experiences through recognizable lenses,
making sense of them within different and varying social discourses. For example,
―coming out‖ narratives often follow a similar path through which people re-interpret
memories of formative experiences into well-trodden paths of queer stories. Although
each of us may have an individual sense of ―identity‖, the tools available at our disposal
to construct and describe these identities are social and co-constructed.
Woodward, for example, discusses how national identities rely on essentialist
concepts to exist. For example, traditional ―American values‖ or non-assimilationist
Islamic ideals both assume that all members of a certain identity group share certain
characteristics, which are fixed non-temporally and do not vary across the group. Thus,
what it means to be ―American‖ becomes an inherent property of the American body and
mind, rather than something historically variable and constituted by discourse. With the
rise of fundamentalist movements linked to nationality, ethnicity, religion, and other
32
Woodward, K. Identity and Difference. (London: Sage Publications, 1997) 11.
Thurlow, C., Lendal, L. and Tomic, A. Computer Mediated Communication. (London: Sage
Publications, 2004) 97.
33
18
cultural markers, the essentialist notion of identity has maintained particular currency in
the popular imagination.
However, social scientists and critical theorists have long since seen the idea of an
―essential identity‖ as solely a useful social construct. Rather than inherent or biological,
viewing identity as ―essential‖ is just one model. An alternate, postmodernist model,
which views identity as a ―project‖, assumes an identity that is constructed and variable.
Stuart Hall writes that identity is not fixed. Instead, it is a production ―which is never
complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside,
representation.‖34 Rather than what Stone calls a ―Body Unit Grounded by Self‖
(BUGS),35 one core persona mapping to one bounded body, ―identity‖ is consistently in
flux and changes based on social context. Woodward summarizes:
Consider the different ‗identities‘ involved in different occasions, such as
attending a job interview or a parent‘s evening, going to a party or a
football match, or visiting a shopping mall. In all these situations, we may
feel, literally, like the same person, but we are differently positioned by
the social expectation and constraints and we represent ourselves to others
differently in each context. In a sense, we are positioned—and we also
position ourselves – according to the ‗fields‘ in which we are acting.36
Hall further points out that the subject always speaks from a particular historical
or cultural position. Woodward calls this ―contingent‖ identity, pointing out that it is a
―product of an intersection of different components, of political and cultural discourses
and particular histories.‖37 Returning to our example of cultural identity above, while the
essentialist model of identity assumes that, say, an American reclaiming an authentic,
34
Hall, S. ―Cultural identity and Diaspora.‖ In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader.
Williams, P. & Chrisman, L. eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) 392.
35
Stone, A. R. The War of Desire and Technology. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996) 85.
36
Woodward, 22.
37
Woodward, 28.
19
inherent ―Irish‖ identity is discovering a ―truth‖ about oneself through shared history and
culture, there is another way of thinking about such things. When we adopt an identity,
although that identity has a past, as we claim that past, we reconstruct it. The past is
transformed, and we become part of an ―imagined community.‖38
Contemporary ideas of identity as non-essentialist point out that identity is
marked by difference (or, conversely, similarity), and thus is defined in opposition to an
alternate identity. With particular regard to popular notions of essentialism, this
difference can be marked on the body – for example, the gendered body as either male or
female, or the raced body as Black or White. However, this difference can be marked
symbolically – what brand of sneakers a person wears, what flag she flies, or what
religious symbol she prays to. Woodward writes that these symbolic markers function as
―how we make sense of social relations and practices, for example, regarding who is
excluded and who is included. Social differentiation is how these classifications of
difference are ‗lived out‘ in social relations.‖39 If identity is always defined
oppositionally, symbolic markers are how those differences are made visible.
Some theorists believe that the overall concept of identity is problematic. Stuart
Hall, for example, prefers the term ―identification‖ rather than ―identity‖ for a number of
reasons. First, it de-centers the essentialist notion of identity. ―Points of identification‖40
are unstable and shifting rather than fixed and inherent. Secondly, it emphasizes the idea
of representation and symbolism in relation to identity. The ―truth‖ of certain subject
positions becomes only a series of symbolic markers that are given meaning by social
context.
38
Woodward, 20.
Woodward, 12.
40
Hall, 395.
39
20
This is not to say that identity does not exist, or that it is a series of lies. It is
―imagined, but not imaginary.‖41 Identity has real effects, on the person performing it, the
people interacting with that person, and the society in which the person exists. Foucault
refers to this phenomenon as a ―regime of truth‖:42 if a society believes something to be
true, and acts as if it is true, it does not matter whether it literally is true. What matters is
whether people treat it as if it were so. This regime of truth extends similarly to identity
performance and symbolic markers.
In communication literature, several key theorists have contributed to our
understanding of the postmodernist, performative conceptualization of identity. Erving
Goffman‘s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life43 is one of the foundational texts of
the field of communication studies, as he was one of the first theorists to suggest that
identity might not be linked to an inherent, fixed subject position. Rather than viewing
interaction as people relating to each other based on an essential, natural version of
themselves, Goffman takes up the metaphor of dramaturgy to explain individual action in
face-to-face, small group contexts. He conceptualized people as actors, whose
performance varied based on social context, particularly in terms of who they were
performing for (the audience) and with whom (the team). This concept of identity,
involving a series of expressive acts to give off particular impressions, necessarily
conflicts with classic humanist ideas of the ―essential identity‖; Goffman wrote that even
when alone, people perform for a ―team of one.‖44
41
Gupta, A., and Ferguson, J. ―Beyond ‗Culture‘ : Space, Identity, and the Politics of
Difference.‖ Cultural Anthropology 7.1 (1992): 7–25.
42
Foucault, M. ―Truth and Power.‖ Power/Knowledge : Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977. (New York: Pantheon, 1980) 133.
43
Goffman, E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. (New York: Anchor Books, 1959).
44
Goffman, 81.
21
It is important to note that Goffman did not believe that these performances were
particularly self-reflexive. Although the variation in actions or presentation could be, and
were, strategic, he noted that every day actors believe in the parts that they play. Whereas
one might try very hard to make a good impression at a job interview or formal event,
there is a key distinction between these types of self-conscious performances and the
performance of identity categories seen as essential, such as gender or class. For
Goffman, these different types of performances could be placed on a continuum, with
some types of performance so ingrained as to become naturalized, whereas the more
extreme types of performative actions coming into play within areas of conflict (service
work, unusual social situations, and interacting with people of different classes, for
example). Although Goffman does not delve deeply into the idea of gender or sexuality
as performative, his theories are still remarkably relevant to modern theories of identity
as a series of constructed identifications.
Online Identity and Identity Online
The advent of new technologies has traditionally brought with it new
examinations of identity. Print media, television and radio have been carefully analyzed
for their impact on people‘s expression of self and identity.45 This examination similarly
extends to the internet and computer-mediated communication. Since the early days of
email and rudimentary text-based chat worlds, theorists, journalists, computer scientists
45
Butcher, M. Transnational Television, Cultural Identity and Change. (London: Sage Publications, 2003);
Dyer, R. ―The Role of Stereotypes.‖ The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations. (New York:
Routledge, 1993); Gauntlett, D. Media, Gender and Identity. (London: Routledge 2002); Saco, D. Voices
from the Distance: Radio Martil and the(Pen) Insular Construction of Cuban Identity. Unpublished M.A.
thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 1992; Tubella, I. ―Television and Internet in the Construction of
Identity.‖ Project Internet Catalunya, UOC. 2001,
<http://www.presidenciarepublica.pt/network/apps/immatubella.pdf.> (1 March 2005).
22
and academics have postulated that the broad rubric of ―online communication‖ would
bring about, variously, the end of face-to-face communication, the eradication of racism
and sexism, drastic changes in grammar and spelling (both positive and negative), and the
rise of a new, global village, to name but a few. Most often, these discussions have taken
place in multiple realms, with both foreboding and forward-thinking perspectives
represented in the mainstream press, academia, and the technology industry.
In this chapter, I am focused on examining the writings specifically pertinent to
identity online. I am indebted to Crispin Thurlow for the distinction made between online
identity and identity online. The term ―online identity‖ somehow connotes an identity that
is different or separate from our ―offline‖ identity. However, as the previous section
outlined, all identity is performative work, not just identity that is expressed through a
computer-mediated medium. This is a key concept as scholarship on online identity often
falls into one of two traps. Either ―virtual‖ identity expression is presented as somehow
less ―real‖ than identity that is performed face-to-face, or it is privileged as something
extraordinarily fluid when compared to the stolid, fixed way that people express their
identities in the ―offline‖ world. The latter implies a false dichotomy between essential
and constructed identity that depends on the medium through which it is presented46.
In order to discuss identity online, I will be drawing from some of the more
visible practitioners of cyberculture studies, an emerging field which Silver divides into
three stages of development: popular cyberculture, cyberculture studies, and critical
cyberculture studies.47 The first stage, popular cyberculture, consists of descriptive
46
For a more thorough examination of this distinction, see Thurlow, Lendal and Tomic, 104-105.
Silver, D. ―Looking Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000.‖ In Web.studies:
Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age. Gauntlett, D., ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000):
19-30.
47
23
writings about the internet from the early to mid-1990‘s, largely authored by journalists
and technology enthusiasts. Although the works that make up this stage remain
historically relevant, for the most part they suffer from what Silver calls a ―limited
dualism‖ and can be described as either ―dystopian rants or utopian raves‖. It is not until
the second stage, cyberculture studies, that we find a significant amount of work on
identity, exemplified by writers like Sherry Turkle, Howard Rheingold, and Allucquere
Rosanne Stone. The distinction between the two latter stages is far from absolute, but
critical cyberculture studies moves beyond the analysis of the second stage to
―contextualize and … offer more complex, more problematized findings.‖48 Although,
within this framework, much of the literature discussed in this chapter is situated within
cyberculture studies, my aim in undertaking this work is to provide a concept of identity
that can be useful for critical cyberculture work.
Early Cyberculture Studies
Brenda Laurel, a significant figure in early feminist cyberculture studies, is a
software developer, writer, and theorist who works primarily around interface design. In
her prescient 1993 work Computer as Theatre, Laurel extended Goffman‘s dramaturgical
metaphor to human-computer activity. Laurel, with the goal of creating applications that
facilitated user action, encouraged user interface designers to view human-computer
interaction more similar to drama than narrative. She writes:
The search for a definition of interactivity diverts our attention from the
real issue: How can people participate as agents within representational
contexts? Actors know a lot about that, and so do children playing makebelieve. Buried within us in our deepest playful instincts, and surrounding
us in the cultural conventions of theatre, film, and narrative, are the most
48
Ibid.
24
profound and intimate sources of knowledge about interactive
representations.49
Although Laurel was not making any claims about identity, this passage illustrates what
would come to be a given in cyberculture studies: the idea of expression of agency
through computer mediation as inherently performative. Laurel, however, does not seem
to believe that the expression of self through a computer is inherently liberatory in some
way. Rather, like Goffman, she sees identity expression generally as a series of dramatic
acts.
Sherry Turkle‘s influential 1995 book Life on the Screen provided cyberculture
scholars with the first lengthy and complicated text on identity expressed through
computer-related media. Turkle‘s analysis begins by citing Freud and Lacan,
psychoanalytic theorists who contributed to postmodern and poststructuralist ideas that
destabilized the concept of the core self. She writes that postmodernists ―attempt to
portray the self as a realm of discourse rather than a real thing or a permanent structure of
the mind.‖50 As we will see in the next section, which draws heavily from queer theorist
Judith Butler, this destabilization of the unitary subject, replaced by one that is created
and represented by and within discourse, was highly influential on feminist and queer
theorists of the 1990‘s. Turkle relates these concepts of ―multiplicity, heterogeneity,
flexibility, and fragmentation‖51 to people using IRC, email, and MUDs. She writes:
Traditional ideas about identity have been tied to a notion of authenticity
that such virtual experiences actively subvert. When each player can
49
Laurel, B. Computers as Theatre. (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993)
21.
50
Turkle, S. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995)
178.
51
Turkle, 178.
25
create many characters and participate in many games, the self is not only
decentered but multiplied without limit.52
Here, Turkle points out that people are used to thinking of themselves as a single, fixed
identity (―iron-like solidity‖)53 that does not change from situation to situation. However,
online communication, especially during the period in which Turkle was writing (early to
mid 1990s), encourages people to create personas or characters that differ from their
presumably ―authentic‖ conceptions of themselves. For example, a male might play a
female character in an online game, or a person might create two or three identities with
which they interact with others in a chat room. In other words, computer games and
online interaction make the actual experience of performing alternate identities other than
the privileged unitary a familiar and usual one for certain groups of people.
Turkle takes this idea further, claiming that this playful, multiple approach to
identity can actually help people view their own unitary identity as constructed:
Having literally written our online personae into existence, we are in a
position to be more aware of what we project into everyday life. Like the
anthropologist returning home from a foreign culture, the voyager in
virtuality can return to a real world better equipped to understand its
artifices.54
The implication is that the experience of performing alternate or multiple characters
online will somehow illuminate the performative aspects of everyday life. This may
allow people to experiment offline with diverse presentations of self, such as more fluid
representations of sexuality and gender. She cites other experiences, particularly creating
52
Turkle, 185.
Turkle, 179.
54
Turkle, 263.
53
26
homepages and the rise in multiple personality disorder, that contribute to multiple
concepts of identity as increasingly familiar and common.
Like Turkle, Howard Rheingold embraces online experiences as positive
contributions to new concepts of identity as multiple. In his popular 199355 book The
Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Rheingold talks about
MUDs (essentially text-based chat ―worlds‖ that can be configured simply for sociable
conversation or for more narrative-based gaming) and how identity is ―fluid‖ for MUD
users. Rheingold is primarily concerned with the community aspects of MUDs, so his
examination of identity is superficial when compared to Turkle‘s. However, he
perpetuates Turkle‘s view of playing characters on MUDs as somehow ―dissolving
boundaries of identity‖:56
The grammar of CMC [computer-mediated communication] media
involves a syntax of identity play: new identities, false identities, multiple
identities, exploratory identities, are available in different manifestations
of the medium.57
Rheingold makes implicit claims that these new vocabularies of identity extend beyond
the computer-mediated world, but these are never made explicit. Still, the popularity of
ideas of online interaction as conducive to multiple, flexible identity constructions
remained.
It is important to note that this ―liberation‖ was almost entirely focused on gender.
The idea of ―liberating‖ people from the confines of racial or ethnic identities was rarely
discussed in this stage of cyberculture studies. This is partly due to the white normativity
55
I am citing the 2000 reprint, but the major changes from the 1993 addition are the introduction and the
conclusion, not the sections that I am discussing in this chapter.
56
Rheingold, H. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Revised Edition.
(Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 2000) 151.
57
Rheingold, 152.
27
of the participants in cyberspace at this time, and partly due to the emphasis on gender
performativity that existed within women‘s studies and queer theory. Online
communication became a new sphere for theorizing that would ―prove‖ the theoretical
constructs advanced by post-structuralist gender theory in the 1990s.
Queer Theory and Post-Human Subjectivity
Cyberfeminist scholarship held up these concepts of the mutable, flexible online
identity as ―proof‖ of ideas advanced by feminist theory, namely that sexuality and
gender were constructed and not inherently tied to biological, genital bodies. Feminist
theorists from the 1960‘s onward argued that the idea of the ―feminine‖ and the
―masculine‖ were social constructs, entirely separate from biology, and infinitely variable
and historically/temporally situated. In other words, the anatomical differences between
―man‖ and ―woman‖ existed as sexes, but on to these bodies were mapped two genders
that depended entirely on social convention to exist and remain58. At the same time,
feminist activists frequently utilized essential concepts of ―womanhood‖: separatist logics
often positioned women as inherently peaceful, loving, or maternal (for example, ecofeminism, lesbian separatists and feminist peace activists).
Judith Butler‘s 1990 book Gender Trouble problematized this nature/culture split
and argued that feminism could no longer rely on an essential concept of Woman to
create a political subject position, even strategically. Gender Trouble is a dense text in
which not only sexuality, but gender itself is uncoupled from the pre-discursive body and
58
See Felluga, D. ―Modules on Butler: On Performativity.‖ Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 28
November 2003, <
http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/genderandsex/modules/butlerperformativity.html> (12 February
2005) for a nice summary, from which much of this section was drawn.
28
resituated along a non-binary framework. Butler draws on literary theory, French feminist
theory, and psychoanalytic theory to illustrate how contemporary ideas of ―male‖ and
―female‖, ―masculine‖ and ―feminine‖, and ―heterosexual‖ and ―homosexual‖, are
entirely social constructs. She writes:
Gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the
discursive/cultural means by which ―sexed nature‖ or ―a natural sex‖ is
produced and established as ―prediscursive‖, prior to culture, a politically
neutral surface on which culture acts.59
In other words, according to Butler, the idea that the body (primarily the genitals) is
inherently sexed pre-discursively is in itself rhetorical. Sex is produced discursively, as is
gender.
Butler also advanced the concept of gender performativity far beyond what
previous feminist theorists had discussed. Although ―femininity‖ had long been seen as
something produced by culture, Butler dis-associates the idea of the subject from the
performance in order to critique the idea of a pre-performative (and thus ―natural‖)
subject. Whereas Goffman saw identity performance as actors playing particular, and
variable, roles, the idea of the subject-as-actor remained. Felluga, writing about Butler,
summarizes:
Unlike theatrical acting, Butler argues that we cannot even assume a
stable subjectivity that goes about performing various gender roles:
rather, it is the very act of performing gender [emphasis mine] that
constitutes who we are.‖60
Rather than identities performing variable acts, Butler argues that identity (and thus any
sense of subjectivity) is created by our performances. Although (as discussed above), we
may view ourselves as fully agented subjects, this sense of subjectivity is a fiction
59
60
Butler, J. Gender Trouble. (New York: Routledge, 1990) 11.
Felluga.
29
produced entirely by our constant enactment of social convention. The ―performativity‖
of gender, then, refers to gender as an ideological style that is constantly reproduced and
reinscribed by the subject who enacts it. All manner of social reality is not a given, but
produced ―through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic and social signs.‖61
Butler is careful to disclaim the idea of an agented subject who blithely and
deliberately performs. Rather, what is intelligible is bounded by the limits of discourse
and what is excluded.62 That is not to say that these limits do not change; on the contrary,
they blur and transform all the time. Subsequently, Butler‘s theory of performativity can
be used as a tool to identify cultural practices that re-bound discourse, particularly in
regard to sexual minorities (drag queens and kings, transpeople, hermaphrodites and the
like).
Before discussing the application of Butler‘s work to cyberculture theory, I would
like to turn to a similarly influential essay, Donna Haraway‘s 1985 work ―A Manifesto
for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth
Century.‖63 Haraway argues for the ―cyborg‖ as a postmodern, strategic metaphor that
can be used as a political and theoretical tool. The (singular and collective) cyborg
subject is purposefully constructed to side-step not only oppositional dualisms that mark
certain groups/subjects as Others, but the essentializing effects of identity politics.
Haraway‘s cyborg is a construct created not only to point out the problems inherent in
61
Butler, J. ―Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist
Theory.‖ Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Case, SE, ed. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1990) 270.
62
Thomas, H.K. ―How to Do ―Whatever‖ in Three Assignments.‖ Computers and Composition Online,
Spring 2003, <http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/Thomas/sequencedassignments.html> (1 March 2005).
63
Haraway, D. ―Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in The 1980's.‖
Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65-108.
30
―universal, totalizing theory‖,64 but to demonstrate the possibility of liberatory science
and technology.
The cyborg is conceived as a response to the essentialist subjectivity that silences
mestiza border consciousness (―permanently partial identities‖)65 and ignores the social
construction of race, gender and class, re-inscribing difference as it attempts to dismantle
it. Haraway argues that the very idea of identity politics based upon a ―natural
identification‖66 assumes there is, indeed, something un-constructed, and thus essential,
about that identity. Simultaneously, identity politics based on binaries (man/woman,
human/animal, nature/technology) erases the lived experience of multiple, borderlands
identity, instead re-situating a bounded, dichotomous existence.
The cyborg subject, in contrast, is by its very nature a mestiza67 consciousness.
First, as a shifting, mutable human/machine hybrid, it cannot possibly re-situate the
cleaved binaries of Western dualism. Instead, the cyborg is strategically constructed, and
indeed finds pleasure, within and across border spaces. Secondly, it de-constructs the idea
of ―the natural‖ by simultaneously placing what we conceive of natural and unnatural
within one subject position. When the subject is both human and inhuman, we cannot
place it in opposition to nature. Finally, the choice to create one‘s own subject position
based on strategic affinity, rather than ―natural commonality‖, allows for powerful sites
for resistance that do not re-inscribe difference. The example Haraway explores is that of
the ―constructed unity‖68 of ―women of color‖. The (collective) subject position ―marks
out a self-consciously constructed space that cannot affirm the capacity to act on the basis
64
Haraway, 181.
Haraway, 154.
66
Haraway, 156.
67
Anzaldua, G. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987.
68
Haraway, 154.
65
31
of natural identification, but only on the basis of conscious coalition, of affinity, of
political kinship.‖69 The idea of a self-constructed subject position that finds pleasure in
the mutability of boundaries70 is a powerful one.
Haraway makes use of the cyborg to identify the limits of epistemologies that
position themselves as totalities. She critiques the construction of (women‘s) subjectivity
as outlined in Marxism, socialist feminism, and radical feminism as embodied by
MacKinnon. In Marxism, labor constructs the subject position. In Marxist/socialistfeminism, the subject is the ontological structure of labor (i.e. the
differentiation/valuation of men‘s labor and women‘s labor). In radical feminism, the
subject position is constructed through men‘s sexual objectification of women. Haraway
persuasively argues that each point of view constructs the subject as a unified whole. This
is problematic for two main reasons: it negates the existence of other forms of domination
(racism, for example), and it posits each theory as ―total‖, claiming entirety in its
explanation of domination and call to action for liberation. It is tempting to add ―cyborg
theory‖ to that list, as Haraway certainly seems to position the cyborg body as a site for
liberation. But she argues, effectively, I think, that the very acceptance of multiplicity and
embracing of collectivity negates the possible problem of reducing domination to a single
agent or site. The cyborg is polymorphous, perverse,71 and therefore infinitely flexible.
The genesis of the cyborg itself is within science and technology. Although the
self-conscious irony Haraway employs throughout the Manifesto makes it difficult to
discern the boundaries between metaphor and experience (and indeed, perhaps the
boundaries themselves are strategically blurred), it is clear that the birth of the Cyborg as
69
Haraway, 156.
Haraway, 150.
71
Haraway, 151.
70
32
concept took place within science/fiction. The cyborg subject is a side effect of ―the
breakdown in clean distinctions between organism and machine,‖72 the bastard child of
―militarism and patriarchal capitalism.‖73 Strategically, the use of a metaphor taken from
within science and technology - a field usually set up in opposition to environmentalism,
compassion, feminism, liberation - allows Haraway not only to argue for the necessity for
feminist work within science and technology, but also for the potentially liberatory
effects of science/technology. If boundaries formerly seen as dichotomous and clearly
situated are breaking down, becoming mutable, as a result of technology, then radical
politics/feminists should take advantage while they are available, rather than rejecting all
sci/tech on sight.
Whereas Haraway‘s cyborg was a metaphor that provided a conceptualization of
what a subject de-stabilized from binaries of gender, sexuality, race and nature itself
might look like, the literal combination of human and machine was embraced by
cyberculture scholars as a bringing about of the post-human. It is crucial to note that
Haraway herself was aware of this contradiction, as a recent interview with Lisa
Nakamura shows:
Haraway: The cyborg in the "Manifesto" was not supposed to be the fembot in
Wired magazine.
Nakamura: Right. Exactly. Nor was it supposed to be Ripley in the Alien films
with her mechanical arms. I'd say that's a vision of the feminist cyborg which has
been celebrated far too much…
Haraway: And my cyborg was not a celebratory, blissed-out wired bunny.74
72
Haraway, 174.
Haraway, 151.
74
Nakamura, L. and Haraway, D. ―Prospects for a Materialist Informatics: An Interview with Donna
Haraway.‖ Electronic Book Review. 30 August 2003,
<http://www.electronicbookreview.com/v3/servlet/ebr?essay_id=nakamuraaltx&command=view_essay>
(14 March 2005).
73
33
Haraway‘s cyborg – a metaphor for a new type of subject position—was taken somewhat
literally and transformed into the ―post-human subject‖, which again gave birth to the
―post-human body”. Whereas Butler looked to uncouple the idea of pre-discursive body
from subject, and Haraway attempted to re-conceptualize the subject as capable of
simultaneously encompassing seemingly oppositional binaries (thus demonstrating the
false naturalization of male vs. female, nature vs. technology, etc.), the post-human,
although ostensibly re-seating ―consciousness‖ outside of ―body‖, still relied on notions
of subjectivity which implied essential agency as somehow linked to inherent self-hood.
Allucquere Rosanne Stone builds on both Butler and Turkle in The War of Desire
and Technology. Stone‘s poetic account of her own experience of multiple identities
situates a cyborg-like subject within discourses of the post-human and the virtual age.
She discounts the idea of the essentialist subject, rather, viewing the body as a creation of
discourse and performativity:75
The societal imperative with which we have been raised is that there is one
primary persona, or ―true identity‖, and that in the off-line world—the
―real world‖—this persona is firmly attached to a single physical body, by
which our existence as a social being is authorized and in which it is
grounded.76
Stone critiques both the essentialist concept of identity and the idea that performances of
identity online are somehow less real, or false, when compared to the performance of
identity offline. Rather, like Turkle, she believes that the various types of multiplicity
encouraged by online interaction lead to a destabilization of the offline subject:
The cyborg, the multiple personality, the technosocial subject, Gibson‘s
cyberspace cowboy all suggest a radical rewriting, in the technosocial
75
76
Stone, 40.
Stone, 73.
34
space… of the bounded individual as the standard social unit and validated
social actant.77
Stone views essentialist concepts of identity as similar to social conceptions of
gender, sexuality, and race as fixed. She points out that feminist theories may deconstruct
gender, but they ―stop just short of tinkering with the framework upon which the idea of
gender itself is based – the framework of the individual‘s self-awareness in relation to a
physical body.‖78 Like Butler, Stone believes that deconstructing the essentialist subject
is a necessary precursor to the deconstruction of gender. If we take it that our experience
of the body is mediated socially (i.e. gender is a social construction), we can take that one
step further and conceptualize the subject as a construction, and one that is dissociated
from the body.
What is key here, though, is Stone‘s belief, like Turkle, that there is something
unique about computer-mediated communication that destabilizes essentialized subject
positions. She writes that technology ―illuminates visual knowledge which makes the
machineries of subjectivity visible and the nuts and bolts that hold the surface of reality
together stand out from the background.‖79 Interacting through online technology, then,
can make us aware of the inherent performativity of our roles offline. It is through our
interactions with technology that we will be liberated from essentialism, and thus from
the fixity of identity that produces hierarchical binaries of gender, sexuality and race.
N. Katherine Hayles posits the idea of the post-human body as an alternate model
of subjectivity that combines the idea of technology as liberatory with Haraway‘s
conception of the cyborg subject position to create a new way of looking at both
77
Stone, 43.
Stone, 85.
79
Stone, 180.
78
35
consciousness and subjectivity. Unlike Haraway‘s cyborg, the post-human can take the
form of a literal ―body‖ that transforms to post-human with either biological modification
through techniques such as genetic engineering, plastic surgery, and cloning,80 or
prosthetic or cybernetic devices extending its capabilities.
Interestingly, it is with such bodily advances that the post-human subject is
illustrated. Hayles delineates four points that characterize the post-human.81 First,
information is privileged over tangibility. In other words, the ability of a subject to
project a Self through technology de-seats consciousness from a physical site. Secondly,
what Hayles refers to as the Western model of consciousness, and what we have
discussed as the essentialist notion of identity, is constructed, not inherent. However,
Hayles claims that this is due to technology breaking down social ideas of ―presence‖ and
―agency‖. Third, the post-human body thus becomes simply prosthetic to the dephysicalized self. Turkle writes that the message of new, prosthetic technologies such as
virtual reality helmets and headphones ―is that we are so much like machines that we can
simply extend ourselves through cyborg couplings with them.‖82 Finally, the combination
of all these shifts in understanding produces a new concept of humanity, which merges
with the concept of the intelligent machine. This shift in subjectivity is the post-human.
Considering what we have already discussed, this model is problematic. First, the
coupling of post-human body with post-human subject assumes that body and subject are
somehow inherently connected, which would return us to a more essentialist subject
position based on biology. This contradicts queer theory‘s conception of identity as
something generated by performance rather than flesh. Second, whether or not the post80
Hayles, N. K. How We Became Posthuman. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) 241.
Hayles, 242.
82
Turkle, 177.
81
36
human subject is de-seated from the body or not, it is still described in unitary terms as a
singular subject position. Third, Wynn and Katz critique the idea that the idea of self as
unitary will change at all, let alone as a result of internet technology. I will discuss these
ideas further in this chapter.
What the post-human does give us is a model of the non-essentialist body.
Although Butler decouples the biological body from discursive conceptions of sex, the
idea of the body itself, removed from meaning, remains. Although Butler would argue
that there is no such thing as a pre-discursive body, only one made intelligible through
performance, the post-human gives us another way to think about the body. I do not
believe that post-humanists would contend with Butler that the pre-discursive body
exists. Rather, they would take the position that a body, once inscribed discursively, can
be actively changed and transformed through technology. Although the meaning of such
a body would change, the literal flesh of the body would likewise be transformed. This
gives us another way to conceptualize the ―essential body‖. We can—and do—
deconstruct the way the flesh is made into gender, or race, or identity. But once the flesh
itself is deconstructed, what, in fact, is at all essentialist about the body itself?
We can argue that this concept of body is not unique to the post-human theorists.
Cosmetic surgery, for example, has been around for several hundred years, and long
before that, people altered their body through the use of cosmetics and clothing. It may be
a marker of the utopian giddiness of post-humanist cyborg theory that the rise of online
communication is linked to these transformations.
Nonetheless, what I am particularly interested in here is the idea of identity
concepts that do not rely on a body made intelligible. This became a key idea in
37
cyberculture scholarship of this era. For Turkle, Stone and their ilk, computer-mediated
communication allowed people to uncouple their body from their subject position (and
therefore identity), expressing themselves without the constraints placed on them by
gender, race, or other essentialized notions of selfhood. Thus we have the idea that the
internet allows people to enact dis-embodied identities; without a literal body to map
identity on to, the fully constructed nature of gender (and so forth) is revealed.
In summary, we have three ways in which expressing multiple identities online
can be liberatory for users. First, this type of identity play encourages people to view
their identities as inherently multiple, allowing for greater flexibility in self-presentation.
Secondly, according to post-humanist scholarship, multiplicity online de-couples the
Body from the Mind, allowing people to ―transcend‖ bodily limitations. This
performance is claimed to negate ―the effects of privilege and prejudice.‖83 Finally,
performing gender online reveals the performative nature of gender offline. In the next
section, I review some critiques of these claims.
Critical Cyberculture Studies
Despite the canonical nature of the texts previously discussed, they have not been
sacred cows in cyberculture scholarship. The relationship between self, identity, gender
and performance, online and offline, has been critiqued by many theorists who have
problematized several of the more overwhelmingly positive or utopian constructions.
Simultaneously, the idea of the internet, and technology as a whole, as inherently
liberatory has been critiqued by theorists who point out the race, class, and gender
83
Kendall, L. Hanging out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002) 10.
38
assumptions often hidden by Wired-era excess. I will examine both types of criticisms in
this section of the chapter, focusing on the former.
Eleanor Wynn and James Katz provide an exemplar of this type of critique in
their 1997 essay ―Hyperbole over Cyberspace: Self-Presentation and Social Boundaries
in Internet Home Pages and Discourse.‖84 Overall, they critique the notion that the self
can be changed in some way by ―moving to an allegedly anonymous electronic
medium.‖85 They outline contemporary social science theories of the self, pointing out
that for Goffman and others (they cite Simmel, Mead, Schutz, Berger and Luckmann),
identity has long been ―an artifact of social context‖86 rather than a fixed sense of self. In
other words, the idea that identity is inherently varied existed long before the advent of
the Internet:
The point taken in this article is that Internet [sic] does not radically alter
the social bases of identity or conventional constraints on social
interaction, although it certainly will provide openings for variations based
in the new opportunities made available. The issues that arise can be
addressed as questions of emerging structures of interaction and
reorganization of social boundaries that can occur in any medium of
communication.87
Wynn and Katz begin their critique by reviewing works of social theory that
outline concepts of self that involve contextual definition, rather than the dichotomous
split between essential and multiple as postulated by Stone and Turkle. Pointing out that
there is a disconnect between cybertheory and previous work in the social science, the
authors criticize cybertheory for generalizing based on small groups of users (MUDders,
84
Wynn, E. and Katz, J. ―Hyperbole Over Cyberspace: Self-Presentation and Social Boundaries in Internet
Home Pages and Discourse.‖ The Information Society 13 (1997): 297-237.
85
Wynn and Katz, 301.
86
Wynn and Katz, 301.
87
Wynn and Katz, 298.
39
etc), assuming that the prevailing conception of identity is essentialist, and, most of all,
conceptualizing ―self‖ as ―discontinuous and a creation of the individual.‖88
Before the authors outline ideas of self as contextualized and variable, they point
out that since humans create social order and meaning through constructing discourses
(and routine), there is an overwhelming social need for people to tell stories of their lives
within metanarratives (as discussed earlier in this chapter). Thus, the authors ―call into
question the idea that fragmentation of self would ever be the basis for cultural change.‖89
However, they conceded that the way that people construct order changes depending on
context. This is similar to Goffman‘s dramaturgical metaphor, which would see place,
time, audience, etc. as part of the staging of any particular identity performance.
Nevertheless, the ability of internet actors to create entirely new, disembodied
performances is limited by the confines of the medium (judgments regarding people‘s
email addresses, typing skills, for example). This point is particularly salient when we
consider that this article was written in 1997, and internet speech has become more styled
than it was seven years ago: linguistic conventions, such as chatspeak or the shorthand
encouraged by text messaging, have further limited people‘s performance choices. I
argue later in this thesis that the privileging of a certain commodified presentation of self
will further erode these abilities.
Next, Wynn and Katz turn to the particular context of internet technologies. They
point out that pre-internet discourses of technology and the divide between technology
and social exist previous to people interacting with individual technologies. Thus,
individual expressions of self are limited by discursive constructions. The internet is a
88
89
Wynn and Katz, 301.
Wynn and Katz, 303.
40
social construct/context in which the self operates, not a place in which the self is
created.90
Finally (for our purposes), the authors point out that the internet is bounded by
real machines in real, physical geographies. They also call attention to the fact that these
machines are supported by military, educational, and commercial interests. Given this,
the authors claim that the social context of the internet can never inherently be a neutral,
pre-discursive space. They finish by re-iterating the idea that Turkle and Stone‘s concept
that ―escape from the physical person is a desirable and rewarding activity that will set a
cultural trend toward the decentralized text‖91 is flawed. This is a remarkably discerning
piece, and one that Lori Kendall would draw from five years later for her similar critique
of liberatory cyberidentity theory.
Lori Kendall‘s 2002 book Hanging out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and
Relationships Online is a thorough and pointed critique of the notion furthered by Turkle
and Stone that participating in new media technologies encourages people to view
themselves in less unitary and more multiple ways. I want to discuss this book in some
depth, as it furthers a number of ideas that are key to re-conceptualizing online identity
beyond the first wave of cyberculture studies.
First, Kendall cites Goffman to remind us that ―despite the ability to adapt our
presentation of self to accommodate different social situations, people resist viewing the
self as performative.‖92 Not only is this true in terms of social co-creation and emphasis
on shared narratives, the shift to essentialist, fundamentalist concepts of national identity
outlined in the first section of this chapter would seem to make this equally, if not more,
90
Wynn and Katz, 306.
Wynn and Katz, 324.
92
Kendall, 8.
91
41
salient than before. People both feel personally more comfortable with concepts of
themselves that rely on unitary or fixed ideas, and are structurally encouraged to think
this way. No matter how disparate events in a person‘s life may be, the temptation to
organize them within a stable, narrative structure is enticing. Likewise, while people
constantly engage in self-presentation strategies that vary based on audience and context,
they ―still tend to perceive their identities and selves as integral and continuous. They
persist in describing themselves in essential, unchanging terms.‖93 If Turkle was correct,
and the rise in information technology that encouraged multiplicity also encourages
people to see themselves as multiple, it seems likely that the rise in popularity of internet
technologies in the seven years between Turkle and Kendall‘s books would have shown a
similar rise in such conceptualization of self.
Kendall goes on to critique the second way in which CMC is seen to be
liberatory: through the decoupling of body and mind. She cites Barlow: ―We are creating
a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic
power, military force or station of birth.‖ Rather than a bodiless world in which all
become equal, Kendall points out that the internet maintains gender inequalities,94 and
that this utopian vision of the world assumes that people do not play themselves
―authentically‖. If a woman offline performs as a female character online, we know quite
clearly that she may suffer from harassment online. Normativizing maleness as the only
way females can de-couple from sexism would seem to foreground sexism, rather than
eradicate it. In environments like the one that Kendall was studying – a MUD called
93
Kendall, 9.
See Cherny, L. ―Gender Differences in Text-Based Virtual Reality.‖ Proceedings of the Berkeley
Conference on Women and Language. April 1994,
<http://bhansa.stanford.edu/%7Echerny/genderMOO.html> (28 January 2004).
94
42
BlueSky—the level of trust implicit in person-to-person interactions implies a certain
degree of authenticity among people‘s self-presentations. I would extend this to social
networking, blogging and journaling websites, which may encourage certain types of
identity work that is clearly playful (for instance, fake celebrity journals on LiveJournal
or community profiles on Friendster) but discourage blatant lying about oneself.
Thirdly, it is the very nature of the medium as performative which encourages
people to see gender-switching as only a performance and not something deeper. Kendall
writes:
The electronic medium that makes gender masquerade possible and
conceivable for a wider range of people also enables both the
masqueraders and their audiences to interpret these performances in ways
that distance them from a critique of real gender. The understanding that
the limitations of the medium require performance allows online
participants to interpret online gender masquerade selectively as only
performance.95
This paragraph is very important. Online mediums (particularly the type of sites that
Turkle studied) lend themselves very easily to performance, and, in some cases, are
designed specifically for performance. To use current terminology, if a person playing a
Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) pretends to be a
Arthurian warrior princess riding a giant tiger, whether or not that person is
―authentically‖ female or male is secondary to the playful, performative nature of the
space which encourages people to experiment with their characters. Furthermore,
performance in text-based communication is necessary in order to convey personality in
almost any extent. This means that anyone who engages in gender play is seen, not as
95
Kendall, 107.
43
someone who embodies multiple genders and thus disrupts the gender binary (i.e. Butler,
Stone, Haraway), but as someone who is merely, and strategically, performing.
Kendall next turns to privilege to demonstrate how notions of cyberspace as
somehow transcending racism or sexism are incorrect. She points out that the belief in the
―liberatory power of cyberspace‖96 assumes that sexism and racism are based on
individual prejudice rather than structures of inequality. In other words, if you can‘t see
skin color or gender, you won‘t be prejudiced against someone, as prejudice cannot
operate without a visual. This notion not only assumes that ―race‖ and ―sex‖ are based on
physical differences (thus setting up White Male as normative, and all else as Other), it
implies that the responsibility of changing one‘s perceptions and behavior is placed on
the Other rather than the Norm. This is a discourse of ―color-blindness‖ that familiarly
serves to encourage people who do not fit into normative categories to masquerade as
normative in order to take advantage of privilege, thus re-inscribing these privileged
categories and maintaining hierarchies of inequality.
Finally, Kendall reiterates the distinction between identity online and online
identity. She points out:
The representation of online identity performances as qualitatively
different from and more fluid than offline identity performances
reproduces an understanding of offline identities as incrementally
changing, integrated wholes. In such accounts, the technological
mediation of online performance changes identity to something more fluid
and exchangeable, suggesting that participants‘ previously stable identities
have been disrupted solely by the capabilities inherent in online
communication.97
96
97
Kendall, 220.
Kendall, 221-222.
44
Like Thurlow, Lendal and Tomic, Kendall critiques the idea that online communication is
so uniquely different from any other type of communication that it has effects that other
changes or contextual cues, such as multiple audiences, the telephone, the television,
inherent contradictions and observations of ―gender masquerades‖ (all examples Kendall
herself mentions) have not been able to create. Turkle‘s observation that the experience
of performing alternate or multiple genders or personas can profoundly change the way
that people think about not only their identity online, but offline as well, seems somewhat
specious when we consider that other types of communication changes have not lead to
similar differences.
The second type of critique focuses on issues of difference that were not
addressed by the original wave of cyberculture theorists. I have previously discussed the
concept of ―popular cyberculture‖, journalism and punditry characterized by
utopian/dystopian views of technology. However, as the previous section shows, the
second wave of cyberculture theory was just as prone to hyperbole as their more
mainstream counterparts. Additionally, while wearing the mantle of academia, many
theorists ignored inherent structural inequalities in internet technologies that broke down
across lines of gender, race, and class.
Ellen Ullman is a programmer who wrote two very influential pieces during the
mid-90s that critiqued the overwhelmingly male perspective of the programming
industry. In her 1995 essay ―Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life‖, Ullman
analyzes her experience working as an engineer within the social structures in Silicon
Valley, which de-emphasize cooperation and sociability in favor of solitude, focus and
45
slightly veiled contempt. She points out that the ―vision of the user as imbecile‖98 (142) is
built right into the code of many programs. Taking this one step further, any assumptions
made by the programmers will be visible in the structure of the software. In a slightly
later essay, ―Come In, CQ: The Body on the Wire‖, Ullman poetically describes how the
alienating culture of programming leads to a schism in self, with the result that
programmers, ―cut off from the real body… construct a substitute body: ourselves
online.‖99 While her argument often relies on essentializing notions of ―men‖ and
―women‖ (―there is, therefore, a usual gender-role reversal in the way men and women
use the internet…‖),100 she overall maintains that this re-constructed body online resides
in a space ―designed for information exchange‖101 and not relationships. The inherent
nature of online communication, then, is structured to emphasize the hegemonic
masculine tradition of communication within engineering.
Beth Kolko‘s 2000 essay ―Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face‖ makes
analogous claims about the way interface design privileges and encourages normative
whiteness. She analyzes the experience of race in text-based virtual worlds in terms of the
frequently missing ―@race‖ property, the ability for users to ―set‖ their race as they
would their gender or mood. The lack of such a property, Kolko argues, assumes that
cyberspace is ―de-raced‖:
Because of the context of the world and the cultural position it occupies,
the default race of the environment is assumed to be white; given a
default, why choose to mark the property? An attitude that race is one of
those things that purportedly can stay behind in the ‗real world‘ prevails;
98
Ullman, E. ―Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life.‖ in Resisting the Virtual Life. Eds.
Brook, James and Iain A. Boal. (San Francisco: City Lights, 1995) 142.
99
Ullman, E. ―Come In, CQ: The Body on the Wire.‖ in Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in
Cyberspace. Eds. Cherny, L. and Weise, E. R. (Seattle: Seal Press, 1996):12.
100
Ullman, 10, 1996.
101
Ullman, 15, 1996.
46
marking race online comes to be read as an aggressive and unfortunate
desire to bring the ‗yucky stuff‘ into this protoutopian space.102
This recalls Kendall‘s discussion of presumed color-blindness online; not only does the
presumption of the internet as inherently liberatory ignore structural (as opposed to
individual) prejudices, the very interfaces with which users interact map hegemonic
conceptualizations of race onto online experience. Kolko summarizes:
The lack of an @race property means that the MUD is an environment
where race is presumed to be either irrelevant or homogenous… The
assumed homogeneity within cyberspace studies and cyberspace itself is
staggering, as is the prevalence of ―we‖ vocabulary. And, quite simply, the
lack of a writeable @race speaks volumes about the assumptions designers
have, assumptions that tangibly affect the trajectory of technological
development.103
It would seem impossible, then, for us to experience identity online in a way that does not
reproduce or, indeed, reinforce systemic hierarchies of race and gender.
Lisa Nakamura‘s work on racial representation in text-based virtual words
extends Kolko‘s critique. While she affirms the idea of ―erasing race‖ as simply another
way of situating whiteness, she strongly critiques the idea of racial identity play as
liberating. Nakamura examines ―identity tourism‖, the phenomenon of people
consciously performing races other than their own, typically white men performing Asian
men or women. Unsurprisingly, the majority of people playing a different race other than
their own are drawing from a series of racist tropes that simply reinforce hegemonic,
white supremacist notions of race as identity. She writes:
…the choice not to mention race does in fact constitute a choice; in the
absence of racial description, all players are assumed to be white. This is
partly due to the demographics of Internet users (most are white, male,
102
Kolko, B. E. ―Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face.‖ In Race in Cyberspace, Kolko, B. E.,
Nakamura, L., & Rodman, G. B. eds. (New York: Routledge, 2000): 216.
103
Kolko, 217-218.
47
highly educated, and middle class). It is also due to the utopian beliefsystem prevalent in the MOO. This system, which claims that the MOO
should be a free space for play, strives towards policing and regulating
racial discourse in the interest of social harmony. This system of
regulation does permit racial role playing when it fits within familiar
discourses of racial stereotyping, and thus perpetuates these discourses.104
It is precisely the idea of the internet as liberatory and utopian that facilitates and
perpetuates racist identity play. While an Asian-American performing as in a nonstereotypical, non-racist way would be seen by the typical users of the MOO as an
unnecessary and possibly threatening emphasis on race, thus violating the norm of
―utopia‖, white users creating Asian characters that draw on stereotypes like the passive
geisha or the stoic samurai are viewed simply as playful. The discourse of the MOO as a
utopian environment makes it impossible for users to critique and counter such racism.
The arguments advanced by Ullman, Kolko, Nakamura and other like-minded
theorists illustrate the perfunctory nature of arguments that online interaction may destabilize problematic concepts of gender or race. Rather, hegemonic concepts of
hierarchical identity structures appear in online environments as systemic. It will take
more than playing characters in a game to dismantle racism or sexism.
Authenticity
The search for authenticity is never ending, but always expresses a fantasy
that the experience of an idealized reality might render our lives more
meaningful.105
104
Nakamura, L. ―Race in/for Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.‖
Cyberreader. V.J. Vitanza, ed. (Needham Heights, MA: Longman, 1995) 442-453.
105
Grazian, D. Blue Chicago. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) 240.
48
As the idea of the essential self has been re-configured to something more flexible
and historically situated, so has the idea of ―authenticity.‖ 106 Authenticity is a
problematic concept as it works in both theoretical and popular discourse. Like identity,
authenticity is a current, widely-held concept when it comes to the idea of a ―real me‖;
we also speak of authentic experiences, artifacts, and people. However, recent
scholarship around authenticity problematizes these ideas and points out that the
authentic is just as much a localized, temporally situated construct as identity, self,
gender, and the like.
In popular discourse, the essential self goes hand-in-hand with the authentic self,
or the real which is expressed accurately. This authentic self is valued as honest, truthful,
and, above all, single. Even turning to the multiple self, we often see conceptions of
multiplicity in which one of the multiple personae is authentic and the others are playful
variants of the truthful, fixed person at the core. For example, Kendall interviews several
MUDders who play their own, ―correct‖ gender while simultaneously maintaining an
alternate persona that is differently gendered. If, as Turkle claims, the construct of gender
itself can be de-stabilized through such role-playing, we would also need to de-seat the
authentic. Otherwise, we see multiplicity as just a series of (untrustworthy) masks that
cover up the unitary self, one that presumably maintains a stable, fixed gender and
sexuality. In order for any concept of multiplicity of self to truly be liberatory (even given
critiques outlined elsewhere in this essay), the concept of authenticity has to be deconstructed and de-centered, outside of the singular Self.
106
While I do not place ―authentic‖ in quotes elsewhere in this chapter, it remains a problematic concept
and one I do not view as either monolithic or given.
49
David Grazian‘s 2003 study of blues bars in Chicago does just this, defining
authenticity as conforming to an idealized representation of reality. The authentic is
always manufactured, and always constructed in ―contradistinction to something else.‖107
In other words, in order for something to be held up as authentic, something else must be
labeled as equally inauthentic. However, this dichotomy is false when we note that both
the performance of authenticity and inauthenticity are equally constructed by discourse
and context.
Like Gupta and Ferguson, Grazian points out that despite the constructed nature
of authenticity, it can and does have real-world effects (Foucault‘s regime of truth
returning):
Although it remains a figment of our collective imagination, we still
continue to employ the concept of authenticity as an organizing principle
for evaluating our experiences in everyday life, and that makes it
significantly meaningful and, in many ways, real. In this manner,
authenticity shares a similar place in our hearts as love or beauty; it is an
old wives tale we tell ourselves over and over again until we believe it to
be true, and as a result it gains a certain kind of power over us.108
It is the constant re-inscription of authenticity that maintains its social power and
salience.
Not only is authenticity a construct, it is a construct that constantly changes. What
is authentic continually differs, and what symbols or signifiers mark a thing as authentic
or inauthentic change contextually. Simultaneously, for each individual, the definition of
authenticity varies depending on where the speaker lies within it. The acceptance of one‘s
own self as authentic depends on one‘s personal definition of what authentic seems to be.
This will have greater or lesser salience to an individual depending on his or her (sub)
107
108
Grazian, 13.
Grazian, 16.
50
cultural identifications; Grazian is studying blues musicians, who have a professional and
personal stake in inscribing themselves within a larger cultural narrative that puts a great
deal of value on authenticity. Regardless, all around us we see definitions of authenticity
constantly being manufactured and redrawn, even re-inscribed on the body through the
use of cultural markers (similar to Woodward‘s discussion of representation). The
―symbolic stake‖ (160), for each of us, rides on widespread acceptance of your definition
of authenticity – and by proxy your inclusion within it.
Returning again to Woodward, Vincent Cheng explores why we might have an
increased stake in authenticity. In his 2004 book Inauthentic, Cheng notes that
contemporary first world cultures are marked with anxiety over authentic cultural
identities. Contextualized within a metanarrative of globalization and world progress that
assumes our current epoch is one of great cultural change and diffusion, Cheng posits that
authenticity, much like ―nation‖, operates as a ―quasi religious locus of
transcendence.‖109 In other words, we are fixed on the authentic as we fear losing
everything that makes us distinct. Again, Cheng is replicating discourses of the
―McDonaldization‖ of world cultures, which assume that American-based
megacorporations will homogenize more ―traditional‖ (and, indirectly, authentic) foreign
cultures. Thus, the yearning for the authentic is completely historically situated, and the
authentic identities themselves are just as much as social construct as are ―inauthentic‖
identities.
Following Cheng and Grazier, we can conceptualize authenticity as a series of
signifiers that appeal to a ―legitimate‖, unitary self, thus helping to establish contextual
109
Cheng, V. J. Inauthentic: The Anxiety over Culture and Identity. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 2004) 5.
51
trust. These signifiers, or the very concept of authenticity itself, become commodified
and rendered a thing. Authenticity thus starts as personal capital, becomes cultural capital
and finally is reborn as literal capital.
Conclusion
While the temptation to view the internet as a unique space in which our very
actions can change the social world around us is compelling, it is no longer useful.
Postmodern conceptions of identity continually de-seat and deconstruct the idea of
ourselves as fixed and bodily situated, but this is countered by the environments and
social contexts in which we move. Social actors are constantly bounded by discourses of
authenticity, essentialism, race, gender, sexuality and the like which emphasize fixity,
unity and, above all, hegemony. In the next chapter of my thesis, I discuss the internet as
an increasingly commodified space in which these emphases are quite clearly and
strategically carried out by commercial actors in order to maximize profit and transform
users into consumers.
52
Chapter Two: Internet Commercialization and Identity Commodification
Introduction
The internet today is massively different from the networks that predated it.
Users of the networks that existed during the 1970s and 1980s communicated primarily
with groups of academics, scientists, and government employees through textual
interfaces. Although the internet user base broadened in the early 1990‘s, most online
experiences remained textual110 until the advent of the World Wide Web111 and
subsequent launch of Mosaic, the first popular Web browser.112 With the development of
the first graphical web browser and rapid increase in internet usage that followed, two
major changes occurred. First, the internet changed from purely textual to multi-modal,
incorporating music, video, animation and images. Second, the rapid and massive
increase in internet users caused a shift in internet content and culture. Whereas the preweb internet was, by design, created and populated almost entirely by academics and
engineers, and the early, pre-boom web by hobbyists and geeks, the current internet has
110
The interfaces of pre-web internet applications like FTP, IRC, Gopher, email and USENET consisted
entirely of ASCII text.
111
The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN in late 1990. See
Stewart, Gillies, J. and Calliau, R. How the Web Was Born. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),
172-201; Johnson, S.P. ―Internet History/Timeline.‖ Ethernet Guide. 20 November 2000,
<http://www3.baylor.edu/~Sharon_P_Johnson/etg/inthistory.html> (1 May 2005); Naughton, J. A Brief
History of the Future: From Radio Days to Internet Years in a Lifetime. (New York: Overlook Press,
2000), 229-239; Berners-Lee, T. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the
World Wide Web. (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
112
The Mosaic browser was invented by Marc Andresson at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA). See Johnson 2000; Abbate, J. Inventing the Internet. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 1999), 217; Segaller, S. Nerds 2.0.1. (New York: TV Books, 1998), . 296-297.
53
been colonized by major media and software companies and is used by close to a billion
people worldwide.113
Despite these enormous changes, contemporary conceptualizations of online
identity are still heavily influenced by previous scholarship focused on user selfpresentation solely within text-based applications and interfaces.114 This is problematic as
the shifts in modality, technological sophistication, and user base have all had profound
impacts on the ways that application designers and users express and think about identity.
Consequently, work on identity online must incorporate an understanding of the
contemporary commercial, multimedia internet.
In this chapter, in order to demonstrate the gradual commercialization of the
internet, I trace the historical transformation of the internet from government project, to
research tool, to mainstream utility controlled primarily by corporate America. The
contemporary internet, of course, encourages quite different types of presentations than
did the pre-commercial internet, primarily due to profit motives. I analyze how and why
this commercial internet manages and views identity, concentrating on shifts in
technology and user base. Finally, I return to theories of identity and commodification to
trace the inherent linkages between the two, and to emphasize the necessity of
113
It is notoriously difficult to measure how many people are using the internet at any one time. The
website Internetworldstats.com uses data from a variety of sources and estimates the April 2005 usage
statistics at 888 million people worldwide. See Miniwatts International. ―Internet Usage Statistics - The Big
Picture.‖ Internet World Stats. 2005, <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm> (1 May 2005).
The majority of internet users are located geographically in North America, Asia, and Europe.
114
Chapter one provides a detailed review of previous work on identity online. For examples of scholarship
that examines identity within the context of text-based internet applications, see Campbell, J.E. Getting It
On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity. (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press:
2004); Baym, N. Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 2000); Kendall, L. Hanging out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and Turkle, S. Life on the Screen. (New York:
Touchstone, 1995).
54
incorporating an analysis of commercialization into any academic discussion of online
identity.
Internet History
My focus in providing a history of the internet is not to duplicate the extensive
work that has already been done in this area.115 Rather, I wish to trace two developments:
first, the gradual transfer of internet technology and ownership from public interests
(governmental, military, and academic) to private companies, and second, the
technological developments in the early 1990s that allowed the modal change in
computer-mediated communication from textual to multimedia. I want to disclaim that
several of the following dates and milestones are contested. Like any technology, the fact
that many people were involved in the development of the internet makes the formulation
of an authoritative history beyond the scope of this chapter.
In order to trace the development of the internet, it is necessary to discuss in some
detail the logistics of internet infrastructure, which originated deep in the militaryindustrial complex of the Cold War. In 1957, the USSR launched the first artificial Earth
satellite, Sputnik. This triggered widespread concern that the USA was falling behind the
Soviet Union in technological development, which was subsequently used rhetorically to
justify increases in military and scientific spending.116 In response, the Department of
Defense launched the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) in 1957, with the aim
of increasing the United States‘ competitiveness in scientific research. ARPA, conceived
115
For far more comprehensive histories of the internet‘s origins, see Segaller, 1998; Hafner and Lyon,
1996; Abbate, 1999; Gillies and Calliau, 2000 and Naughton, 2000.
116
One school of thought holds that the US government exaggerated the Soviet threat in order to maintain
high military expenditures and boost the post-WW2 economy. See Paterson, T.G. ―The Cold War Begins.‖
In A History of Our Time: Readings on Post-War America. W.H. Chafe, ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003), 10.
55
as a ―blue-sky‖ lab that would sponsor ―high-risk, high-gain‖ research,117 began to fund
projects at many independent sites, with the goal of developing computer technology
useful to the military.118 ARPA was tasked with ―[coming] up with uses for computers
other than tools for numerical scientific calculating.‖119
At the same time, forward-thinking computer scientists were researching
technologies that would lay the groundwork for the precursors to the internet. For
example, by 1962, the RAND Corporation had begun to research distributed
communication networks, culminating in the development of packet-switching. Packetswitching, which facilitates decentralized data handling and is fundamental to
contemporary protocols like TCP/IP, was conceptualized by Paul Baran120 and further
developed by Leonard Kleinrock at MIT.121 This collaboration of research efforts by the
military, the academy, and private interests would characterize the development of the
internet well into the current era.
Two concerns fueled government development of core technologies that would
become instrumental in developing the internet. First, the Department of Defense was
apprehensive about mass centralization of information and wanted a more distributed
system in the case of a possible Soviet attack. Secondly, American scientists were
looking for easier ways to collaborate and share data and research information.122 As a
117
Hafner and Lyon, 22; see also Gillies and Cailliau, 12.
Gillies and Cailliau, 11-16; see also Abbate, 1999, 8-11; Stevenson, J. H. ―(De)Constructing the Matrix:
Toward a Social History of the Early Internet.‖ Contextualizing the Internet 1995: Essays. 2001,
<http://www.tranquileye.com/netessays/de_constructing_the_matrix.html> (1 May 2005).
119
Hafner and Lyon, 37.
120
Abbate, 10-21; Johnson, 2000.
121
Stevenson, 2001; Segaller, 66-69.
122
There is some debate over this issue. Most internet historians maintain that ARPANET was a direct
response to possible nuclear threat; others, most notably Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon (authors of When
Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet) take the position that the goal of ARPANET was purely
peaceful and developed purely for researchers to share resources and data (Hafner and Lyon, 54).
118
56
result, in 1968, the Department of Defense issued a request for quotations to 140
companies to build interface message processors, or IMPs. An interface message
processor connects two or more hosts through telephone lines via dial-up and allows for
message exchange between them.123 This concept was developed by Lawrence Roberts at
Lincoln Laboratory in Massachusetts and Wes Clark, and would become fundamental to
the first generation of network hardware and software. The IMP contract was awarded to
Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), a well-known technology company specializing in
defense work and the former home of J.R. Licklider, a visionary computer scientist and
the original director of ARPA‘s Information Processing Techniques Office.124 BBN
would later be responsible for a variety of innovations including the modem, the ―@‖
symbol in email addresses and the first text-based game, Colossal Cave Adventure.125
The first IMP was installed at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969.
Three more IMPs were established at the Stanford Research Institute, UCSB and the
University of Utah, each the recipient of a US government research contract.126 BBN
purchased dedicated 50KPBS from AT&T in order to link the four sites.127 The resulting
system was known as ARPANET and was an immediate success, growing rapidly in the
early 1970s, primarily connecting research universities. ARPANET, unlike the internet,
was a single network connecting many computers. It allowed users, primarily computer
However, Paul Baran, the Rand Corporation researcher who conducted significant early work on packetswitching, was certainly concerned with nuclear attack and his research was a direct response to that threat
(Galloway, A. Protocol. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004), 5; see also Abbate, 10).
123
InetDaemon Enterprises. ―History of the Internet.‖ InetDaemon.com. 7 December 2004, <
http://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/history.html> (1 May 2005); Sheldon, T. ―Internet History.‖
Tom Sheldon‘s Linktionary.com. 2001, <http://www.linktionary.com/i/internet_history.html> (1 May
2005) ; Abbate, 56-58.
124
Gillies and Caillaiu, 12-13.
125
Wikipedia contributors. "Bolt, Beranek and Newman." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia
Foundation Inc. 25 June 2005, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism> (1 July 2005).
126
Gillies and Caillau, 28-29; Sheldon.
127
Inetdaemon.
57
scientists and ARPA researchers, to share resources, find users to test software, arrange
collaborative projects, and conduct large-scale data processing.128
Although the ARPANET had been specifically designed for sharing technical
papers and scientific data, the instantaneous, non-geographically bound communication
medium quickly lent itself to non-academic, non-governmental use. Despite the strict
stipulation that these networks should only be used for research or government-related
purposes, the ARPA administrators turned a blind eye to the development of discussion
groups129 and email.130 By 1973, 75 percent of the traffic on what was now known as
DARPANET131 consisted of email, mostly between academics and researchers.132
Discussion groups called listservs (the progenitors to Usenet) focused primarily on
relevant topics, but the two most popular listservs were devoted to science fiction and,
interestingly, email itself. Griffith writes that the latter, known as ―human-nets‖,
…was devoted to the social implications of the e-mail medium itself, and
it helps define the moment when the e-mail users began to realize the full
implications of the communication tool they were using.133
DARPANET quickly extended beyond the use for which it was designed and became a
source of both entertainment and metatextual discussions about technology (something
that has characterized the internet ever since!).
128
Abbate, 96-104.
Griffiths, R. T. ―Chapter Three: History of Electronic Mail.‖ History of the Internet, Internet for
Historians (and just about everyone else). 11 October 2002, <
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap3.htm> (1 May 2005).
130
Email was invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1971. See Segaller, 104-106.
131
ARPANET was renamed DARPANET in 1971. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was
a separate entity from the Department of Defense until the late 1960‘s, when the DOD took over ARPA and
all its administered projects. Therefore, ARPANET was renamed DARPANET (Defense Advanced
Research Projects Network). I use ARPANET consistently for simplification purposes until the mid-80‘s
(1984-1986), when the NSF took over DARPANET and the network was expanded, re-architected and
named the NSFNet. (see Sheldon; Johnson; Galloway 5; Gillies and Calliau, 77-80).
132
Sheldon.
133
Griffiths.
129
58
However, despite the broadening of topics and interests on the DARPANET to
include those that were outside the strictly scientific or academic realm, the user base still
consisted, in Griffiths‘ words, of ―elite defense and communication scientists in institutes
whose membership of the net was dependent [sic] their role as ARPA (sub-)
contractors.‖134 In fact, it is not a stretch to say that users of DARPANET and most of the
other networks (BITNET, CSNET, DECNET and UUCP)135 were exclusively academics,
computer scientists, and military personnel. Indeed, DARPANET was configured so that
only people in these occupations could gain access. ARPANET had been designed
specifically to allow scientific and military researchers to share data and access
computers remotely, and so only universities that received government funding could
connect. 136
As the network developed, the number of academics using DARPANET greatly
increased. By the early 1970‘s, more than half of the connected hosts were universities.137
At this point, the Department of Defense declined to continue fully supporting
DARPANET, maintaining that it had grown beyond its military origins, and the National
Science Foundation took over the funding of many network-related projects. The NSF
founded CSNET in 1981 with the explicit purpose of connecting computer scientists
working at universities nationwide. The NSF‘s ―Brief History of the NSF and the
Internet‖ states:
In 1985, NSF considered how it could provide greater access to the highend computing resources at its recently established supercomputer centers.
134
Ibid.
These different networks were funded by various other entities besides the Department of Defense.
BITNET was founded at the City University of New York, DECNET at the Digital Equipment Corporation,
CSNET by the National Science Foundation and UUCP at Bell Labs. There were several other networks in
existence at the time besides these four; see Gillies & Cailliau, 74-79 for more information.
136
Johnson.
137
InetDaemon.
135
59
Because NSF intended the supercomputers to be shared by scientists and
engineers around the country, any viable solution had to link many
research universities to the centers.138
In 1983, the DOD created MILNET for exclusively military uses and essentially left
DARPANET to the academics.139 The user population of what would become the internet
was almost exclusively academics, scientists, and researchers.
At the same time, computers were becoming more accessible to Americans than
they had ever been. The personal computer revolution of the late 1970‘s and early 1980‘s
brought desktop PC‘s (―single-user‖ computers) into the homes of thousands of average
middle-class Americans140 while arcade and console-based video game systems enjoyed a
huge rise in popularity.141 Independently run dial-up networks, like UNIX-based
computer conferencing and bulletin board systems (BBS) devoted to hacking and
gaming, proliferated across the US.142 Two Duke University post-graduate students
invented Usenet, an independent discussion network, in 1981.143 Despite these advances
in popular technology, DARPANET remained a rarified sphere with access limited to
engineers, academics, software developers and a few students.
The National Science Foundation took over DARPANET in 1985, christened it
the NSFNet, and began slowly moving towards privatization. At first, the NSFNet simply
expanded the DARPANET to connect more colleges and universities using dedicated
138
Hart, D. ―A Brief History of NSF and the Internet.‖ NSF Fact Sheet. National Science Foundation
Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. August 2003,
<http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/fsnsf_internet.htm> (26 April 2005).
139
Irvine, M., Drake, W., and Dowdy, E. Internet Industry History and Background. 1999,
<http://cct.georgetown.edu/curriculum/505-99/internet3.html> (26 April 2005); Sheldon.
140
Abbate, 186-187.
141
Kent, S. The Ultimate History of Video Games. (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2001).
142
Naughton, 186-189.
143
Griffiths; Abbate 201-202.
60
circuits provided by MCI and packet switches made by IBM.144 In order to open the
NSFNet to regional access providers (universities and private corporations that provided
increased local access), four Network Access Points (NAPs) were created which, while
controlled by the NSF, were managed by Merit, a consortium made up of IBM, MCI, and
Michigan universities.145 These NAPs formed the ―backbone‖ of the NSFNet. Despite
these transitions, users were still limited to government and organizations that received
government research funding.146
In 1991, two major changes occurred which opened the door to widespread
commercialization and, consequentially, a wider user base. First, the NSF rescinded the
―acceptable use policies‖, permitting the use of the internet for commercial gain.147
Second, the NAPs and future expansion of the internet were appropriated by the three
major commercial long distance networks of the time: MCI, Sprint, and AT&T.148 The
apocryphal claim attributed to Al Gore that he ―invented the internet‖149 turns out to have
a basis in truth, as Gore was responsible for the wordily named 1991 High Performance
Computing and National Research and Education Network Act (NREN). The primary
goal of NREN was to further educational and research applications of the NSFNet, but it
had the effect of opening the door to further commercialization.150 In 1993, the NSF fully
ended its subsidy of the backbone and sold the four NAPs, in a closed bid without public
144
InetDaemon; Abbate 191-194.
Sheldon.
146
InetDaemon.
147
Johnson; Sheldon.
148
InetDaemon.
149
Gore‘s actual words were ―I took the initiative in creating the Internet‖, which, if not precisely true, is
certainly true enough. Gore was a strong advocate of the early Web, and his accomplishments included
sponsoring the 1986 High Performance Computing and Communications Conference, which called for
connecting supercomputers with high-speed fiberoptic networks (see Sheldon), securing funding at MIT for
the CERN web team, and requiring that every US Government office had a website. See Rosenberg, S.
―Did Gore Invent the Internet?‖. Salon. 5 October 2000, <
http://dir.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/gore_internet/index.html> (26 April 2005).
150
Irvine, Drake and Dowdy.
145
61
debate, to Sprint, Pacific Bell, Ameritech, and MFS.151 This prompted the launch of
thousands of small, local internet service providers (ISPs).152 The same year, the NCSA
released the immensely popular browser Mosaic, facilitating access to the World Wide
Web, and the internet, as we think of it today, was born.153
Several years before the advent of the World Wide Web, a number of proprietary
commercial and nonprofit networks introduced Americans to the concept of going
―online‖. Services like America Online (AOL), Prodigy, and CompuServe connected
users via modem to walled computer systems, where people could shop, post on message
boards, play games and chat with other users within the system. Although these networks
would not link to the larger internet until the 1990‘s, they familiarized their users with
applications like e-mail, newsgroups, and chat programs.154 Other, volunteer-run
networks such as the Whole Earth ‗Lectronic Link (the WELL), IRC servers and local
BBSs provided means for people to meet like-minded others and communicate over
modem lines without paying subscription fees.155 By the time that Mosaic launched, these
early services had helped to set the groundwork for a fairly significant portion of the
population to be comfortable with online communication.
Early Internet Culture
Due to the academic and scientific roots of networking technology and the strict
prohibition of commercial activity in the internet‘s formative years, online culture during
151
InetDaemon.
Abbate, 197-200.
153
Other proprietary commercial networks existed, including AOL, CompuServe, MSN and Prodigy. These
networks were, at the time, closed systems without access to the larger internet.
154
I was a Prodigy subscriber starting in 1988 and have very fond memories of chatting with other users
who lived across the world. See Abbate, 203-204 for more about the various pre-internet networks that
allowed people to communicate with each other via modem.
155
Abbate, 203-204. For the history of IRC, see Stenberg, D. ―History of IRC (Internet Relay Chat).‖
Daniel.haxx.se. 24 September 2002, < http://daniel.haxx.se/irchistory.html> (11 July 2005).
152
62
these early years of commercialization was rooted in the hacker, academic, and hippie
ethics of the homebrew computer scientists and open-source developers who populated it.
Early internet adopters were highly educated and relatively young with above average
incomes,156 but, more importantly, many of them were deeply invested in the anticommercial nature of the emerging internet and the ―information wants to be free‖ hacker
ethos. Any attempted use of the network for commercial gain was highly discouraged,
particularly uses that violated ―netiquette‖, the social mores of the internet.
For example, on April 12, 1994, a law firm called Canter and Siegel, known as
the infamous ―Green Card Lawyers‖, sent the first commercial spam email to 6,000
USENET groups advertising their immigration law services. This inspired virulent
hatred, which seems inconceivable in today‘s spam-ridden climate. Internet users
organized a boycott, jammed the firm‘s fax, email, and phone lines and set an autodialer
to call the lawyers‘ home 40 times a day.157 Canter and Siegel were kicked off three ISP‘s
before finally finding a home and publishing the early e-marketing book How to Make a
Fortune on the Information Superhighway.158 Despite these dubious successes, the
offense was seen as so inappropriate that Canter was finally disbarred in 1997, partially
due to the e-mail campaign; William W. Hunt III of the Tennessee Board of Professional
Responsibility said, "We disbarred him and gave him a one-year sentence just to
emphasize that his email campaign was a particularly egregious offense."159
156
Neustadtl, A., and Robinson, J. P. ―Social Contact Differences Between Internet Users and Nonusers in
the General Social Survey.‖ IT & Society 1 no.1 (2002): 73-102.
157
Campbell, K.K. ―A Net.Conspiracy So Immense...Chatting With Martha Siegel of the Internet's
Infamous Canter & Siegel.‖ Toronto Computes. 1 October 1994, < http://www.kkc.net/cs/> (26 May 2005).
158
Rowland, R. ―CBC News Indepth: Spam.‖ CBC News.12 March 2004, <
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/spam/>.
159
Wikipedia contributors. ―Canter & Siegel.‖ Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 19 June 2005, <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canter_%26_Siegel> (1 July 2005); Craddock, A. ―Spamming Lawyer
63
As the internet moved beyond its academic origins, these types of conflicts
multiplied. Users coming from large commercial ISPs like AOL and CompuServe were
viewed pejoratively as newbies who did not take the time to learn the particularities of
netiquette and were subsequently flamed or told rudely to ―RTFM‖.160 September of
1993 was viewed as the ―September that never ended‖ – the Internet Jargon file defines
this term as follows:
One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual
September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette,
made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people
starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in
without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small
drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in
September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly
overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who
nostalgically recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline
in the quality of discussions on newsgroups.161
Nowadays, of course, anyone who was posting on Usenet in 1993 would be considered
an internet veteran! My point is that there was a cultural clash between the ―old school‖
of internet users, many of whom had been online long before the invention of the web,
and the new breed of internet users. Most of the early users were white, middle to upper
middle class males who partook in stereotypical ―geek‖ activities and interests—science
fiction, coding, technological tinkering, and video games—and adhered to the precommercial philosophy that the internet was a space where knowledge and information
were freely shared for the greater good. (Witness early users who spent hours creating
Disbarred.‖ Wired. 10 July 1997, < http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,5060,00.html> (1 July
2005).
160
RTFM translates to ―Read The Fucking Manual‖ or ―Read the Friggin Manual‖ for the less coarsely
inclined.
161
―September That Never Ended.‖ The Jargon File Version 4.4.7, ed. Eric Raymond. 29 December 2003 <
http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended.html> (28 April 2005).
64
elaborate Frequently Asked Questions files who did not expect to get paid.)162 Stevenson
summarized the cultural shift as the internet‘s user base became increasingly mainstream:
This sudden and profound shift in the matrix‘s user base, from researchers,
academics, students and hackers to a large number of computer-savvy
consumers and business people, is transforming the core dynamic of the
Internet to one of a relationship between consumer and service provider.
…The co-operative, do-it-yourself philosophies of the hacker which have
been embodied in the very technology of the net are becoming a smaller
and smaller part of the Internet development process.163
Mosaic and the Expansion of the Internet
Tim Berners-Lee and his team at CERN, the European Particle Physics Library,
invented the World Wide Web in 1990. The web was originally conceptualized as a
common information space which would link disparate forms of information together
using hypertext164 while connecting the various distinct networks that existed at that
time.165 The first web server, hypertext editor, and line mode browser166 were released
publicly in 1991,167 but the web did not really catch on in popularity until 1993, when
Marc Andresson and a group of students at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) invented the Mosaic browser.168 Mosaic‘s simple, graphical
interface made it much easier for non-programmers to use the internet. Although earlier
162
See Constant, D., Sproull, L., and Kiesler, S. ―The Kindness of Strangers.‖ Organizational Science 7
(1996): 119-135.
163
Stevenson.
164
Berners-Lee, T. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web.
(New York: HarperCollins, 2000) 5, 17, 20; see also Berners-Lee, T. ―The World Wide Web: A Very Short
Personal History.‖ Tim Berners-Lee. 1998, <http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory> (26
April 2005).
165
Besides NSFnet, there was BITNET, UUNET and so on.
166
A line-mode browser allows people to surf the web completely textually, which is useful for the visually
impaired or people who have slow dial-up connections. Lynx is one example of a line-mode browser.
Bolso, E.I. ―2005 Text Mode Browser Roundup.‖ Linux Journal 8 March 2005 <
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8148> (1 July 2005).
167
Berners-Lee.
168
The NCSA is a public institution housed within the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and
although it partners with many private research firms, the majority of its funding comes from the National
Science Foundation.
65
technologies like Gopher and Archie had increased the accessibility of the web, Mosaic
enabled people without any particular technical knowledge to easily browse the World
Wide Web. In 1993, this consisted of approximately 100 different websites serving two
hundred thousand documents.169
At this point, the web was not particularly different from the textual internet. This
was mainly due to the restrictions inherent in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the
code in which most web pages are written,170 since the first version of HTML allowed
users to include only text and hyperlinks in web pages. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of
HTML, based it on the concept of hypertext, which had existed conceptually since the
term was coined by Ted Nelson in 1965,171 and in software (like HyperCard for the
Macintosh) since the 1980s.172 HTML was designed to be a simple document markup
language which would be compatible with the diverse array of operating systems and
types of computers connected to the internet. In keeping with the scientific and academic
origins of the web, Berners-Lee based HTML on the already-existing Standard
Generalized Markup Language, or SGML.173
Since it was a markup language, the first version of HTML allowed users only to
divide a document up into headers, paragraphs, list items, and so on. However, while
computer scientists and researchers (many of whom would later become part of the W3C
consortium, which governs online standards) were debating how to implement new
169
Farber, D. [farber@central.cis.upenn.edu]. ―How Big is the Web?‖ In [interesting-people-list], 15 Dec
1993, Internet. <http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199312/msg00068.html>
(26 May 2005); Gray, M. ―Web Growth Summary.‖ Growth of the Web. 1996,
<http://www.mit.edu:8001/~mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html> (26 April 2005).
170
HTML was used almost exclusively for web authoring until the advent of ASP, PHP and other dynamic
languages.
171
Gillies and Cailliau, 100
172
Gillies and Cailliau, 127-129.
173
Longman, A. W. ―A History of HTML.‖ Raggett on HTML 4. Harlow, England: Addison Wesley
Longman Limited, 1998. <http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html> (1 May 2005).
66
features in future versions of HTML, software developers were circumventing ―official‖
channels and building new features directly into browser software. For example, while
the WWW-Talk listserv was quarrelling over the best way to include images in HTML
documents, Marc Andresson went ahead and created the <img> tag, which could be read
by the Mosaic browser. (This tag would become part of the official HTML specification
in later versions.) Mosaic included other non-official features like unordered lists and
forms,174 often in response to user requests.
As HTML evolved, more features became available to document authors, most of
which were contested by the argumentative web community. For example, in 1995,
browser developers unveiled new HTML tags that allowed authors to create colored
backgrounds and wrap text around images. Members of the academic community
protested that these features did not belong in a document markup language.175 The
schism was deepening between the old guard of internet users, who wanted to reserve the
internet for purely scientific research, and the increasing number of people using the
internet for recreational or entertainment purposes. Unfortunately, this led to a widening
gap between the official HTML specifications and HTML as it was implemented by
software developers, with both Microsoft and Netscape creating proprietary HTML tags
that were incompatible with rival browsers. As a result, today‘s web developers know the
difficulty involved in trying to code pages that look the same in every browser.
Other technologies besides HTML expanded the scope of web documents.
Macromedia‘s Flash software, formerly FutureWave‘s FutureSplash, was released as a
browser plug-in in 1996, enabling page authors to create more complicated interfaces and
174
175
Ibid.
Ibid.
67
embed animations in web pages.176 Other developments made distributing audio and
video much easier for the average user.177 Streaming technologies including RealPlayer,
Quicktime, and Windows Media enabled users to view video clips online, while
streaming audio and the MP3 format made it easy to distribute and share audio files.
When HTML 4.0 was released in 1999, the invention of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
gave web developers almost complete control over the placement of elements within web
pages.178 The web had transcended its origins as a purely textual platform designed solely
for the distribution of scientific documents to become a medium through which visual,
aural, video and interactive media were freely available to produce, distribute, and
consume.
The Boomtime
The internet grew exponentially during the 1990‘s, which can be attributed to two
factors. The development of usable browser technology, combined with increased
opportunities to access the internet, greatly decreased the barrier to entry for average
people. Prior to Mosaic, most internet applications were solely textual and, furthermore,
required some degree of familiarity with fairly sophisticated technology to use properly.
Email, for example, was primarily accessed through Unix or VAX/VMS systems and
required users to learn unintuitive, non-user-friendly commands. Mosaic, on the other
hand, was simple to use and free to download.179 Simultaneously, the NSF‘s rescindment
176
Flashmagazine. ―The Flash History.‖ Flashmagazine. 31 July 2002, <
http://www.flashmagazine.com/413.htm> (25 April 2005).
177
It was possible to distribute audio and video through binary files that could be downloaded from
USENET or IRC and then decoded; however, this process is not easy for technologically unsophisticated
users.
178
WC3. ―HTML 4.01 Specification.‖ W3C Recommendation. 24 December 1999, <
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/> (25 April 2005).
179
Segaller, 295-296.
68
of the ban on commercial internet use opened the door for thousands of commercial ISP‘s
to provide cheap dial-up connections, many of them cheaper than the proprietary AOL
and CompuServe networks.180 And even as home use was increasing, schools and
workplaces were beginning to offer internet connectivity as a matter of course.
As a result, the number of internet users increased exponentially during every
year of the late 1990‘s.181 In 1997, which marked the real beginning of the boom, the
number of websites grew from 640,000 in January to 1.7 million in December. By the
end of 1998, there were more than 300 million websites.182 (As a point of comparison, as
of today, July 16, 2005, Google is indexing more than 8 billion web pages, and it is likely
that there are many more that Google‘s bots are unable to reach.)183
―The dot.com boom‖ is a catchall term used to describe the internet fad that
spread through the United States and across the world in the late 1990s. While the
experience of the boom differed by location, in the United States it can be characterized
by several factors. The media‘s fervent emphasis on internet technology, combined with
the glamorization of internet companies, a stock speculation bubble that turned a visible
and vocal minority of young technology workers into millionaires, and a rapid increase in
useful internet applications, created a sort of optimistic frenzy and contributed to the
general assumption that that the internet was a foolproof way to make money and
improve life.184
180
Segaller, 297; Abbate, 197-200.
Coffman, K.G. and Odlyzko, A.N. ―Internet Growth: Is there a ‗Moore‘s Law‘ for Data Traffic?‖ In J.
Elli, P. M. Pardalos, and M. G. C. Resende, eds. Handbook of Massive Data Sets. (Norwell, MA: Kluwer,
2001) 47-93; Johnson.
182
Sheldon.
183
Google. Google.com. 2005, <http://www.google.com>, (16 July 2005).
184
Kuo, D. J. Dot.Bomb. (New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2001), 21-22.
181
69
The idea that the web was a path to certain wealth was eagerly spread by Wall
Street to maintain consumer interest in dot.com stock.185 ―Brick and mortar‖
companies186 viewed the internet as a crucial marketing tool. Many traditional businesses
scrambled to move online or created engaging websites to capture customer attention.187
Other dot.coms conducted business entirely over the internet, including virtual stores like
Amazon and Pets.com, and services from grocery deliveries to errands to video rentals
staffed by bicycle messengers.188 Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay became household names
and stock soared, regardless of the actual profits of the companies involved. Stories
abounded of companies with flawed business models or non-existent ―paths to
profitability‖ receiving venture capital and subsequently launching huge initial public
offerings. The corporate culture of the dot.coms, distinguished by young employees, frat
house-like offices and lavish marketing expenditures, was fetishized by the media189 and
young college graduates flocked to the centers of the ―new economy‖: San Francisco,
Seattle, Austin and New York.190
The boom reached its apex on March 10, 2000, when the NASDAQ composite
index hit a high of 5048.62, more than double the year before.191 The crash began slowly
and picked up speed. On March 11th, the market dropped 2 percent, and 4 percent the
185
Cassidy, J. Dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. (New York: Harper Collins, 2002) 135-136.
―Brick and mortar‖ is dot.com slang for a business with a physical storefront.
187
Kuo, 41.
188
Cassidy, J., 135.
189
Cassidy, 166-181.
190
In the interest of self-disclosure, I should point out that I was very much a part of the dot.com boom. I
began working at software companies in 1995, and by 1998 was working as a project manager at a web
services firm. I experienced much of the stereotypical dot.com culture first hand. Regrettably, I did not
manage to retire in my mid 20‘s.
191
Wikipedia contributors. ―Dot Com.‖ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 9
July 2005, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_com> (14 July 2005).
186
70
next day. Six months later, in October 2002, the NASDAQ had dropped 78 percent.192
The cultural impact of the dot.com crash was very significant. Thousands of companies
closed their doors, many technology workers were left unemployed, and the media had a
field day heaping scorn on 30-year-old former CEO‘s. The giddy optimism and sense of
possibility of the era were over, replaced with an economy in recession, a new president,
and a sense of wary conservatism.
Despite the crash, the effects of the boom were not entirely reversed. During the
dot.com frenzy, people had become accustomed to the internet, seeing it as a utility rather
than a novelty. The contemporary internet had been transformed again, this time into a
ubiquitous presence in the life of middle class Americans.
Contemporary Internet Era
The massive commercialization of the internet did not begin with the dot.com
boom. Recall that the NSF had already quietly sold the backbone of the Internet to the
major American telecommunications companies.193 Additionally, the free access that
characterized university connections and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) of the 1980‘s
had been replaced almost entirely by paid access.194 The power of the independent
service providers had decreased and most Americans now accessed the internet through
their cable or telephone companies.195 As a result, American media conglomerates
already controlled most of the internet‘s network infrastructure before the boom began.
192
Alden, C. ―Looking Back on the Crash.‖ Guardian Unlimited. 10 March 2005, <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1433697,00.html> (11 July 2005).
193
Abbate, 196-197.
194
Kessler, M. ―Pay-as-you-surf Internet Access Takes Off.‖ USA Today. 4 December 2003, D1.
195
Mark, R. ―Court Backs Cable in Brand X Case.‖ Internet News. 27 June 2005, <
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3515801> (1 July 2005). There are still noncommercial structures such as free wireless internet access, local freenet ISP‘s and the like, but they are
used by a minority of internet users.
71
The dot.com boom did, however, greatly affect the content of the internet, or
more specifically, the content of the World Wide Web. Nowadays, when a typical user
goes online, he or she is most likely looking at internet sites created and maintained by
major media and software companies. The parent companies of the most popular
websites in the United States as of April 18, 2005, according to the Nielsen/NetRatings
company, are Microsoft, Time Warner, Yahoo!, Google, eBay, the US Government,
RealNetworks, United Online, and Ask Jeeves. Time Warner‘s sites, which include
Entertainment Weekly, America Online, CNN, Netscape and People, have the highest
―sticky time‖ (amount of time a single user spends on a site in one sitting) at one hour
and 32 minutes per person.196
Parent Name
Microsoft
Time Warner
Yahoo!
Google
Ebay
United States Government
RealNetworks
United Online
Ask Jeeves
Amazon
Unique Audience
(000)
53,318
50,110
47,753
32,524
17,537
13,000
11,293
9,592
9,274
9,142
Reach
% Time Per Person
50.06
00:39:53
47.05
01:32:53
44.84
00:48:26
30.54
00:10:02
16.47
00:47:50
12.21
00:11:19
10.60
00:20:56
9.01
00:28:04
8.71
00:10:00
8.58
00:10:45
Figure 1: Top 10 Parent Companies of Popular Websites in the United States, Home Panel 197
This is not to say that media corporations own or control all online content. To the
contrary, there are still millions of independent websites. Moreover, in the last few years
196
NetRatings, Inc. ―United States: Top 10 Parent Companies, Week of April 18, 2005, Home Panel.‖
Nielsen//Netratings 18 April 2005, <http://direct.www.nielsennetratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_to&country=us> 21 April 2005.
197
Ibid.
72
there have been some encouraging recent developments in online culture that point to as
possible trend away from corporate control. Although it is out of the scope of this thesis
to discuss many in depth, I would like to touch on two in particular: the Free Culture
movement, and the rise of communally-created and organized content.
The ―Free Culture‖ movement attempts, broadly, to counter the influence of
major media companies over copyright law in the United States and worldwide. The
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and a
variety of other proposed and pending laws have resulted in an atmosphere where certain
types of technology and art, including certain research projects, are illegal to create or
distribute.198 Digital copyright activists point to the role of big media (namely the
Recording Industry of America and the Motion Picture Association of America) in the
creation of these laws, maintaining that the regulations prioritize corporate profitability
over the public interest.199 A variety of organizations like Downhill Battle, the Gutenberg
Project, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation work together to educate the public about
copyright and internet law, undertaking activist campaigns, launching websites, archiving
public domain content, and developing software that protects individuals from litigious
corporate entities. An alternative to restrictive American copyright law, the ―Creative
Commons‖ license series enables content creators to release creative works or inventions
with custom copyright notices. These allow creators to specify various degrees of ―fair
use‖, including attribution, non-commercial distribution, and ―share alike‖, which allows
198
See Lessig, L. Free Culture. (New York: Penguin, 2004) 183-207. Examples of innovation or creative
products which are currently illegal under US copyright law include the Beastie Boy‘s Paul’s Boutique,
Danger Mouse‘s The Grey Album, the DVD decryption program DeCSS, etc. For more on how current
copyright law stifles scientific innovation, see Samuelson, P. ―Anticircumvention Rules: Threat to
Science.‖ Science 293 issue 5537 (14 September 2001): 2028-2031.
199
Green, H. ―Are The Copyright Wars Stifling Innovation?‖ Business Week. 11 October 2004, <
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_41/b3903473.htm> (1 July 2005).
73
for the ―remixing‖ of works without fear of litigation.200 The great majority of these
innovations are occurring online, paving the way for online media that is not controlled
by major media companies.
Secondly, collaborative content creation tools like Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia, and the ―social bookmarking‖ site del.icio.us, which uses a ―folksonomy‖
model, point to a renewed interest in independent internet content that resides outside of
the control of the Big Five media companies.201 Wikipedia, which is a very
comprehensive encyclopedia that can be written and edited by anyone, is an example of
the type of resource that can be created by a great many people working together for a
common goal; the Wikipedia model is similar to that of open-source software
development. As a result, Wikipedia has become the #2 reference site on the web.202 (I
cite several Wikipedia articles in this thesis and have found it to be very useful when
researching internet-specific topics. For example, the Wikipedia entry on ―Canter and
Siegel‖ is very comprehensive, whereas the infamous legal team does not appear
anywhere in the Encyclopedia Britannica.) The Wikipedia is based on the wiki source
code, which makes it easy for people to organize and publish content without knowing a
great deal of HTML. The wiki source code is available for free, and is used by
individuals and businesses for a variety of organizational needs. Similarly, sites such as
Flickr and del.icio.us let users ―tag‖ and organize content, 203 a bottom-up taxonomic
200
Creative Commons. CreativeCommons.org. 2005, < http://creativecommons.org/> (1 July 2005).
Hammond, T., Hannay, T., Lund, B. and Scott, J. ―Social Bookmarking Tools: A General Overview.‖
D-Lib Magazine 11 no. 1 (April 2005), <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html> 26
May 2005; Pink, D. ―The Book Stops Here.‖ Wired 13 no. 3 (March 2005): <
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html> (1 July 2005); Rose, F. ―Big Media or Bust.‖ Wired
10 no. 3 (March 2002), < http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.03/mergers.html> (1 July 2005).
202
Burns, E. ―Wikipedia‘s Popularity and Traffic Soar.‖ ClickZ. 10 May 2005, <
http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/traffic_patterns/article.php/3504061> (1 July 2005).
203
Hammond, T., Hannay, T., Lund, B. and Scott, J.
201
74
scheme known colloquially as ―folksonomy.‖ This user-organized content relies on an
informed and engaged user base and has become very popular with early adopters.
There will always be independent content on the web, and I could point to a host
of other encouraging trends. Weblogs, frequently updated personal pages that discuss
current events or particular topics, have gained rapid popularity in the last few years.
Blogs have created a potential space for resistance to the mainstream news media, as
bloggers analyze, pick apart, and investigate mainstream news stories for themselves.204
The free, non-profit classified advertising site Craigslist has become a serious competitor
to more elaborate corporate sites (that charge users to place ads) by adopting a simple,
text-based interface that allows for low bandwidth and hosting costs.205 Peer-to-peer
applications like BitTorrent and BlogTorrent let users distribute content to potential
audiences of millions.206 In terms of network infrastructure, free wireless internet has
become popular in densely-populated urban areas. Even the open-source web browser
Firefox is rapidly gaining market share against Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer.207 These
developments, while covered in depth by the technology press and online pundits, are
still confined to early adopters of technological innovations. And the majority of
commercial applications do not have a non-commercial alternative.
Commodification of Identity
Having traced the transformation of the internet from a network created and
populated by academics, scientists, and computer homebrew hobbyists to a mainstream,
204
McGregor, J. ―It‘s a Blog World After All.‖ Fast Company 81 (April 2004), 84.
Kornblum, J. ―Web Board Craigslist Makes a Name For Itself.‖ USA Today. 28 September 2004.
206
Dvorak, J.C. ―The Scheme to Discredit BitTorrent.‖ PC Magazine. 20 June 2005, <
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1829724,00.asp> (1 July 2005).
207
Mossberg, W. ―Security, Cool Features Of Firefox Web Browser Beat Microsoft's IE.‖ The Wall Street
Journal. 30 December 2004, < http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20041230.html> (14 July 2005).
205
75
commercial application, I must now re-locate identity within this altered, contemporary
―internet.‖ Given the commercial nature of the internet, what does it mean to express
identity online when compared to previous scholarship on the topic? Is there a difference
in how identity operates online nowadays, compared to the way identity operated in the
early, hobbyist days of the internet? I maintain that the increase in corporate control of
the internet means that most of the spaces where identity is expressed are commercial
structures and, consequentially, companies now use identity to generate revenue. This
process isn‘t singular or monolithic; rather, it is a combination of market trends and
technological developments that have facilitated user tracking while necessitating
increased revenue generation. In this section, I use several examples to show how these
processes work, why corporations view identity as an asset, and how companies have
leveraged identity for their own purposes.
In the pre-commercial internet, identity expression generally took place in two
forms: through communicative interactions, and within static spaces. In the first, people
performed their identities through active interaction with other people in locations like
chat rooms, bulletin board systems, and message boards. This interaction didn‘t
necessarily need to be synchronous- a user could post a USENET message and receive a
reply a week later. However, these types of applications required users to perform their
identity consciously. Although one could make presumptions and inferences about a
user‘s identity from his or her vocabulary, style of typing, and use of jargon, most
scholarship concludes that people presented their identity by typing self-descriptions or
76
deliberately role-playing.208 Since these applications were generally entirely textual
(some let users send pictures or audio files back and forth, but this was rarely easy and
usually limited to, say, binary transfers within IRC), people were limited to text when
describing themselves. Textual self-descriptions are inherently performative. It‘s very
difficult to convey visual information textually without a certain amount of verbal verve
and creativity, or at least without thinking strategically about what information you
would like to present. Also, many of these applications replicated ―real world‖ features
like rooms, bars, clothes, and furniture. In order to ―use‖ these features, users had to
pretend to some extent or another that they were actually interacting with a room, object,
piece of furniture or whatnot, which is a strategic, imaginative, and theatrical type of
performance.209
It is no wonder that work on identity online during the 80s and 90s focused on
role-playing and deceit. When limited to text, it is relatively easy to perform in a manner
that is not entirely ―accurate.‖ As a result, in earlier scholarship, there are many instances
of chat room users representing themselves ―inauthentically‖ and the resulting fallout.
Turkle devotes a great deal of Life on the Screen to users who switched genders or
created entire false personas,210 while Stone includes a chapter on ―The Cross Dressing
Psychiatrist,‖ which references interactions that took place within a CompuServe group
in the early 1980s.211 In Campbell‘s Getting it on Online, which follows the interactions
between participants in a gay male chatroom focused on bodybuilding, one of the main
208
See footnote 3 for a few citations, particularly Kendall, 2002 on masculinity in chat rooms; Campbell,
2004 on gay sexuality in chat rooms; and Turkle, 1995 on general issues of selfhood and identity in MUD‘s
and IRC.
209
For more on these types of interactions, see Correll, S. ―The Ethnography of an Electronic Bar: The
Lesbian Café‖ Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 24 no. 3 (1995): 270–98.
210
Turkle, 210-232, as well as throughout the volume.
211
Stone, A. R. The War of Desire and Technology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995, 65-81.
77
characters presents himself as an extremely muscular hunk, who is revered by other
chatters as a paragon of fitness and source of expertise. Campbell eventually discovers
that the person behind this character is actually an overweight security guard living with
his parents.212 A certain amount of performance is required to present one‘s identity
within textual applications, and this presumably made it tempting to role-play other
characters or to present in different ways.
Identity expression also took place in static, textual areas of applications that had
not been designed to include frivolous or extraneous information. For example, within
UNIX and VAX-based email systems, the ―finger‖ command allowed users to check
whether another user was online.213 Users could create a text file called a ―.plan‖ which
displayed if another user typed ―finger username.‖ Plans originally existed to
display useful information like office hours and telephone numbers, but quickly became a
free space for quotes, stories, epigrams and other ASCII objects that reflected the
personality or mood of the user. Likewise, email and USENET users often appended their
messages with signature files, or ―sigs‖. A signature file is typically four or so lines of
text that includes the user‘s name, email address, affiliation, and a pithy quote, song lyric,
piece of ASCII art, or other textual object that reveals an aspect of the user‘s personality.
Signature files and .plans gave users a certain amount of personal agency within media
that were designed and built principally for academic and professional uses.214
212
Campbell 2004.
The ―finger‖ command is obsolete today. It may be possible to find a system that still allows open
fingering, but it is no longer familiar to internet users.
214
Within more recreation-oriented textual sites such as MUD‘s, users can enter a description of
themselves that will appear when the ―look charactername‖ command is entered. Since people in
MUD‘s are often playing particular characters within the game, however, this is less analogous to profilebased sites.
213
78
Today, internet users can express themselves through many different media, in an
enormously varied number of ways. Besides text-based chat applications like instant
messenger and IRC, voice-over IP (VOIP), microphones, and webcams allow aural and
visual chat. People can talk to each other while playing games, working on documents, or
using applications. Weblogs, personal homepages, online journals and profile-based sites
such as social networking services and personal ad networks allow people to present
themselves in more static ways that may also allow for interpersonal interaction.
I am particularly interested in the ways that corporate-owned structures like
profile-based sites encourage users to express themselves, since much online selfexpression takes place within applications or websites owned by large corporations rather
than independent entities. Social networking sites like Friendster, MySpace, and
Facebook, which are discussed in depth in the next chapter, require each user to create a
structured personal profile. The site then asks the user for the email addresses of their
friends, so that they can be persuaded to join the site as well. Online personals, one of the
few consistently profitable non-pornographic internet content genres, encourage
individuals to use marketing techniques to appeal to their target audience. Even
independent media is often reliant on corporate structures. Blogs, which have been
widely touted as an answer to corporate media consolidation, typically use technology
developed and deployed by large corporations. Google owns Blogger and former rival
BlogSpot,215 while SixApart owns Moveable Type, LiveJournal and TypePad, and is
beginning to roll out contextual advertising on TypePad-created blogs.216 Similarly,
215
Gallagher, D. ―Deals: Blogging Start-Ups Join Forces.‖ The New York Times. 6 January 2005, C3, 9.
Bradley, E. ―SixApart and Kanoodle Launch Contextual Blog Ads.‖ SearchViews. 23 June 2005, <
http://searchviews.com/archives/2005/06/six_apart_and_k.php> (1 July 2005).
216
79
Yahoo owns Flickr, a folksonomic photo-sharing site that is currently experimenting with
the implementation of contextual advertising throughout.217
In Nancy Baym‘s pioneering 2000 study of identity presentation in USENET, she
concluded that people‘s ability to shape their identity is influenced by the medium (a
point that is discussed in greater detail in the next chapter).218 Beyond the question of
how corporate sites encourage identity presentation when compared to non-corporate
sites, which is outside the scope of this thesis, I am interested in how people‘s
expressions of identity are commodified by corporate sites. Obviously, corporate sites, as
well as many independent sites, need a profit model in order to operate. But most of them
don‘t sell subscriptions or charge a monthly usage fee.219 How can sites like Friendster
continue to provide free content to millions of users?
The answer lies in the particular ways in which corporate sites value their users.
Increasingly, the specific value that users bring to popular websites is located in their
profiles, the spaces where users are encouraged to construct public personas. Other sites
use data provided by users when they sign up, move through the site, or contribute
content. Like television programs, which exist chiefly to appeal to particular user
demographics in order to sell commercials,220 many websites exist primarily to harvest
data from targeted user bases. The primary revenue stream for these sites is generated by
the sale or corporate use of individuals‘ online identity information. One‘s personal data
217
Baker, L. ―Flickr Testing Both Google AdSense and Yahoo Contextual Ads.‖ Search Engine Journal. 7
July 2005, < http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=1892> (15 July 2005).
218
Baym.
219
The major exception being online personal sites, which are the most lucrative non-pornographic
websites online. In 2003, they made $418 million dollars. See Egan, J. ―Love in the Time of No Time.‖ The
New York Times Magazine. 23 November 2003, 66-128.
220
Byars, J. and Meehan, E.R. ―Once in a Lifetime: Constructing ‗The Working Woman‘ Through Cable
Narrowcasting.‖ Camera Obscura 33-34 nos. 1-2 (1994-1995): 13-41.
80
is ―monetized‖ and one‘s identity becomes capital. This is a stark contrast to previous
conceptions of online identity as personally liberatory and happens in a variety of ways.
First, within individual internet applications, user information can be data-mined
for particular keywords and pieces of information. These trigger particular responses
from the system and allow for very direct marketing strategies. For example, Google‘s
popular email service, Gmail, provides users with two gigabytes of storage space. In
exchange, users agree to let Google mine their email for marketing purposes. As Gmail
users send and receive emails, keywords found in their emails are tracked and used to
display individually targeted advertisements.221 The user becomes a target market of one,
and his or her interests can be determined on a much more granular level than would be
possible otherwise. For example, Friendster provides fields for users to write in their
favorite bands, movies, and television shows. If a user loves The Sopranos and Scarface,
the data-mining application integrated into Friendster could display an advertisement for
the DVD box set of The Godfather.222 The knowledge that this Friendster user likes
gangster movies is a much more sophisticated piece of demographic information than
would typically be captured by user-completed forms, and is subsequently more valuable.
Secondly, the number of users to a site becomes an enticement to attract
advertisers. A site with millions of users can charge potential advertisers more per media
buy than a site with thousands of users, subsequently making more money. Even more
valuable than a site with a million users is a site with a million users who each spend an
221
Glasner, J. ―What Search Sites Know About You.‖ Wired. 5 April 2005,
<http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67062,00.html> (1 May 2005); Mehta, A. et. Al. ―AdWords
and Generalized On-line Matching.‖ Stanford Operations Research Colloquia. 9 February 2005 <
http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~saberi/adwords.pdf> (1 July 2005).
222
Friendster, Inc. ―Friendster Privacy Policy.‖ Friendster.com 2005, <
http://www.friendster.com/info/privacy.php> (1 July 2005).
81
hour on the site.223 Thus, websites who make money from advertising revenue are
encouraged to track both the site visitors and the length of time each visitor spends on the
site. This generally requires implementing cookies.
In addition to tracking this data for internal use, websites can and do collect
information about their users and sell it to firms that compile lists of potential customers
for direct marketing companies. ―Opt-out marketing‖, where users are added to
marketing lists by default and have to specifically request removal, is illegal in many
countries, and sites that operate there are required to get explicit permission from users
before selling their name, email address, income, or any other potentially profitable
personal details. This is not the case in the United States, and even reputable internet
companies such as Yahoo! often boost profits by selling customer information to other
companies.224
Third, as people are encouraged to convert their offline social network into online
data, users become assets as they provide access to their contacts. The internet today is
clearly a site of increased convergence. Technologies allow users to merge their mobile
phone books, instant messenger buddy lists, email contact lists, and ―friend lists‖ on
social networking services and journaling sites. Information that formerly did not exist in
a codified, structured form, such as a person‘s offline social group of friends and
contacts, or information that existed in disparate, non-internet connected devices, like the
contact list on a mobile phone or PDA, will increasingly be aggregated, organized, and
transferred online.
223
This is known as ―sticky time‖ or ―stickiness.‖ See Mulcahy, S. ―Sticky Is as Sticky Does.‖ ClickZ
Experts. 20 December 2001, < http://www.clickz.com/experts/media/agency_strat/article.php/943401> (1
July 2005).
224
―The Internet sells its soul.‖ The Economist. 16 April 2002,
<http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1085967> (1 May 2005).
82
This transfer is being handled by corporate sites. For example, BT Wholesale and
Phonesync offer subscribers the option to pay monthly to back up their phone books
online in case of phone loss or damage.225 SMS.ac, Playtxt and FriendX are services that
facilitate social networking based on location; in order to do this, they mine a user‘s
email address book, coordinate it with their mobile phone book, and email every contact
encouraging them to sign up for the service.226 Friendster users can import their e-mail
contact list from Hotmail or Yahoo! mail; contacts already on the service are
automatically added, and those who are not are sent a prompt to join.227 Many cell phones
now allow you to send instant messages to people on your buddy list, and likewise many
instant message programs allow you to send messages to people on their cell phones.228
Dodgeball, recently purchased by Google, 229 combines mobile phone books and social
networking sites (mobile social-software services, or MoSoSos)230 to create a service that
lets users send text messages to everyone in a group of friends through located nearby.231
These types of applications are a lucrative opportunity for mobile providers as the mobile
content market, which also includes games and ring tones, is predicted to triple its yearly
225
Miles, S. ―Losing Your Mobile Phone Contacts Maybe a Thing of the Past.‖ Pocket-Lint. 5 March 2004,
< http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=236> (15 July 2005).
226
Terdiman, D. ―MoSoSos Not So So-So.‖ Wired News. 8 March 2005, <
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66813,00.html?tw=wn_1culthead> (13 July 2005).
227
Friendster, Inc. ―Import E-Mail Addresses.‖ Friendster. 2005, <
http://www.friendster.com/invite.php?statpos=invitefriends> (1 July 2005).
228
―SMS is Passe- Get Ready for the Mobile Instant Messenger Revolution.‖ eWeek. 22 November 2004, <
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1731081,00.asp> (1 July 2005).
229
Kharif, O. and Elstrom, P. ―Connections, the Wireless Way.‖ BusinessWeek Online. 29 June 2005, <
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2005/tc20050629_3438_tc024.htm?chan=db> (15
July 2005).
230
Terdiman 2005.
231
Kandel, E. ― A Mobile Link for 90 Mutual Friends.‖ The New York Times. 13 May 2004,
<http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview.html?res=9506E7DD113CF930A25756C0A9629C
8B63> (1 May 2005).
83
revenue to $9 billion by 2006;232 the current generation of MoSoSos will bring in $215
million a year by 2009.233
Finally, a user‘s personal information is valuable insofar as it enables companies
to create detailed demographic profiles for individual users. Increasingly, corporations
are using aggregate data trackers to combine information for a single user from multiple
sources.234 Google might find it useful to track popular searches, but Amazon might find
this information even more useful, as it can be used to target particular products based on
those searches. This is distinct from the targeted keyword advertising described earlier as
it spans multiple sites and, as a result, the user is often unaware that his or her actions are
being tracked. Large interactive advertising agencies like Doubleclick, Gostats and
Hitbox track user movement through cookies that are placed by advertisements; however,
since advertisements served by these companies appear on a wide variety of sites, it is
possible to track a user‘s path as he or she surfs the internet.235 For example, Microsoft‘s
Passport, which is discussed in depth in the next chapter, tracks users across any
Microsoft web site while the user is logged in. These sites include Hotmail, MSN, MSN
Instant Messenger, Xbox, Microsoft.com, and many other segments of Microsoft‘s online
sphere.236
232
Freidman, M. ―Mobile Content Market Will Triple by Next Year: Survey.‖ Information Week 7 July
2005, <http://informationweek.networkingpipeline.com/165700445> (15 July 2005).
233
Kharif and Elstrom.
234
―The Internet sells its soul.‖; Safire, W. ―Goodbye To Privacy.‖ The New York Times. 10 April 2005,
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C06E3D7133FF933A25757C0A9639C8B63> (1 May
2005).
235
Dixon, P. ―Consumer Tips: How to Opt-Out of Cookies that Track You.‖ World Privacy Forum. 26
April 2005, < http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/cookieoptout.html> (1 July 2005).
236
Slemko, M. Microsoft: Passport to Trouble. 2001, <http://alive.znep.com/~marcs/passport/> (28 June
2005); Kormann, D. P. and Rubin, A. D. ― Risks of the Passport Single Signon Protocol.‖ Computer
Networks 33 (2000): 51-58; and Opplinger, R. ―Microsoft .Net Passport: A security analysis.‖ Computer,
36, no. 7 (2003): 29-35.
84
Even more worrisome, many of these aggregators are merging information
tracked online with information tracked offline. Others are collaborating with
governmental sources. As Kim Zetter wrote last year in the online version of Wired
magazine:
Data aggregators—companies that aggregate information from numerous
private and public databases—and private companies that collect
information about their customers are increasingly giving or selling data to
the government to augment its surveillance capabilities and help it track
the activities of people. Because laws that restrict government data
collection don't apply to private industry, the government is able to bypass
restrictions on domestic surveillance.237
For example, information on citizens in Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and seven other
Latin American countries was collected by a data aggregation company called
ChoicePoint, who then sold it to the United States government in order to ―verify the
identities of Latin American nationals accused of committing crimes in the United States
and help in the larger effort to find potential terrorists.‖238 ChoicePoint, which claims to
have a record on every single American consumer,239 maintains an internet marketing
business called DirectLink which, according to their website, ―links persistent individual,
household and address level identifiers with all input data sources.‖240
It is not out of the realm of possibility that independent sites might use some or all
of these techniques. However, having a single, non-profit web proprietor mining email or
237
Zetter, K. ―Big Business Becoming Big Brother.‖ Wired. 9 August 2004, <http://wiredvig.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,64492-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1> (28 May 2005).
238
Paul, P.C. and Ferris, S. ―Mexico Claims ChoicePoint Stepped Across Line.‖ Atlanta JournalConstitution. 27 April 2003, <
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/0403/27privacy.html?UrAuth=%60N%5CNUOcNVUbTTU
WUXUTUZT[U_UWUbU%60UZUaUbUcTYWYWZV> (28 May 2005).; Zetter, K. ―Brave New Era for
Privacy Fight.‖ Wired. 13 January 2005, < http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,662422,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1> (28 May 2005).
239
Sullivan, B. ―Database Giant Gives Access to Fake Firms.‖ MSNBC.com 14 February 2005, <
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6969799/> (14 May 2005).
240
Choicepoint Asset Company. ―ChoicePoint Precision Marketing.‖ Choicepoint.com. 2004,
<http://www.choicepoint.com/industry/telecom/direct_1.html> (1 May 2005).
85
collecting personal information is distinctly different from an enormous corporation
having access to the same data, especially considering the impact of media consolidation
on the parent companies of major websites. Jupiter Media Metrix estimates that from
1999 to 2001, the total number of companies that control 60 percent of all minutes spent
online dropped from 110 in March of 1999 to 14 in 2001.241 Software companies, who
own many very popular websites, are undergoing similar changes; Adobe and
Macromedia recently merged, resulting in the dominance of the graphics software market
space by a single company.242 Similarly, Microsoft is famous for buying smaller software
companies as soon as they exhibit particular innovation in any area: examples include
WebTV, Great Plains, Navision, and Groove Networks.243 These trends suggest that
major websites will merge just as offline media has done. Regardless, if independent
websites do start to adopt corporate tactics in order to remain competitive in the market
sphere, it makes it even more crucial that we develop a sophisticated understanding of
these techniques in order to ensure that users maintain online privacy and control over
their personal data.
Given that the modern internet has been transformed from a free space for selfexpression into one in which identity presentation is encouraged along bounded, revenuegenerating lines, I want to return to theories of identity to properly contextualize this
understanding of commodification.
241
Shah, A. ―Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership.‖ Corporate Influence in the
Media. 15 April 2004, < http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners.asp> (1
May 2005).
242
Taft, D. K. ―Will Adobe-Macromedia Merger Kill Competition?‖ eWeek. 25 April 2005, <
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1789283,00.asp> (1 May 2005).
243
Microsoft Corporation. ―Microsoft Investments and Acquisitions.‖ Microsoft.com 2005, <
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/InvestmentandAcquisitionsList.mspx#ACQ_2005> (1 July 2005).
86
Identity and Commodification
The link between ―identity‖ and ―commodity‖ is neither new nor confined to the
internet space. Although the transformation of people‘s personal information into
corporate assets has only recently become widespread both online and offline, scholars
have long understood identity formation in the context of commercialism. In what
Anthony Giddens refers to as ―late modernity‖, one‘s identity is no longer fixed or
inherent. Instead, identity is created by the individual, and becomes a series of complex
and changing negotiations between the use and consumption of products that function as
symbolic markers (and whose meaning is fixed by social contexts). This process is still
more complicated by the fact that people are increasingly encouraged to construct and
position their own identities as commodities to be consumed by others. The concurrent
transformation of identity into commodity and impetus for self-commodification makes it
even more crucial that we analyze the structures through which self-presentation takes
place. Before moving on to case studies of particular internet applications, I want to delve
into the links between identity and commodification to locate these discussions within
previous scholarship.
Giddens provides a useful structure to discuss the way that people form their
identities in contemporary society. He maintains that the major identifying characteristic
of ―late modernity‖ is a turning away from traditions and toward reflexiveness, the
process by which people consider and make decisions about how to behave in society.244
Giddens‘ ―late modernity‖ is an ideal, not a fixed descriptor of Western society in the 21st
century; however, the fact remains that most people no longer base their social roles on
244
Giddens, A. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Modern Age. (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1991) 32; see also Gauntlett, D. Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. (New
York, NY: Routledge, 2002) 96.
87
what is traditionally expected of them by virtue of their class, ethnicity, family,
nationality, and the like (of course, all of these things come into play during the process
of identity construction). Rather, people in late modernity are required to formulate their
own social roles and identities. The self is not only a project to be worked on, but a
project that must be worked on; it is the modern citizen-consumer‘s responsibility to
choose a lifestyle, career, set of relationships, style and other such signifying
characteristics in order to compose his or her identity and thus define him or herself to the
world. This process often takes place through consumption.245
So how does the average person in late modernity construct an identity? Recall
the discussion of Kathryn Woodward in the first chapter. Identity is marked by
difference, and difference is likewise signified through ―symbolic markers.‖ Symbolic
markers, material objects that denote particular meanings, are given import within social
contexts. Bordieu maintains that consumption is specifically used to mark social
difference; in other words, consumption becomes a class marker.246 But this is not limited
to class. For example, within the Byzantine social systems of teenagers, a particular brand
of sneakers can convey infinite hipness (and social capital), while a different brand can
mark the wearer as hopelessly out of touch with fashion, style, and what is ―cool.‖ The
sneakers themselves remain just sneakers; their meaning only exists within the shared
understanding of the group. And this meaning can change rapidly and significantly. A
few years later, the reviled inferior brand may be dragged into the light by retro
revivalists and displayed as an even more potent symbol of coolness. Hebdige writes that
subcultures ―communicate through commodities even if the meanings attached to those
245
Giddens, 81-83; Gauntlett, 102.
Storey, J. Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods. (Athens, GA:
University of Georgia Press, 1996), 115-116.
246
88
commodities are purposefully distorted or overthrown.‖247 In the case of the retro
revivalists refashioning a formerly uncool brand into something avant-garde, the meaning
is completely detached from anything that the sneaker manufacturer or other social
groups may intend. The point is that difference, and therefore identity, is signified
through the use of a neutral object that is given a particular definition through social
interaction and understanding.
The ideology of consumerism can be boiled down to this: that the meaning of life
is found in what we consume rather than what we produce.248 In late modernity, almost
any aspect of ourselves we might want to convey – our sexuality, intelligence, education,
political beliefs, nationality, hobbies – can be marked through consumption. ―Identity‖ is
thus transformed into ―lifestyle‖. People are encouraged to ―express themselves‖ by
purchasing particular objects that are given meaning within social contexts, subcultures,
and networks. This process, however, is not completely one-sided. Notably, consumption
can be viewed as an active process in itself, what de Certeau calls ―secondary
production.‖249 In other words, the way that products are used and are given meaning is a
constant negotiation between the understanding of the dominant culture and the
appropriation/reinterpretation of meaning by individual or subcultural consumers. For
example, in Williams‘ recent study of players of Magic: The Gathering (a competitive
fantasy card game), he concludes that owning valuable Magic cards was only one aspect
of the players‘ identities; other cultural practices, such as sharing, treating other players
well, good sportsmanship and skills were more important in formulating player identity.
In fact, the players who spent lavish amounts on Magic cards but did not demonstrate
247
Hebidge, D. ―Subculture: The Meaning of Style.‖ (London: Routledge, 1979) 95.
Storey, 114.
249
Storey, 126
248
89
other values important to the community were looked upon derisively.250 Formulating
identity is a complicated negotiation that should not be reduced to simple buying and
selling of lifestyles.
Two contemporary examples should suffice to demonstrate the complex
relationship between consumption and the construction of identity. Witness the ―hipster‖
archetype, which originated in the independent music scenes of minor American cities,
the trappings of which were quickly co-opted and marketed to teenagers. Cultural
practices such as rejecting expensive microbrews in favor of the cheap American beer
Pabst Blue Ribbon251 and wearing ―trucker hats‖ for ironic, kitsch affect were
transformed into symbolic markers, easily purchased at mall stores, which indicated that
the practitioner was hip and cutting edge. As this trend-to-market252 time decreases,
subcultural denizens are beginning to circumvent the process by creating their own
artificially marketed lifestyles. The ―electroclash‖ movement of 2002 was created by
Larry Tee, a Williamsburg, Brooklyn DJ who packaged bands (synthpop and electronic
acts who drew on 1980‘s new wave for inspiration), fashion (neon colors and early 80‘s
kitsch) and drugs (cocaine) into a wholly artificial subculture that was promoted through
his successful Electroclash Tour of the early 00‘s. Many of the bands involved did not
write their own music or even perform live; Fischerspooner and W.I.T (a band made up
of three models who lipsynched and danced in public) delivered their overproduced
synthpop to the public with a heavy dose of irony. The idea of ―authenticity‖ was
250
Williams, J. P. ―Consumption and Authenticity in the Collectible Games Subculture.‖ The Georgia
Workshop on Culture and Institutions, 21 January 2005, Athens, GA, 25-26.
251
Walker, R ―The Marketing of No Marketing.‖ The New York Times. 22 June 2003, Section 6, p. 42.
252
This is retail jargon for the amount of time it takes a company to observe a trend, capitalize on it, and
sell it in stores. The teen-targeted ―alternative‖ store Hot Topic owes much of its success to its extremely
low trend-to-market time and constant turnover of merchandise.
90
completely, strategically, and purposefully turned on its head. Electroclash was created
specifically as a marketable gimmick and fittingly burned itself out in less than two
years.253
The idea that people find their identities through consumption is nothing
new, and neither is the cooptation of ―authentic‖ or ―underground‖ lifestyles by corporate
interests. As of now, the only entities literally buying and selling the identities of others
are corporations, but there are larger, subtler ramifications. Increasingly, people
strategically formulate and present their identities to convey particular messages or to
position themselves for consumption by others. What is the impact of people viewing
their own identities as commodities and presenting themselves accordingly?
The spread of the business fad ―branding‖ to the interpersonal realm demonstrates
this shift. A highly influential boom-time article,―The Brand Called You‖,254 instructed
dot.com workers and freelancers to construct the ―self‖ as a brand, or something to be
consumed. Much as people in late modernity construct their identity based on the
products they consume, the economic boom-time, with its emphasis on flexibility, jobswitching and freelance career-building, necessitated self-promotion, thereby
encouraging consumption of self on a larger scale. Independent professionals were told
―You're every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop. To start
thinking like your own favorite brand manager, ask yourself the same question the brand
253
See Easton 2003 for a somewhat precious take on this topic. Easton, A. ―Electroclash: The Filth and the
Dispassion.‖ Stylus Magazine. 11 August 2003, <http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=61> (1
May 2005).
254
Peters, T. ―The Brand Called You.‖ Fast Company 10 (1997): 83-92,
<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html> (1 March 2004).
91
managers at Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my
product or service does that makes it different?‖255
Recently this branding ideology has been extended to dating. Coupland locates
written personal ads within a cultural narrative of commodification by which the self and
the wanted other become products in the marketplace.256 In other words, in writing a
personal advertisement, the author presents herself as a product, using words or
photographs that convey a particular, presumably appealing message, such as a
hypothetical athletic, professional blonde. Simultaneously, the writer describes the
―wanted other‖ as a product- tall, dark, handsome, and rich. Personal ads show the
presentation of identity as a confined series of self-selected, packaged, and marketable
aspects.
Rachel Greenwald, in her popular 2003 self-help book How To Find A Husband
Over 35 Using What I Learned At Harvard Business School, explicitly encourages
women to brand themselves to appeal to potential romantic interests. She writes ―A
personal brand is a must-have for every woman who is single and over 35…Your future
husband may be someone you meet on a chance basis whereby he will take only a few
moments to decide if you are someone he wants to get to know. It‘s better that you help
him see what you want him to see—your brand—than allow him to make snap judgments
that may not be in your favor.‖257 Branding positions self-commodification as an active
process in which people strategically construct their identities in order to ―sell‖
themselves to potential customers: business contacts and romantic partners. Given that
255
Ibid.
Coupland, J. Dating Advertisements: Discourses of the Commodified Self. Discourse and Society 7
(1996):187-207.
257
Greenwald, R. How to Find a Husband Over 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School.
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2003) 83.
256
92
identity is marked through consumption, it isn‘t surprising that we see personal ads that
tout favorite movies, books, and brands of cars and clothing as personality or identity
signifiers.
As companies commodify the identities of individual users, individual users are
likewise encouraged to strategically and proactively position themselves as objects to be
consumed. Furthermore, the late-modern individual both constructs and presents identity
through demonstrably buying and using particular marketized products and services.
Commodification and identity are inextricably linked, and, unsurprisingly, these
processes are remarkably in line with the interests of corporations. A sophisticated
understanding of the negotiations involved is absolutely crucial to referencing the
operation of identity online and the possibility of providing a space for resistance to these
processes.
The Digital Divide
Before moving on in the next two chapters and discussing the specifics of how
commodification operates online today, I would like to disclaim that although it is easy to
universalize the impact of internet technology, it is dangerous to do so without qualifiers.
The Digital Divide generally refers to the gap in access to internet technology. During the
late 1990‘s, this gap followed lines of race, gender, and class, but recently, although there
are still disparities in access to the internet, the lines of race and gender have all but
disappeared.258 Currently, the most important United States factors are geography259 and
258
The racial gap closes as household income increases. See Pearson Education, Inc. ―Percent of
Households with Internet Access, 2001.‖ Information Please Database. 2005,
<http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0880773.html> (1 April 2005). Very recently the amount of women
online exceeded the number of men. See Chabrow, E. ―More American Women than Men Go Online.‖
93
class260. Additionally, 99 percent of public schools have internet access261 and 87 percent
of teenagers have regular (weekly or daily) access to the internet.262 These figures would
imply that for the younger generations of Americans, internet access has become almost
universal and is likely to increase.
The digital divide is still significant internationally. Although North Americans
make up only 5 percent of the worldwide population, they comprise a quarter of all
internet users. Europe and Australia are similarly overrepresented, while Africa, the
Middle East, and Latin America are significantly underrepresented online. Asia currently
makes up 56% of the world population and 34% of the internet population, and this
number is rapidly increasing as internet access in China and Southeast Asia continues to
rise exponentially.263 It is likely that we will see major changes in internet traffic patterns
as the rate of access across the world increases.264 In summary, we should not fall into the
trap of believing that the internet experiences of Americans can be universalized.
InformationWeek. 7 April 2005,
<http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160502074> (25 May 2005).
259
Geographic lines would include rural vs. urban populations, depending on the infrastructure, for
example, households that can subscribe to high-speed DSL lines or cable modems. See Parker, E. ―Closing
the Digital Divide in Rural America.‖ Telecommunications Policy 24 (2000) 281-290.
260
Class might include statistics such as the percentage of households who can afford to have a computer in
the house and pay for internet access, but also includes factors such as education. See Robinson, J.,
DiMaggio, P and Hargittai, E. ―New Social Survey Perspectives on the Digital Divide.‖ IT & Society 1
no.5 (Summer 2003) 1-22.
261
National Center for Education Statistics. ―Internet Access.‖ NCES Fast Facts. 2003, <
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=46> (1 May 2005).
262
Pew Internet and American Life Project. ―Girls lead the way in using the internet to hunt for colleges
and other schools.‖ Pew Internet and American Life Project. 23 March 2005, <
http://www.pewinternet.org/press_release.asp?r=102> (1 April 2005).
263
BBC News. ―Net‘s Spread.‖ The iGeneration: Bridging the Digital Divide. 2003, <
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/03/technology_digital_snapshots/html/2.stm> (26 April
2005).
264
This will have significant, and interesting impacts, including the decrease of English as the online lingua
franca, and possible conflict between non-English speakers and English speakers, who are used to being the
majority online.
94
Conclusion
The development of internet technology has reached a point where greater
multimedia integration and personalization are available than ever before.
Simultaneously, corporations have access to sophisticated surveillance and tracking tools
that make privacy online a pressing concern. The increased commodification of internet
space combined with these technological advances make it crucial that we understand the
implications of expressing and presenting identity online. The next two chapters offer
case studies of particular internet structures which exemplify the conflict between the
way that corporations manage and handle identity, and the way that identity has been
characterized in the cyberculture literature.
95
Chapter Three: Self-Presentation Strategies in Social Networking Sites
Introduction
There are very real conflicts between the ways that users understand their
identities online and the expression encouraged by commercially-driven applications.
Software typically shapes and privileges self-presentation in particular ways, often
limiting or encouraging users to shape their identity expression along commercially
acceptable lines. The specific mechanisms by which this is accomplished are most easily
understood by placing particular online spaces under the microscope. In this chapter, I
undertake a thorough examination of social networking sites265 (SNSs) such as
Thefacebook, MySpace and Friendster. My goal is to show both how people choose to
present themselves through profile-based sites and how site structures privilege certain
types of identity presentation.
In this chapter, I introduce social networking services and briefly discuss the
foundational theories of social network analysis that have influenced the design of these
applications. I look particularly at the spaces extant within these sites for user selfpresentation and identity expression, and the problematic assumptions supporting these
structures. Despite these inherent problems, users have adopted a variety of creative
strategies to circumvent the limitations of the technologies. Next, I situate social
networking sites within the larger context of the commercial internet, as discussed in the
previous chapter. Thus, the application assumptions are predicated on the for-profit
265
SNS can be used to refer to either ―social networking sites‖ or ―social networking services.‖
96
nature of the sites, and the ways in which identity is commoditized are fundamentally
linked to the specifics of revenue generation.
Social Networking Services
In the last three years, SNSs have rapidly grown in popularity among internet
users worldwide. Friendster, the original social networking application, was founded in
2002, has a current user base of seventeen million people,266 and has subsequently
spawned a small industry. Some of these websites, such as MySpace and Thefacebook,
have surpassed Friendster in popularity by targeting particular populations and
incorporating new features on a regular basis. Others, like Microsoft‘s Wallop, Rojo, and
Yahoo!360, combine social networking with additional sociable functionality like RSS
feeds, blogs and picture sharing. Overall, there are several hundred SNSs online today,
including Tribe.net, Jobster, Dogster and Orkut.267
All these applications are generally based on a common idea drawn from social
networking analysis: that publicly articulated social networks have utility. That is,
enabling actors to codify, map and view the relational ties between themselves and others
can have useful and positive consequences. SNSs are designed specifically to facilitate
user interaction for a variety of goals, mainly dating, business networking, and
promotion. However, I maintain that the current generation of social networking software
266
This statistic is according to the Friendster corporation. The homepage of Friendster claims 17 million
as of May 25, 2005. Friendster, Inc. Friendster. 2005, <http://www.friendster.com/> (25 May, 2005).
However, Friendster has recently been overtaken by competitors such as MySpace and Thefacebook; the
CEO of Friendster quit on May 25th, and MySpace now claims 9 million unique visitors a month and has
7th highest number of page views a month. See ―MySpace Ranks Seventh in List of Domains with Highest
Number of Pageviews.‖ WWWCoder. 14 March, 2005.
<http://www.wwwcoder.com/main/parentid/472/site/4544/266/default.aspx> (3 May 2005). Like most
internet statistics that are provided by proprietary sources, these should be viewed as questionable without
independent corroborating data available.
267
Meskill, J. ―Home of the Social Networking Services Meta List.‖ The Social Software Weblog. 14
February 2005, <http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/9817137581524458/> (30 June 2005).
97
is problematic in several ways, particularly in the types of self-presentation privileged
within the applications. The types of self-presentation strategies that the applications
allow are directly influenced by the sites‘ commercial purposes rather than user needs. As
a result, users deploy a variety of strategies in order to increase the utility of the networks
and circumvent these commodified assumptions.
It is important to keep in mind that SNSs are an immature technology. Amin &
Thrift write about the ―invisibility‖ threshold of a technology, or the point where it is
used without thinking.268 For example, when we change the television channel, we don‘t
think ―I am going to pick up and use the remote control which will change the channel
using infrared transmission‖; rather, we think only of the function, changing channels.
The technology that facilitates this process has become invisible. In contrast, users of
social networking sites are generally focused on the use of the applications, rather than
their utility. It remains to be seen whether SNSs will outlive their novelty and become a
useful part of internet users‘ social structures.
Social Network Analysis
A social networking service allows users to publicly articulate and map their
relationships between people, organizations, and groups. Although there are differences
between the various social networking applications, they tend to have a basic structure in
common. A new user begins by creating an account, filling out a profile, searching for
other users, and adding people to his or her list of friends. Once people have established a
network of ―friends‖, they become connected to a larger network of friends-of-friends.
Depending on the SNS, users can browse through the profiles of other individuals (some
268
Amin, A and Thrift, N. Cities: Reimagining the Urban. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Polity, 2002), 58.
98
sites restrict your ability to browse to profiles in your ―extended network‖, or people
separated from you by a predefined number of ―degrees‖). To find specific people, users
can search profiles by name or email address or browse the network by a particular set of
criteria (high school name, single people under the age of 30 in Memphis, people who
like David Bowie). Within the website, users can send messages to each other, chat, post
on bulletin boards, and write ―testimonials‖ for their friends. Most SNSs include
community features that allow users to converse about shared activities or interests, and
others have incorporated weblogs, journals and photo sharing into their feature set.
Before delving into the particularities of identity presentation, I would like to
situate SNSs within social network analysis (SNA), which allows researchers to study
micro-level social patterns by relating them to macro-level social theories.269 Garton,
Haythornthwaite, and Wellman define a social network as ―a set of people (or
organizations or other social entities) connected by a set of social relationships, such as
friendship, co-working or information exchange.‖270 Social network analysis involves
mapping and measuring relationships between network nodes, or people, entities and
groups, to examine information flow across ties. SNA allows researchers to view
networks both visually and mathematically271 to predict information flow, friendship
networks, and behavioral patterns. Researchers who use network analysis to study human
behavior generally assume that the ways in which actors, or nodes, behave is dependent
on their relationships (ties) and social patterns (structures). When using network analysis
269
Granovetter, M. ―The Strength of Weak Ties.‖ The American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973),
1360-1380.
270
Garton, L., Haythornthwaite, C., and Wellman, B. ―Studying Online Social Networks.‖ Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 3 no.1 (1997), <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue1/garton.html>
(18 February 2003), 2.
271
Krebs, V. ―How to do Social Network Analysis.‖ Orgnet.com. 2004, <
http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html> (18 February 2004).
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to study, for example, historical events or movements, cultural, political and normative
structures are generally set aside in favor of looking closely at mapped networks.272
For instance, Granovetter uses social network analysis to predict how two people,
each connected to a third by a ―strong tie‖, will behave towards each other. Note that the
―strength‖ of a tie is determined through a set of criteria that includes the amount of time
two people spend together, their intensity of emotion, amount of intimacy and ―reciprocal
services which characterize the tie.‖273 Take Kristy, an actor, or node, in a social
network, and her two closest friends, Claudia and Mary Anne. Granovetter makes the
argument that Claudia and Mary Anne will have at least a weak tie to each other due to
their mutually strong ties to Kristy. Moreover, it is likely that Claudia and Mary Anne
will have a strong tie to each other, as an adversarial relationship between the two would
strain each woman‘s strong tie with Kristy. Thus, the most important factor in predicting
Claudia and Mary Anne‘s behavior toward each other is their role in the network that
connects them to Kristy.
At this point it is useful to distinguish ―community‖ from a ―social network.‖ The
key element in the social network is the network itself, which may be made up of many
communities linked together, or disparate elements that are linked by a single weak tie.
Communities, on the other hand, imply a group of people linked by some shared interest
or commonality.274 Although communities may be social networks, social networks are
not communities.
272
Emirbayer, M., and Goodwin, J. ―Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency.‖ American
Journal of Sociology 99 (1994): 1411-1454.
273
Reciprocal services include conversational reciprocity, favors, and the like; see Granovetter, 1361.
274
Obviously the definition of ―community‖ is contested. The traditional definition of community could be
paraphrased as ―solitary groups of densely-knit neighbors located in a common geographical space‖ (see
Wellman, 1997 for similar definitions). Rheingold defines virtual community as ―social aggregations that
emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient
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With this in mind, how does social network analysis approach online interaction?
Can it include virtual communities or actors whose primary relationships may be
conducted online? Garton, Haythornthwaite, and Wellman argue that social network
analysis can easily be applied to social interactions that take place online.275 For example,
SNA can be used to study patterns of information flow, particularly forms that are highly
effective online (viral or memetic information flow, for example). Second, the authors
posit that online networks are highly useful for establishing weak ties, since the social
overhead associated with contacting weak ties is lower online than that in real life. In this
way, online social networks may actually be easier to bridge than ―real-life‖ social
networks, allowing information to be transferred to larger, broader groups of actors.
Finally, online social networks allow people to interact who are separated by physical
spatiality or distance,276 and, may, in some cases, allow people to bridge social
hierarchies as well. Not only is social network analysis useful for looking at online
interactions, online interactions are particularly suited for establishing and using social
networks.
human, feeling to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.‖ See Rheingold, H. The Virtual
Community: Homesteading On the Electronic Frontier, revised edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000,
xx. A more inclusive conception of community that can apply to either online or offline communities is
Wellman‘s 2001 definition: ―Networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a
sense of belonging and social identity‖. See Wellman B. "Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of
Personalized Networking". International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25 no. 2 (June 2001):
245.
275
Garton, Haythornthwaite and Wellman, 1997.
276
Note that Granovetter did not take distance into account when formulating his theory of weak ties
insofar as predicting actor‘s behavior. Kristy could have very strong ties to both Claudia and Mary Ann, but
if the latter two actors are located geographically in disparate areas, they may not know each other
regardless of their relationship to Kristy. It is interesting to contemplate this conundrum when looking at
online social networks, as they can and do span physical distance. Whether online interaction solves this
―problem‖ is unclear.
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Social Networking Sites
Given that online social networks can be subject to the same forces studied by
social network analysts in offline social networks, the impetus behind the creation of
formal social networking sites is to harness these forces (e.g. information flow) for
instrumental good. It is important to note that both formal and informal social networks
already exist online; online communities exist in an immensely diverse array of sites,
ranging from networked video games and chat rooms to fan bulletin boards, professional
listservs and informal networks of artists who collaborate on digital music and video.
However, SNSs originated both in the theories of Granovetter and his ilk and the business
world‘s emphasis on networking. Whereas the founders of some services (Wallop, for
example) claim a great influence from social network analysis, and others (like Jonathan
Abrams, the founder of Friendster) claim complete ignorance of theory,277 the
commonality is the use of a social network for a particular purpose. Namely, the current
social networking sites aim to increase the ability of users to find jobs, dates, new friends,
apartments and the like through extended networks of friends.
Information spread within social networking sites works in two ways. First, weak
ties are the most effective way of gathering and disseminating information. Weak ties
function as ―bridges‖ to populations outside one‘s immediate social circle and connect
disparate groups. Granovetter writes:
Whatever is to be diffused can reach a larger number of people, and
traverse greater social distance (i.e. path length), when passed through
weak ties rather than strong. If one tells a rumor to all his close friends,
277
boyd, d. ―::cringe:: Jonathan Abrams did not invent social networks.‖. Apophenia.16 March 2004,
<http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2004/03/16/cringe_jonathan_abrams_did_not_invent_social_n
etworks.html#004071> (31 May 2005).
102
and they do likewise, many will hear the rumor a second and third time,
since those linked by strong ties tend to share friends.278
Social network sites increase the bridges to groups other than one‘s close friends by
facilitating the ―friending‖ of both strong and weak ties. Additionally, the ability to post
messages on bulletin boards that reach everyone on one‘s ―friends‖ list allows this
extended network to be utilized for instrumental good. Likewise, messages posted to
bulletin boards and blog services from both strong and weak ties can be viewed.279
Secondly, the overall goal of social networking sites is to facilitate users making
new connections through the service.280 SNSs are predicated on the idea that meeting new
people and increasing one‘s social network is useful and beneficial to all parties in the
network. The services, then, make it easy for users to directly contact people outside their
immediate network. If users are looking for a specific person, such as an old friend from
college, they can search by name or email address. Less formally, users can browse and
view the profiles of other users, even if they are not ―friends‖. The profiles available for
the user to view depends on a variety of factors, including how many ―degrees of
separation‖ there are between both people and the privacy options available (while some
social networking sites allow users to view the profile of anyone on the network, others,
like Thefacebook, have sophisticated privacy options that let the user choose who has
access to their personal information).
278
Granovetter, 1366.
Note that ―strong‖ and ―weak‖ ties are not conceptualized the same way within social networking
services and the social networking analysis literature. Every ―friend‖ within a social networking service is
considered a ―strong tie‖, and every ―friend-of-friend‖ (or contact separated by a mutual relationship) is,
more or less, considered a ―weak‖ tie. However, one‘s SNS ―Friends‖ can range from a best friend, sister,
or roommate to a vague acquaintance from a decade ago – both strong and weak ties. Likewise, a weak tie
is not necessarily one that you are connected to through a friend. See Donath, J. and boyd, d. ―Public
displays of connection.‖ BT Technology Journal 22 no. 4 (October 2004): 72.
280
Donath and boyd, 77.
279
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It is important to note that there is a presumption of trust involved with social
networking sites that is somewhat different than it might be on, say, online personal
services. Danoth and boyd identify a number of features of social networking sites that
contribute to this. First, social networking sites publicly display participants‘ connections
to others as a key part of their profile. These connections can, first, help identify the
participants‘ identity as ―authentic‖, as contextual information can be gathered from the
publicly articulated network. Second, the availability of the network of friends can
provide a ―check‖ to people misrepresenting themselves in their profile, as they are less
likely to blatantly lie in the context of their offline social network. Thirdly, the visible
network allows users to ―check up‖ on potential dates or business partners; if there is a
mutual friend (or even friend-of-friend) in common, users can send them a message and
check that John Doe is actually the nice guy that he appears to be.281
Unfortunately, the strictly binary (friends or not friends) trust ratings built into
social networking sites are not sufficient to accurately determine whether one‘s ties can
be trusted.282 Furthermore, in my own experience I have found that my students are likely
to present very personal information (phone number, dorm room location, and class
schedule) within the popular college social networking site Thefacebook, as it restricts its
user base to students from certain colleges by verifying correct *.edu email addresses.
Students ―trust‖ the application as they believe (erroneously) that their information can
only be viewed by undergraduate students from their own college.283
281
Donath and boyd, 73-76.
Golbeck, J. and Hendler, J. ―Inferring Trust Relationships in Web-Based Social Networks.‖ Submitted
to Association for Computing Machinery Transactions on Internet Technology, January 2005.
283
Thefacebook does allow students to restrict the viewing of their profile to certain groups of people. I‘ve
found, though, that most undergraduates don‘t know about these options and don‘t know how to configure
them to protect their privacy.
282
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Self-Presentation in Social Networking Sites
Identity presentation within social networking applications takes place primarily
within highly structured, multi-modal user profiles. In order to fully understand this
presentation, it is useful to refer back to Goffman‘s theories of ―front stage‖ and
―backstage‖ identity performance, as discussed in the first chapter. 284 ―Front stage‖
performances, in Goffman‘s analysis, consist of scenarios in which a face is presented
publicly, such as a waiter working in a restaurant waiting on customers. ―Back stage‖
performances, on the other hand, take place in private spaces reserved for group
members, such as the restaurant kitchen. Students might present a ―front stage‖ identity
in class, but present ―backstage‖ while hanging out with other students afterwards at
happy hour.
In SNSs, front stage performance of identity takes place through profiles, while
additional identity information may be conveyed through private messages, emails, or
personal meetings. However, because this information is ―backstage‖, it is not available
to the casual observer or researcher. Information about the user‘s identity can also be
gleaned contextually from the other member‘s of the user‘s publicly articulated network,
but this is dependent both on the information that the other members of the network make
public, and how the observer reads the network. Hence, user self-presentation is limited
to profile construction.285
284
Goffman, E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. (New York: Anchor Books, 1959), 22-30, 111140.
285
Note that in this section I am drawing examples primarily from Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, and
Thefacebook. These services were chosen primarily based on popularity; however, there are hundreds of
social networking services and it is outside the scope of this thesis to analyze each one. Although the great
majority of social networking services follow the same structure, it is likely that there will be slight
105
The specifics of profiles differ slightly across applications, but they follow a
generally codified structure with three parts: text, pictures and testimonials. The textual
aspect consists of profile information that is written by the user and chosen according to
the fields provided by the site, generally name, age, geographical location, likes and
dislikes, ―About Me‖ and ―Who I‘d Like to Meet‖. The second part, typically labeled a
―Photo Album‖, allows users to upload and display digital pictures. Finally, testimonials,
originally conceived of as a reputation system, are short messages written by the user‘s
―friends‖ that appear on the user‘s profile, and are in practice a generally open space for
varied commentary by others. Looking at the most popular social networking services,
MySpace allows users the most customization, as users can configure their page by
changing colors, images, and fonts. Some users choose to embed audio and video clips.
Friendster recently launched a feature that allows users to choose from a variety of preset color schemes for their profile, including ―Acid Wash‖, ―Bad Attitude‖ and
―Marshmallow Peeps‖. In the last year or so, most of the SNSs have added features such
as blogging and RSS feeds; currently, these are primarily used by early adopters. It will
be interesting to see whether these increased outlets for self-presentation influence user
strategies. Overall, however, all social networking sites limit the user to an identity
presentation that is both highly pre-structured and singular.
This is problematic on three levels. First, the rigid profile structure encourages the
user to present him or herself in a way that is partly constructed by the application, not
the user. Whereas the agency of a person to self-represent is limited in face-to-face
communication by social context, power structures, and so forth, there are still a variety
differences across applications; these differences are expected and should not contradict the conclusions I
come to in this chapter.
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of flexible presentation strategies available. For example, accent, body language, speech
patterns, linguistic choice and appearance are all user-configurable facets of selfpresentation. Social networking sites limit identity presentation to a singular, fixed
profile, and most services do not provide users with configuration or customization
options to choose their own particular representation strategies.286 MySpace allows
customization options to a point, but still only allots one profile per user and provides a
set series of fields.
Secondly, the way that profiles are structured is not neutral; rather, power is
embedded throughout the applications in a variety of ways. Generally, the user is
portrayed not as a citizen, but as a consumer. All three applications encourage people to
define themselves through the entertainment products they consume: music, movies,
books, and television shows. Although both Orkut and Thefacebook include political
ideas, both sites define ―politics‖ as simply ranking oneself on a spectrum of political
identity (very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, and very conservative). Not only
are users treated as consumers, they are encouraged to consume others in a concept of
networking that privileges social capital over friendship or community building.
―Networking‖, in business terms, is a goal-oriented process in which one‘s social circle is
constantly expanded in order to connect with as many people as possible, in order to gain
business advantages. Many professional organizations have networking evenings where
members can quickly meet-and-greet a variety of people in their field who may be able to
connect them to useful information or resources, or vice versa. Networking ideology
commodifies relational ties and encourages amassing as many contacts as possible
without deepening connections between actors in order to ―bridge‖ disparate networks. It
286
See Orkut, Friendster, and Thefacebook for examples.
107
is this aspect of social networking that social networking applications are attempting to
capture and apply across a larger set of social phenomena, including business, but
extending to friendship, romantic relationships, and community activities.
Third, SNSs inherently exclude certain segments of the world population. For
instance, the majority of sites are American applications that attract primarily US
users.287 Orkut has a very high percentage of South American, Middle Eastern and Asian
users, presumably due to its ties to Google, a site that is localized for international use
and boasts an enormous international user base. Additionally, since all SNSs require
internet access, their user base is inherently limited to a certain segment of the
population, cutting non-Internet users out of the network completely. We could apply this
criticism to all internet applications, but I think it is particularly egregious in social
networking as the utility of the network is diminished as non-internet enabled individuals
are excluded completely. Even if these people may be fully integrated into an offline
social network, such as place of business or group of friends, once that network is shifted
to the online sphere, they are excluded. (Following the discussion in the last chapter
regarding the ever-increasing impetus for offline social networks to move online, this is
likely to increase). Finally, none of the most popular social network sites have a profile
field for racial or ethnic identity. Although this means users have agency over how they
wish to represent their ethnic background, it may set up whiteness as normative, given
that within American culture, white ethnic identity is usually privileged as ―normal‖.
Recall the work of Kolko as considered in the first chapter: when race is erased from the
287
Thefacebook limits its user base to particular colleges. Right now the great majority of the colleges on
the network are American, although there are a few universities in the U.K. and Canada. It is likely that
more colleges outside the US will be added in the future.
108
online landscape, it is usually replaced by a presumption of whiteness. None of these
cultural assumptions are addressed or discussed within social networking applications.
Authenticity
Social networking sites overall presume that each user has a single ―authentic‖
identity that can be presented accurately. As I‘ll discuss later in this chapter, Friendster,
for example, strongly discourages any profiles that they deem to be ―inauthentic‖, and
subsequently purged a great many of them from the site in 2003.288 Likewise,
Thefacebook requires users to provide a working, current *.edu email address to verify
that the user is a student at a particular university. But what is the authentic? Presumably,
it is a truthful and ―real‖ picture of oneself, with accurate information as to one‘s name,
age, sexuality, hometown, likes, and dislikes. Other social applications do not limit their
users in the same way; online personal sites, for example, allow each user to create
multiple profiles so they can present themselves in different ways. SNSs, in contrast,
allow one profile per email address, and limit the user‘s ability to change it based on
audience.
This fixity can be quite difficult to navigate when one is used to representing him
or herself in multiple ways. This becomes most problematic when considering a
completely exposed, articulated public network. The persona one presents for a family
member or professional colleague differs greatly from the way one‘s identity operates in,
for example, a romantic context. Consider the concept of passing, discussed in the first
chapter. Passing assumes that one chooses to reveal certain aspects of his/her identity at a
particular time, often for reasons of safety. An openly gay man, for example, may use
288
Mieszkowski, K. ―Faking Out Friendster‖. Salon.com. 14 August 2003,
<http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/08/14/fakesters/print.html> (7 May 2005).
109
Friendster to look for possible romantic partners. However, as open as he may be in his
personal life, he may not be completely ―out‖ in his professional life, or to his parents or
hometown contacts. Revealing his queerness becomes a strategic move, depending on
context. Social networking applications remove this option, resulting in a lack of agency
that can have real-world implications (losing a job, a friend, or parental approval).
In the first chapter, I outlined the concept of ―identity play‖, the idea that
expressing identity online is liberatory, revealing, and somehow unique to the internet
realm. Juliet Davis further critiques this view of technology as a utopian playground in
which identity can be freely played with and transgressed. She writes ―this idea follows
the form-as-substance myth: i.e., that we can simply leave our history and cultural
trappings behind and take on a new nature merely by taking on its visual form; that
virtual reality provides the phenomenological experience necessary to approximate
constructions of those identities in socially resonant ways.‖ 289 She is discussing virtual
reality, but her ideas apply to social networks as well. Identities do not change just
because they are expressed through software; they are still subject to the same power
relations and problems that they are in the real world. Limiting each person to a single
profile and treating each in the same way ignores the fact that people live in a
contextualized world, with implications to match. Instead of idealized sites where power
is non-existent and all people are treated equally, a new type of power is re-inscribed
within technology: the problem of visibility and policing, and the fact that the technology
is not at all neutral.
289
Davis, J. Myths Of Embodiment And Gender In Electronic Culture. 2004,
<http://www.julietdavis.com/VC/paper.html> (1 June 2004).
110
User Presentation Strategies
While these applications severely limit the ways in which users can express
identity, we should be careful not to disregard user agency. On the contrary, in order to
navigate the assumptions built into social networking sites, users adopt a variety of selfpresentation strategies. While the majority of users present in an ―authentic‖ manner,
others obfuscate information by presenting themselves in an ironic fashion, or by creating
a false or alternate profile (known informally as ―Fakesters‖). I maintain that these
differences in self-presentation are based on two overall factors. First, the lack of
contextual presentation within social networking sites requires savvy users to control the
amount of information presented in order to avoid conflicting self-presentation. Second,
both the social context in which the user is located and the assumptions of the application
itself influence each person‘s self-presentation choices. I spent some time evaluating
profiles on Friendster, Orkut, and MySpace to examine the different ways that users
choose to create profiles and present themselves within social networking services.290
Overall, I found that the majority of profiles could be divided into three categories, what I
call Authentic, Authentic Ironic, and Fakesters.
290
200 profiles were analyzed from the three main services. See Marwick, A. "I'm a Lot More Interesting
than a Friendster Profile": Identity Presentation, Authenticity and Power in Social Networking Services.‖
To be presented at Association of Internet Researchers Conference (AOIR 2005). Chicago, IL, USA, 5-9
October 2005, 2004.
111
Figure 2: Example of an Authentic profile
An Authentic profile is one in which the user includes legitimizing personal
information and characteristics such as their ―real name‖ and ―location‖ to further the
perception of ―authenticity‖. The great majority of profiles fall into this category, since
most users create profiles in ways intended by the application. These users enter their
(presumably) real names, pictures, and identifying information, and do not attempt to
―play‖ fictional characters, celebrities, things, groups, or communities. It is important to
reiterate, as discussed in the first chapter, that ―authenticity‖ is a problematic concept,
and, like identity, varies based on context. However, the users who present in this
―authentic‖ manner are presumably making self-presentation decisions based on their
assumptions of context and audience. Furthermore, it is likely that the majority of users
will not run into problems within social networking applications. However, as discussed
in the last chapter, convergence between online and offline social structures is likely to
112
increase; similarly, ―structures of conflict‖ (or applications that attempt to ―configure the
user‖291 in manners that are personally or socially problematic) will multiply as this
process continues.
Figure 3: Example of an Authentic Ironic profile
A subgroup of the Authentic profiles, the Authentic Ironic profile is one in which
a user is generally performing as themselves, but uses sarcasm, irony, or satire as a
modifying strategy. For example, the user may use a funny picture of a celebrity as their
default photograph, identify themselves with a pseudonym, or state that they are a
hundred years old. However, the user is still ―themselves‖. In other words, their friends
will know to look for them under this profile, and usually their testimonials will bear this
out by including their real name. Most Authentic Ironic profiles include a mix of
―authentic‖ and ―ironic‖ information, for example using a name like ―GreenpotBluepot‖
291
Danah boyd‘s terminology. See boyd, d. ―Friendster and publicly articulated social networks.‖
Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 24-29, 2004.
Please also note that danah boyd does not capitalize her name.
113
but including accurate pictures, or stating one‘s occupation as ―sheepherder‖ while
maintaining that their location is Manhattan. Users may create an Authentic Ironic profile
for a variety of reasons, including amusing their friends, trying to act cool (if such
profiles are normative within their larger social structure), for fun, or in order to mask
their true information from people they may not want viewing it (their parents, for
example).
Figure 4: Example of a Fakester profile
Profiles that are clearly non-Authentic can be labeled as Fakesters. Into this
category fall profiles that purport to be celebrities, objects, places, activities, and obscure
in-jokes. This category has a wide variation, ranging from profiles that serve as substitute
communities (such as a college dorm) to Fakesters designed as promotions for dance club
nights or magazines. It is important to note that Friendster, when originally launched, had
114
no community features built into the application.292 As a result, some users created
Fakesters in order to compensate for this lack. For example, fans of the television show
―Alias‖ might create a Fakester profile so that people who liked the show could ―friend‖
it and thus meet each other. At the same time, sites such as MySpace and Thefacebook
built community into the site very early, so Fakesters were far less common. Currently,
creating a site-sponsored Fakester profile on Friendster or MySpace has become a
popular marketing technique with television shows, movies, and musical acts targeting
the Gen X and Gen Y consumer.293
Erving Goffman wrote that the two primary factors influencing self-presentation
choices and strategies were context and audience.294 As previously discussed, people
change their dramaturgical performance based on who they are interacting with, and the
context (environment, social structure) in which the interaction takes place. These factors
are equally applicable to online environments, and, in fact, help to explain why users
might choose to create a type of profile that either obfuscates their ―authentic‖ identity or
presents but a single facet of what is a truly multifaceted personality. Within social
networking services, the audience is not immediately apparent. Users construct even an
―authentic‖ profile based on their assumptions about the audience, which might include
people who they already know within the network, or their friends who are active internet
users. More savvy users understand that there is no way to determine who might see their
profile, and so creating a fake or deliberately abstruse profile may be a way to circumvent
292
Whereas some might argue that all of Friendster is community based, it lacked the ability to create
groups such as professional associations, alumnae, cat lovers, etc. These features were built into MySpace
and Tribe from the beginning. See Hirashima, T. ―Yahoo 360‖. Straight, No Chaser. 29 March 2005, <
http://www.straightnochaser.org/MTArchives/2005/03/yahoo_360.php> (1 July 2005).
293
Terdiman, D. ―Friendster‘s Fakester Buddies.‖ Wired News. 12 July 2004,
<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64156,00.html> (7 May 2005).
294
Goffman, 239-240.
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potential conflicts with audience. Since most social networking sites lack the
functionality that allows users to manage multiple profiles or vary information based on
the viewer, Fakesters and authentic/ironic profiles are creative ways to manage necessary
multiplicity in self-presentation. For example, using a nickname that is familiar only to
one‘s core group of friends prevents the user from being found by people outside that
group.
We can understand context in social networking sites in three different ways.
First, the architecture or construction of the application has a great deal of influence over
the self-presentation strategies available for the user. MySpace, for example, has
advanced customization features which allow for a much wider variety of selfpresentation options than do Thefacebook or Friendster. As a result, MySpace profiles
differ in terms of embedded multimedia, additional functionality (animated cursors or
JavaScript calls), supplemental images, and the like. Similarly, Friendster‘s early lack of
community features led some users to create Fakester profiles in response. Secondly,
different applications have different instrumental uses and thereby encourage particular
types of singular self-representation. SNS that are specifically designed for job searching,
such as LinkedIn, Ryze, or Jobster, encourage (explicitly or implicitly) highly
professional self-representation, while users of Thefacebook, which is targeted towards
college students, tend to create playful, humorous profiles. Thirdly, locating the user
within a particular network of other users can provide clues to their self-presentation
strategies. Browsing a social networking service, one can see commonalities between
groups of friends: some post primarily sexy pictures of themselves, while other groups
create deliberately abstruse profiles that function as social capital within their peer group
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or contain specific symbolic markers. Self-presentation strategies are influenced by both
the application‘s structure and the influence of one‘s social group.
Application Assumptions
Given that some users clearly want the ability to present themselves in ways
viewed by social networking sites as ―inauthentic‖, why do the services privilege
―authentic‖ identity expression? How do they privilege authenticity, and under what
assumptions do they classify a profile as ―inauthentic‖?
The answer to the first question is twofold. During Friendster‘s 2003 purge of
Fakesters from the network, Jonathan Abrams, the founder of the site, discussed the
Fakester phenomenon in an article for Salon magazine:
―Fake profiles really defeats the whole point of Friendster…Some people
find it amusing, but some find it annoying. And it doesn‘t really serve a
legitimate purpose. The whole point of Friendster is to see how you‘re
connected to people through your friends.‖295
In an interview for the San Francisco Weekly, Abrams reiterated ―The whole
point of Friendster is that you‘re connected to somebody through mutual friends,
not by virtue of the fact that you both like Reese‘s Peanut Butter Cups.‖296
Abrams, and by virtue the Friendster corporation, believed that Fakesters were
somehow less legitimate than more ―authentic‖ profiles. Connections through
communities were besides ―the point‖ of Friendster, which was ostensibly to meet people
for dating and networking through already-existing social channels. This is a curious
view of networking; in both the business and social world, people certainly meet other
people through similar interests. Think of the possibilities inherent in a UNIX user group
295
Mieszkowski.
Anderson, L. ―Attack of the Smartasses.‖ SF Weekly. 13 August 2003,
<http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2003-08-13/news/feature_print.html> (7 May 2005).
296
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for an IT administrator looking for a new employee, or a single medieval enthusiast
meeting her future partner at a Society for Creative Anachronism event. Moreover,
Abrams believed that even people who posted pictures of things other than their own
faces were disobeying the rules of the network. ―The pictures are supposed to be a means
of identifying you,‖ Abrams insisted in the SF Weekly interview.297 The idea of the
internet as providing any degree of anonymity was eclipsed by Friendster‘s need to
authenticate identity. Presumably, the reliability of the network was threatened by any
idea of ―false‖ or ―inauthentic‖ identity – even a user innocently adding a picture of
Angelina Jolie or Homer Simpson to her profile.
The idea that an ―authentic‖ identity is a ―trustworthy‖ one is common within
social software. Returning to Amazon.com‘s ―Real Name‖ service discussed in the
introduction, Amazon assumes that a user using his or her legal name is equivalent in
trustworthiness to reputation networks built up over time. In this case, Amazon allows
users to rate reviews as helpful or unhelpful; a reviewer with many helpful reviews has a
better reputation on the site than one who posts unhelpful, inane, or irrelevant comments.
The idea that a person should be trusted simply because they choose to use their ―real
name‖, rather than judged on any contributions they have made to community
maintenance or embedded knowledge, is based on these presumptions of authenticity.
Think of eBay: sellers can use any name they want—most people don‘t use real names on
eBay. EBay shoppers determine whether or not they can trust a seller based on the
feedback system, which can encapsulate the experiences of thousands of people and
transactions. This seems to be a far better indication of trust than whether or not someone
is using a legal name – which, surely, can be faked or falsified.
297
Anderson.
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This is compounded by the fact that social networking sites already have
reputation systems built in. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the presumption of trust
comes from testimonials and connections to other users. A person who fakes a picture or
obscures their information but has ten friends in common with you and many positive
testimonials would probably be viewed as more trustworthy than someone with a
completely ―authentic‖ profile who has no friends or testimonials (or friends and
testimonials that you don‘t like or find off-putting).
So the ―trust‖ reason doesn‘t really make sense within the context of social
networking sites. I maintain that the real answer lies squarely in the commercial aspect of
the sites. In the previous chapter, I discussed a variety of ways in which individual user
identities become commodified assets. Social networking sites are clearly commercial
sites, and, as their operating costs are high, and signing up is free, revenue must be
generated in ways other than charging users for accounts (the personal ad model).
However, SNSs, most of which have many users who spend a lot of time on the site, can
be very valuable to potential advertisers as a way to deliver a particular target audience.
Recall from the last chapter that within many corporate sites, individual user identities are
transformed into corporate assets. As a result, SNSs have experimented with a variety of
profit models, including classic ad banner advertising, mining user profiles for keywords
for targeted text ads, and allowing companies to sponsor their own Fakester profiles.
This last technique has been used on many social networking sites, but it is
particularly ironic on Friendster considering the controversy over 2003‘s Fakester
purge.298 A Friendster PR rep made the distinction:
298
Terdiman.
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―The issue here is actually about consumer protection… We do, as a
policy, strongly discourage fake profiles. A rogue user hiding behind a
Jesus profile, for example, has the potential to abuse the service or users in
many ways. In case of the Anchorman [DreamWorks film that purchased
Friendster space as part of its marketing campaign] characters,
DreamWorks owns the right to the characters and there is nothing
fraudulent about it.‖299
In other words, fake profiles purchased by movie studios are funny and lighthearted,
whereas Fakester profiles are potentially fraudulent and dangerous to the user. Clearly it
is unlikely that a Dreamworks-sponsored character would attempt to ―abuse users‖.
However, it is equally unlikely that users would place more trust in a user who created a
profile of Jesus. Abrams‘ belief that the utility of the network is compromised by
Fakester profiles would seem to apply equally to corporate-sponsored profiles.
Overall, it is in social networking services‘ best commercial interest to limit a user
to one profile in order to more clearly determine that user‘s demographics. A user with
ten profiles, all with differing information, is much harder to turn into a series of
marketable demographic categories than is a single ―authentic‖ profile. Friendster is
partnered with DoubleClick,300 who, as described in Chapter Two, place aggregate
advertising cookies on user‘s computers. A user who is constantly logging in and out of
Friendster with different usernames would make the cookie less valuable, as the user
could not be as easily tracked between sites. Although MySpace, Tribe, and the like all
disclaim in their privacy policies that data transmitted to third-party advertisers is ―nonpersonally-identifiable‖, the fact is that the data in question includes ―IP address, profile
299
Lisa Kopp quoted in Terdiman.
―DoubleClick Signs Friendster for Online Ad Management.‖ Internet Ad Sales.com. 20 January 2005,
<http://www.internetadsales.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4452> (5 May 2005).
300
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information, aggregate user data, and browser type.‖301 This information is much more
valuable to advertisers and data aggregators if it can easily be linked to a single user,
even if the granular details of that single user‘s profile are not available.
Almost all the major social networking sites also use targeted advertising based
on keywords in users‘ profiles and search results. MySpace, Tribe and Friendster all
employ Google AdWords, which mine individual data (such as email or profile
information) and display text ads targeted to particular keywords in the data. For
example, searching MySpace for ―cats‖ brings up a search results page that shows mostly
―Sponsored Results‖ (including Cat Items on eBay, the Cat Companion DVD, and
Touring Broadway: Cats), with the non-sponsored Search Results (MySpace pages that
include the keyword ―cats‖) given minor real estate on the page (See Figure 4).
Moreover, this type of data mining takes place in profiles as well; on Tribe.net, looking at
a Seattle-based profile will bring up the text ads ―Traveling to Seattle‖ and ―Seattle
Apartment.‖
301
See the MySpace privacy policy at MySpace.com "Privacy Policy." Myspace.com. 25 February 2005,
<http://www.myspace.com/misc/privacy.html> (15 March 2005) and the Tribe.net privacy policy at Bean,
W. "Tribe Networks Privacy Policy." _Tribe.net_. 1 June 2004,
<http://seattle.tribe.net/template/pub%2CPrivacy.vm?r=10302> (15 March 2005). Tribe‘s privacy policy is
far more specific to the site and in general Tribe is much better about disclaiming how personal information
is actually used. Regardless, Tribe uses both third party advertisers who collect aggregate information and
Google AdWords.
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Figure 5: Ad placement based on search results on MySpace
The current emphasis on unitary identity presentation in social networking
applications is clearly problematic for users. Users need to be able to present in diverse,
multiple, and particular ways, or else obfuscate their data so they can contextualize selfpresentation in much the same way as they might do offline. I had an experience while
interviewing for PhD programs in which a member of my future possible cohort had
found my profile on Friendster. This profile was designed to appeal to my friends, and it
had not been edited or modified for professional self-presentation. I was embarrassed and
edited it immediately upon returning home. While this was a fairly innocuous incident, it
is not difficult to imagine instances in which this type of conflict would have more
momentous consequences. Moreover, application design in an ideal world would
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prioritize how users are actually using an application or how users want to use an
application over the types of application user that will generate the most revenue.
Conclusion
Social networking sites currently function as structures of conflict. Users both
require and desire the ability to vary their self-presentation, which takes place within
profiles, based on both context and audience. This need fundamentally conflicts with the
aims of application designers and parent companies, who emphasize the creation and
maintenance of authentic identity presentation. This ―authenticity‖ is rhetorically
presented as necessary to proper functioning of a social networking service based on trust
and replication of offline social networks. Simultaneously, singular identity presentation
is required in order for companies to generate revenue based on targeted ad words and
demographic aggregators. This conflict illustrates the inadequacy of conceptualizing
online identity without taking into account the particular ways in which singular identity
is privileged by commodified corporate structures.
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Chapter Four: Xbox Live and the Political Economy of Video Games
Introduction
In cyberculture scholarship, video games have traditionally been viewed as sites
where self-expression is a playful exploration of alternate roles and identities. Much of
this work has analyzed either completely textual worlds (MUDs, MOOs) 302 or massively
multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).303 In this chapter I begin with the
understanding that neither MUDs nor MMORPGs represent the gameplay experience of
the majority of people, as console games are both more popular and mainstream than
either textual chat-based worlds or PC games. Therefore, in order to accurately discuss
current identity expression in gaming, we must examine console games. However, until
very recently, consoles did not have the technological capacity to afford multiplayer
online gaming and subsequent geographically distributed communication, making it
difficult to research identity expression through gameplay interaction. This has changed
with the current generation of systems that combine console gaming with internet
connectivity. Given that console users play within proprietary, closed systems, I maintain
that identity in these environments is subject to the same market forces that affect other
commodified online realms. In contrast to previous portrayals of identity in gaming as
302
MUD stands for Multiple User Dungeon; MOO stands for MUD, Object Oriented.
See Turkle, S. Life on the Screen. (New York: Touchstone, 1995); Sunden, J. Material Virtualities.
(New York: Peter Lang, 2003); Mortensen , T. ―Playing With Players: Potential Methodologies for
MUDs‖. Game Studies 2, no. 1 (July 2002); Filiciak, M. ―Hyperidentities: Postmodern Identity Practices
in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games.‖ In The Video Game Theory Reader, ed. J.M.P.
Wolf and B. Perron, 87-102. (New York: Routledge, 2004); Steinkuehler, C. A. ―Massively Multiplayer
Online Videogames as a Constellation of Literacy Practices.‖ Paper presented at the 2003 International
Conference on Literacy, Ghent, Belgium, 22-27 September 2003; McBirney, K. ―Nested Selves,
Networked Communities: A Case Study of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction as an Agent of Cultural
Change.‖ The Journal of American Culture 27, no. 4 (December 2004): 416-431; Ducheneaut, N., and
Moore, R.J. "Let Me Get My Alt: Digital Identiti(Es) in Multiplayer Games.‖ CSCW 2004 workshop on
Digital Identities, Chicago, Illinois. 6 November 2004.
303
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uniquely flexible, today‘s systems favor a unitary, authentic presentation of self that
encourages both sociability and, as we saw in the second chapter, increased profits for
console manufacturers.
Looking specifically at Microsoft‘s Xbox and even more specifically at the Xbox
Live system, I argue that the use of Gamertags within Xbox Live and their integration
with Xbox.com exemplifies the way in which identity singularity is emphasized within
gaming systems in order to generate revenue for the parent company. Given that Xbox
360, Microsoft‘s next generation game system, will maintain and extend these
capabilities, it seems clear that this trend will continue. While this move towards
monetized singularity can be both beneficial and problematic for users, it is crucial to
contextualize future work around identity and gaming within current business practices
associated with the game industry, so as not to idealize gaming as the last remaining site
for postmodern identity variance.
In this chapter, I trace the origins of Microsoft‘s Xbox system and situate it within
the contemporary video game industry. I analyze in depth the differences between PC and
console gaming in order to demonstrate the limitations of previous identity work based
on either online role-playing games or text-based chat worlds. Returning to identity
theory, I complicate previous work by identifying seven different ways in which users
may negotiate their identity while gaming. The final section of this chapter looks at Xbox
Live in detail, examining how the system handles identity, the strengths and limitations of
this strategy, and how it is likely to evolve in the next generation of consoles. I conclude
with a call to action for future games researchers to look beyond MUDs and EverQuest
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and ensure that the economy of gaming is integrated into any analysis of identity
expression or self-presentation within interactive entertainment.
Introducing the Xbox
Last year I went to E3, the video game industry‘s yearly exhibition and one of the
biggest trade shows in the United States. The LA Convention Center was completely
filled with enormous displays from game developers, hardware manufacturers and
software publishers. The major companies‘ booths cost several million dollars304 and the
most popular featured ―booth babes‖, female models dressed as scantily clad game
characters who posed for pictures with the overwhelmingly male conventioneers. The
spectacle was immense, as is fitting for an industry that currently grosses more than 10
billion dollars a year in the US alone305 and 28 billion a year worldwide.306 Millions of
game consoles have been sold in the United States since the late 1970s and, in the current
market, hotly anticipated releases like Halo 2 can sell up to 2 million copies on their first
day of release.307 Overall, the video game industry grosses about half as much as the film
304
Figures are not publicly available, but according to an editor roundtable at gaming fansite 1up.com, the
2004 Sony booth cost $15 million dollars. See ―E3 2004 Roundup.‖ 1up.com May 2004,
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zd1up/is_200405/ai_ziff127423> (12 June 2005).
305
Marriot, M. ―In Console Wars, Xbox is Latest to Rearm.‖ The New York Times. 13 May 2005,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/technology/13xbox.html> (13 May 2005).
306
This figure is in US dollars. See Lowenstein, D. ―Electronic Entertainment Expo 2005 State of the
Industry Address.‖ Speech presented at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2005, Los Angeles, California. 13
May 2005.
307
Halo 2 broke all records in this department, earning $125 million on its first day of release, beating
Spider Man, the record holder for films, which earned $114 in its first three days of US release. See
Becker, D. ―‗Halo 2‘ Clears Record $125 Million in First Day.‖ ZDNet News. 10 November 2004,
<http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5447379.html> (May 15, 2005)
In fact, the Spider Man II video game has sold 7 million units worldwide. Spider Man II sales figures from
Activision Investor Relations. Interview by author, 16 May, 2005, Seattle. Telephone call.
See also Activision, Inc. ―Activision Reports Record Third Quarter and Nine Month Fiscal 2005 Results.‖
Activision Investor Relations. 7 February 2005,
<http://investor.activision.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=155092> (16 May 2005).
126
industry,308 almost as much as the music industry,309 and continues to grow; worldwide
revenues are projected to hit $41.4 billion in 2009.310
Within this heady market, Microsoft‘s Xbox console has been a surprise
contender in the market space. Although Sony‘s PS/2 has sold about 85 million consoles,
compared to about 20 million Xboxes and roughly 18 million Nintendo Gamecubes, the
numbers have evened out in the last year.311 Microsoft‘s recent announcement of the
Xbox 360 next-generation system, due to premiere a full year before Sony‘s PS/3 and
Nintendo‘s Revolution, has set off another round of PR rivalry between the three major
manufacturers. The ―console wars‖, as the battle for clear market dominance is known,
are likely to persist for the immediate future.
For a company with a reputation among hardcore hackers and geeks for being the
―evil empire‖, Microsoft‘s move into the gaming sphere was risky. At the time of the
Xbox launch, Sony dominated the home market: the PS/2 had been out for a year and had
shipped 20 million units worldwide.312 This market dominance was exactly what had
Microsoft worried. Before the PS/2 launched, Sony hyped it as a ―Trojan horse‖ which
308
Lowenstein. You‘ll often see the ―fact‖ cited that the video game industry grosses twice as much as the
film industry; this assumes sales of both hardware and software, which is like comparing apples to oranges.
The film industry does not take into account sales of hardware like DVD players and home theatre systems;
Lowenstein maintains that that the video game industry shouldn‘t either. The figures cited in this paragraph
are based on sales of games alone.
309
The music industry sold about $33 billion (US dollars) in physical product in 2004 compared with $28
billion in video games. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry ―Global Music Retail Sales,
Including Digital, Flat in 2004.‖ IFPI.org. 22 March 2005, <http://www.ifpi.org/sitecontent/publications/rin_order.html> (12 June 2005).
310
Including online and portable game revenues. DFC Intelligence ―DFC Intelligence Releases New
Market Forecasts For Video Game Industry.‖ DFCint.com. 22 September 2004,
<http://www.dfcint.com/news/prsep222004.html> (12 June 2005)
311
The PS/2 was released a year prior to the Xbox, so the comparison is not necessarily accurate. These
sales figures also seem to include the first version of the PlayStation, which was released in 1995. Teather,
D. ―Sony Unveils PlayStation 3‖. The Guardian. 18 May 2005,
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1486489,00.html> (24 May 2005).
312
Becker, J. and Wilcox, J. ―Will Xbox Drain Microsoft?‖ C|net News. 6 March 2001,
http://netscape.com.com/Will+Xbox+drain+Microsoft/2100-1040_3-253654.html (15 May 2005)
127
users would initially purchase to play games, but end up using as a living-room
entertainment center, taking the place of both the television and home PC.313 Microsoft
execs worried that a cheap web-enabled game console could both supplant their
dominance in the home PC market, and establish Sony‘s market lead in a space where
Microsoft was lacking a presence.314 The awareness of this threat coincided with the
aggressive evangelism of several Microsoft employees who worked on DirectX,
Microsoft‘s core authoring tool for multimedia application environment. They saw the
DirectX technology as something that could enable more sophisticated and
technologically advanced gameplay than was available on the PS/2.315
Microsoft already had a games division. The company wasn‘t seen as a major
player in the gaming industry, but flagship titles like Flight Simulator constituted a steady
revenue stream and were popular and well respected. But all of Microsoft‘s game
business was PC based. The major problem with programming for PC games is that there
is no hardware consistency in the user base. Users have a huge variety of hardware and
software configurations, ranging from hardcore gamer geeks who update their video and
audio cards every year to casual gamers who use their six year old PC primarily for word
processing and emailing Grandma. Anyone who has spent several hours tinkering with
hardware and software just to run the latest version of Office knows that there is an
almost infinite array of things that can go wrong with PC configuration.
313
Takahashi, D. Opening the Xbox. (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2002), 17
Kent, S. The Ultimate History of Video Games. (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2001), 574-575.
315
DirectX is Microsoft‘s core technology for multimedia application development for the Windows
platform and is used in authoring games, video players, and the like. See Microsoft‘s page on DirectX:
Microsoft Corporation. ―Microsoft DirectX Technology Overview.‖ Microsoft.com. 18 March 2002.
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx?url=/windows/directx/productinfo/overview/def
ault.htm> (12 June 2005).
A comprehensive discussion of the creation of the Xbox by Microsoft‘s Seamus Blackley and his team of
wunderkinds is told in depth in Dean Takahashi‘s Opening the Xbox.
314
128
Consoles, on the other hand, are a fixed platform. Apart from modders—hardware
hackers who modify chipsets and console hardware in order to run Linux, emulate
archaic consoles, play extra-regional DVDs and other such murkily legal activities316—
every Xbox is exactly the same. Every Playstation is exactly the same. In other words, a
company creating a game for the Nintendo GameCube only needs to program and test on
the GameCube, not on a hundred different varieties and flavors of the GameCube.
However, this standardization also ensures that the best console hardware is always
technologically behind the best PC hardware. A PS/2 is based on the hottest technology
of 1999, not 2005.
The Xbox combined PC parts with a fixed environment that would allow game
companies to develop for a relatively simple hardware platform while incorporating
technology that was more powerful than the PS/2. It wouldn‘t solve the problem of
immediate obsolescence, but it would ensure that the Xbox would be more powerful than
its direct competitor. Not only would the Xbox launch an entire year later, with the
advances in technology that the year would surely bring, its PC-based hardware would be
inherently more powerful than Sony‘s proprietary components.
Four years later, the Xbox has not yet caught up to Sony‘s initial market lead.
Regardless, the platform remains popular with game developers and players, and the
sequel to Microsoft‘s flagship title, Halo II, stands as the best-selling game of all time.317
It remains to be seen who will be victorious in the next round of the Console Wars, which
316
317
Greenberg, D. ―Xbox Enthusiasts Discover its Versatility.‖ The Washington Post. 30 January 2005, F07.
Becker.
129
will be fought between Sony‘s PS/3, Nintendo‘s Revolution, and Microsoft‘s Xbox
360.318
Ms Pac Man to MMO‘s: A Highly Abbreviated Video Game History
Turning away from the Xbox for a minute, I want to contextualize Microsoft‘s
offering within the video game industry as a whole. How did the video game industry
become such a major player in American entertainment? After all, it was not so long ago
that video games were dismissed as a short-lived fad, another Pet Rock or Spice Girl.
This is largely because the early 1980s saw a highly dramatic rise and fall in the
popularity of arcade games, a time period that is nostalgically referred to as ―the Golden
Age of Arcade Games.‖ This historic era began with Atari‘s first coin-op title, Pong
(ported to Home Pong, a very early console system, in 1975) and Taito‘s Space Invaders,
which launched in the US in 1978. The success of these two titles opened the door to the
Golden Age, which was characterized by coin-operated stand-up game consoles, packs of
teenagers racking up high scores on Asteroids and Ms. Pac-Man, and media-fueled
parental hysteria around possible negative effects of arcades.319 By 1981, Americans
were spending, per year, 8 billion dollars on arcade games and 1 billion on home video
game machines.320 The game industry was earning more than double the amount of all of
Nevada‘s casinos combined, twice as much as the film industry, and triple the TV
318
Marriott.
A 1981 Newsweek story typifies the controversy: ―Critics contend that they [arcade games] squander
allowances and study time, glorify violence and encourage everything from compulsive gambling to
tendonitis (Space Invaders wrist). Taking a cue from the pool-troubled elders of the mythical River City,
communities from Snellville, Ga., to Boston have recently banned arcades or restricted adolescent access;
one legal challenge to the ordinances will be heard by the Supreme Court this week.‖ Langway, L.
―Invasion of the Video Creatures.‖ Newsweek. 16 November 1981, 38-40.
For more entertaining hyperbole, the website Gamearchive.com has an excellent selection of early 1980‘s
articles on video games. Hart, C. ―Arcade Games in the News!‖ Gamearchive.com. 15 January 2004.
http://www.gamearchive.com/General/Articles/index.html (12 June 2005).
320
Harmetz, A. ―Video Arcades‘ New Hope.‖ New York Times. 20 January 1984, D1.
319
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revenues and gate receipts of major league football, baseball, and basketball.321 The
novelty hit Pac Man Fever hit the top of the charts,322 cult Disney movie Tron was
released and stand-up arcade machines appeared in restaurants, hotels, and even doctor‘s
offices. Kent writes that in 1982 ―the Hilton Hotel in Rye Town, New York, opened
Bagatelle Place. Named after the forerunner of pinball, Bagatelle Place was a formal
arcade with thirty-three video games, a cappuccino bar, and a strictly enforced dress
code.‖323
The popularity of arcade games collapsed as quickly as it had risen. By mid-1982,
the arcade business had stopped growing—2000 arcades closed in 1983324—and the fall
of the stand-up industry spread to the home market. Atari lost $356 million in 1983 and
was forced to lay off 30 percent of its employees; similar cuts took place at Mattel,
Activision, and Bally.325 Pundits blamed market saturation, over-zealous arcade
operators, unexciting games and the fickle whims of teenagers.326 Manufacturers hoped
that two highly anticipated games, Atari‘s home port of Pac Man and the over-hyped E.T.
cartridge, would revive the industry, but each sold far fewer copies than anticipated. Kent
writes:
Atari was stuck with enormous inventories of worthless game cartridges.
With no hope of selling them, Atari dumped millions of cartridges in a
landfill in the New Mexico desert. When reports came out that people had
321
Skow, J. ― Games that play people.‖ Time. 18 January 1982, 50-58.
Buckner and Garcia, the artists behind Pac Man Fever, have a web site extolling their virtues at
http://www.bucknergarcia.com/. They have recently re-released their original album which includes classic
game-related songs like Froggy's Lament, Ode To A Centipede, Do The Donkey Kong, Hyperspace, The
Defender, Mousetrap, and Goin' Berzerk.
323
Kent, 167.
324
Alexander, C. ―Video Games go Crunch!‖ Time. 17 October 1983,
<http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,952210,00.html> (1 June 2005).
325
Ibid.
326
Kleinfeld, N.R. ―Video Games Industry Comes Down to Earth.‖ The New York Times. 17 October
1983, A1.
322
131
discovered the landfill, Atari sent steamrollers to crush the cartridges, then
poured cement over the rubble.327
The collapse of the game industry sent smaller companies into bankruptcy, forced larger
companies to look elsewhere for profits, and made retailers and customers suspicious of
new video game-related product launches. The home market would not fully recover until
1986, when Nintendo launched the Nintendo Entertainment System, the American
version of the incredibly successful Famicom.328
The success of the NES began the Console Wars, which were fought between
Sega, Nintendo, and a host of secondary companies throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In
chronological order, the Sega Genesis, Nintendo Game Boy, SNK NeoGeo, Super
Nintendo, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64 and the Sega
Dreamcast each pushed console capabilities in terms of graphical sophistication,
hardware power and playability. In 2000, Sony launched the Playstation 2, the first of the
current generation of game consoles. It was followed in 2001 by Nintendo‘s GameCube
and Microsoft‘s Xbox.329
It is important to remember that while all this console brouhaha was going on, PC
games were similarly increasing in sophistication. Hugely successful titles like Myst,
Doom, and Quake made headlines and sold in the millions. Since consoles cannot
generally be upgraded without voiding the warranty and PC hardware advances in
capability very quickly, PC games typically have superior graphics and sound than
console games. Computer games also tend to be much richer in terms of interactivity
327
Kent, 240.
Pollack, A. ―Video Games, Once Zapped, In Comeback.‖ The New York Times. 26 September 1986,
A1. See also McGill, D. ―Nintendo Scores Big.‖ The New York Times. 4 December 1988, C1.
329
Lewis, L. ―Telecoms Media Technology: In the Killer Game for Three Players, Only One Will Win.‖
The Independent on Sunday. 8 December 2002, B7.
328
132
since the PC has a larger variety of input devices (primarily the keyboard) than the
console system (which is usually restricted to a hand-held controller). This means that PC
games can easily incorporate chat and sophisticated commands like ―Look under rock‖
and ―Say xyzzy‖, whereas console game actions are limited to those that can be conveyed
by pushing a button.
Despite this, PC gaming has slowly become a niche market. Like wireless
providers, console manufacturers subsidize the cost of hardware in order to attract
customers, meaning that the actual cost of an Xbox with a $200 price point might be
twice that. The result is that a powerhouse gaming PC can cost four times as much as a
console, prohibitively expensive for most people.330 Another major selling point of
consoles is the ability to play with friends in a living-room environment rather than alone
at a desk.331
Consider the numbers. The console gaming market is enormous when compared
to the PC market. In 2004, the PC market brought in $1.1 billion US dollars and made up
15 percent of the overall gaming market, while console software made $5.2 billion US
dollars (not counting console hardware costs).332 The entire video game market in the
United States generated almost 10 billion dollars in 2004,333 but the vast majority of this
revenue was due to console gaming. PC games currently lead in the massively
multiplayer online game market, but this is likely to change as the next generation of
consoles becomes more sophisticated in terms of textual input ability and internet
330
Carnoy, D. ―Xbox 360 and PS3: Death to PC Gaming?‖ C|net Reviews. 2 June 2 2005,
<http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6449_7-6233821-1.html> (12 June 2005).
331
Wingfield, N. ―Trends (A special report): Videogames; New Games, New Machines, New Winners and
Losers.‖ The Wall Street Journal. 31 January 2005, R4.
332
ZDnet ―$5.2 Bln [sic] of Console Games, $1.1 Bln of PC Games and $1.0 Bln of Portable Games Sold
in 2004.‖ IT Facts. 3 March 2005, <http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P2726> (1 June 2005).
333
Marriott.
133
connectivity. Microsoft‘s Xbox Live, although currently ―only‖ boasting about 1.4
million subscribers,334 is being carefully watched to see if console gamers, who tend to be
more ―casual‖ than PC gamers, will pay a monthly subscription fee in order to play with
other people.
We can take away three key points from this abbreviated history. First, we must
distinguish between PC and console games. PC games are played on a home computer,
use a wide variety of input devices and take advantage of the latest innovations in
hardware and software. Console games are far more popular, run on proprietary hardware
that is less powerful than the current generation of PC technology, and rely on game
controllers for input. The second key distinction is between networked games, which
allow gamers to play with other people, and non-networked games, which don‘t. It is
only recently that console games have become internet-enabled, while variants on
networked PC games have existed for decades.
The final, blurriest distinction is between role-playing games and non-role playing
games. This is far less dichotomous, but generally role-playing games are networked and
involve players creating original characters who advance through various levels of the
game by improving their skills, acquiring possessions, achieving in-game goals, and the
like. These are usually referred to by the acronym MMORPG, for Massively Multiplayer
Online Role-Playing Games, or just MMO for the less Dungeons-and-Dragons themed
games. Players don‘t ―win‖ an MMORPG like they do a conventional game like Grand
Theft Auto: Vice City; instead, the game is open-ended and relies on the players
themselves for much of the drama. Of course, there are open-ended games that are not
334
According to Microsoft. See Shih, P. ― Limelight Delivers Content for Xbox Live.‖ TheWHIR.com. 4
May 2005, <http://www.thewhir.com/features/limelight-xbox.cfm> (16 May 2005).
134
multiplayer, and there are multiplayer games that are not open-ended. But generally
MMORPG‘s like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies and
Lineage are PC-based, multiplayer games that allow for a great deal of interaction and
creativity on the part of the user. These distinctions will become more salient as we
examine how identity has been understood until now within different gaming
environments.
Identity Presentation in Gaming Environments
Now that we understand the history and contemporary climate of the video game
industry, I want to return to identity as it pertains to gaming. The early work on identity
presentation in games focused particularly on the elements of role-playing, with a
particular emphasis on gender switching. Stone included several such anecdotes in her
1995 work on cyberidentity The War of Desire and Technology, including ―the crossdressing psychiatrist‖ (a male psychiatrist posing as a woman within a CompuServe chat
room) and users of Lucasfilm‘s Habitat choosing avatars of the opposite sex.335
Similarly, Turkle writes:
Gender-swapping is an opportunity to explore conflicts raised by one‘s
biological gender. …By enabling people to experience what it ―feels‖ like
to be the opposite gender or to have no gender at all, the practice
encourages reflection on the way ideas about gender shape our
expectations. MUDS and the virtual personae one adopts within them are
objects-to-think-with for reflecting on the social construction of gender.336
In the mid to late 1990s, MUDs and other gaming environments were viewed as a
particularly fertile site for imaginative play that liberated users, allowing them to
construct and play out alternate personas. Indeed, it was presumed that most people
335
336
Stone, A. R. The War of Desire and Technology. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
Turkle, 213.
135
would choose to play characters that were different from their ―real-life‖ selves.
Disembodiment from a gendered, raced physical body ostensibly allowed players to
experiment with a host of alternate identities, adopting and disregarding ―alts‖ in a
completely free environment. The implication (implicitly or explicitly) was that this
experimentation would lift the curtain on the user‘s ―real‖ gender, placing it alongside the
playful identities adopted in-game as just another construct.
Regardless of the validity of this idea, it is crucial to remember that Stone and
Turkle were writing about environments that were purely textual and, more importantly,
non-commercial. The internet user base during the early to mid 90s was far less
mainstream than it is today,337 and any evidence of this type of play is more anecdotal
than actual. Despite the dissimilarities to contemporary gaming, this concept of identity
has been remarkably persistent. Indeed, Halloran, Rogers and Fitzpatrick, even while
looking at the contemporary Xbox Live in 2003, write:
Research into text-based MUDs has important implications for social
experience. According to this, people can create parallel identities that
enable them to construct and experiment with sexuality, race, gender and
power. These identities may be validated online in ways which make the
social experience powerfully attractive. However, here, the construction of
identity becomes less an artifact of the attenuation of cues in face to-face
communication, and more a complete departure from what might hold in
face to- face ‗reality‘.338
The idea that games are a site where unique, experimental identity play takes place is
current and powerful.
In the first chapter of this thesis, I discussed the move away from characterizing
―online identity‖ as something remarkably different and towards contextualizing identity
337
See Chapter 2 for a detailed discussion of these differences.
Halloran, J., Rogers, Y. and Fitzpatrick, G. ―From Text To Talk: Multiplayer Games and Voiceover IP.‖
In Proceedings of Level Up: 1st International Digital Games Research Conference. 2003, 132.
338
136
online within the exploration of identity offline. The online sphere is generally regarded
as one of many sites for self-presentation rather than a unique space where identity plays
out in ways that it never does in ―real life‖. Miller and Slater argue that ―we need to treat
Internet media as continuous with and embedded in other social spaces, that they [media]
happen within mundane social structures and relations that may transform but that they
cannot escape into a self-enclosed cyberian apartness.‖339 The point is that internet
communication is located within offline social contexts and structures. While identity
presentation may change slightly when expressed through online media, as it may change
within any communication technology, it does not exist in a vacuum, removed
completely from any traces of one‘s offline realm.
Furthermore, the rapid convergence of online and offline social networks means
that completely alternate internet identities are increasingly rare, often confined to
subcultures, and even regarded as somehow unsavory or untrustworthy.340 Even within
environments that are set up specifically for role-playing, users tend to express
themselves in manners similar to their ―offline‖ identity. Filiciak, examining gaming,
writes, ―The presentation of one‘s own persona on the Internet resembles to some extent
the user‘s real-life identity.‖341 Thus, we now understand identity online as in part an
extension of identity offline.
This is augmented in gamespaces since interactions and presentations within
games, particularly online games, are not confined to the games themselves. In
MMORPG‘s such as Lineage, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft, gaming involves or
even requires communication, cooperation, team-building, competition and so forth with
339
Miller, D. and Slater, D. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. (New York: Berg, 2000), 5.
See Chapter 2.
341
Filiciak, 91.
340
137
other players. This communication often bleeds over into ―real world‖ collegiality or
friendship, and the distinction between identity in-game and out-of-game becomes
increasingly blurred. Steinkuehler writes, ―What is at first confined to the game soon
spills over into the virtual world beyond it (e.g. websites, chatrooms, email) and even life
off-screen (e.g. telephone calls, face-to-face meetings), and collections of in character
playmates likewise expand into real-world affinity groups.‖342 Steinkuehler is looking
specifically at Lineage, a PC-based MMORPG, but her statement is increasingly true for
console games as well. Internet-enabled services such as Xbox Live or the PS/2 Network
Adapter allow online game play and interaction. Bulletin boards run by major game
publishers and hardware manufacturers create spaces where gamers can discuss strategies
and hints, join gamer clans and simply socialize with other gamers. Gamer clans—groups
of gamers who play together at LAN parties or over the internet—often extend their
friendships through their own websites, real life meetings, conventions or phone
conversations. The dichotomy of ―online‖ and ―offline‖ communication has become a
continuum that includes many different mediums and technologies.
Obviously we must complicate our understanding of how identity functions
within gaming environments. Rather than a simple, singular way to conceptualize selfunderstanding or self-presentation within games, I have identified seven ways in which a
gamer may experience herself or her character. These understandings are complicated
and overlapping, and a gamer can experience one or many simultaneously. Players may
role-play an elf or ork within a game, but their sense of self within the game, created and
maintained through the gaming environment and in relations to other players, may be
quite different. For example, an EverQuest player can have personal relationships with
342
Steinkuehler, 7.
138
her teammates in which she performs an identity closer to her ―authentic‖ offline self
than a completely divergent, role-played character. This is a complex situation that
cannot be explained within the current concept of gaming as identity play. I want to
discuss all seven of these understandings in order to complicate self-expression within
games and reveal how necessary it is to create new theoretical conceptions of identity.
The first two ways to understand identity relate to one‘s avatar or character. First,
there is the experience of playing a pre-set avatar or character created by the game
developers or publishing company, such as Lara Croft, Mario, or Ms. Pac-Man. The
gamer can interpret this identity however she wants, from imagining herself as the
character to disregarding it completely. Second, more sophisticated games allow the
creation of custom characters or avatars. Within EverQuest, for example, a player creates
her avatar by choosing from thirteen races and fourteen ―classes‖ (roughly equivalent to
jobs: magician, warrior, bard), setting the character‘s wisdom, strength, charisma (and so
forth), picking a name and selecting facial features and costume.343
In-game interaction also helps us to understand identity. Third, within the game, a
gamer may have a sense of identity as a member of a gaming tribe (i.e. ―A citizen of
Narrath‖, the fictional EverQuest country), similar to a geographic or ethnic identity. Ito
discusses how ―locality‖ can be dis-associated from physical geography and instead
apply to communities that are not physically located in a specific place. Thus, a person
who identifies with a particular online community (game or non-game) may understand
themselves in affiliation with that community as location. 344 This identification may
343
Sony Computer Entertainment America ―EverQuest Frequently Asked Questions.‖ EQLive. 2004,
<http://eqlive.station.sony.com/library/faqs/faq_eqlive.jsp> (10 June 2005).
344
Ito maintains that games can constitute virtual geographies; players may identify in similar ways to
gamespaces that they do to localities. Ito, M. ―Network Localities.‖ Presented at the 1999 Meetings of the
139
exist solely during gameplay, or overlap into out-of-game activities. Fourth, in-game, the
gamer may understand her own identity differently based on the game‘s context,345
discourse(s), 346 or the player‘s teammates. In other words, in-game identity shifts and
changes based on audience and context just as offline identity does, regardless of
character or role-playing. Fifth, the gamer may consider separately in- and out-of-game
identities. While playing, Joe may think of himself as an avatar or character, but this may
simultaneously co-exist with Joe‘s sense of himself out of the game. At the same time
that Joe is sitting on his couch playing Grand Theft Auto, he may think of himself as the
game‘s main character, Tommy Vercetti, but distinguish this identity from the ―real‖ self
who is currently sitting in his living room playing a game.
The sixth possible identity position involves a situation in which a gamer is not
actually playing a game, but is engaging in game-related communicative activities like
chatting, talking to other gamers in person or on the phone, or posting on game-related
bulletin boards. In this sense, this location is not clearly in-game or out-of-game but
somewhere in the liminal middle, meaning that it is impossible to generalize about how
this position operates. Seventh and final is the gamer‘s sense of identity ―outside‖ the
game while she is not engaging in game-related activities: the ―real world‖ self, which, as
we know, is complicated enough.
These different identity presentations and conceptions constantly overlap, shift,
and change and, as a result, each person‘s management of these presentations can be
incredibly complex. A single gamer may present his or her identity, or think about his or
Society for the Social Studies of Science, San Diego, California. 1999,
<http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/locality.pdf> (May 5, 2005).
345
Mortensen.
346
Steinkuehler.
140
her identity, in one or many of these ways simultaneously. For example, while playing
Tomb Raider, my identity may be a complicated set of negotiations between my
identification with Lara Croft, my sense of myself as a gamer, and my sense of myself
when I am not playing games. McBirney describes her own negotiation in multiplayer
RPGs:
When I play Diablo II, I am negotiating several plastic identities: my real
life identity, Thelestis (my moniker on the Amazon Basin, a gaming
community and forum); my account name on http://www.battle.net; and
Duessa (a level eighty-six Frozen Orb/Hydra sorceress). The RL [Real
Life] self controls these alternative identities, but the alternative identities
are not merely circumscribed within the borders of the RL self.347
This complexity makes it very difficult to generalize at any time about how a particular
gamer thinks of their self, much as it is difficult to generalize about how a non-gamer
may present their identity. Murphy concludes her sophisticated study of how console
gamer‘s bodies interact physically with their avatar‘s virtual physicality by admitting that
the process is very intricate:
Gamer identification fuses – or to borrow a term from film theory –
sutures the gamer to the game. In doing so, the gamer and the game being
played become intertwined… while this interaction might be more fluid
than filmic or televisual spectatorship allows for, it is also grounded in
interactivity (instead of passivity), in a combination of simulated and
actual movement, and in a fundamentally different relation to media – as
user, inter-actor and not spectator or consumer…the ways in which
gamers interact with video games and the phenomenological and
philosophical ramifications of that process are very complex. 348
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to make broad claims on ―gaming and identity‖;
rather, I prefer to focus on the types of identity presentations that are privileged by
console gamespaces.
347
McBirney, 416.
Murphy, S. ―‗Live in your world, play in ours‘: the Spaces of Video Game Identity.‖ The Journal of
Visual Culture 3 no. 2 (2004): 235.
348
141
In summary, we can use a more sophisticated model of understanding identity in
gaming that allows for interactions between ―authentic‖ and ―inauthentic‖, between
―online‖ and ―offline‖ and between ―real‖ and ―virtual‖. We can no longer assume that
gamespaces inherently encourage self-expression that is separate and different from what
takes place in offline or non-gamespaces. Indeed, we cannot even assume that there is a
singular type of presentation in these spaces. I will now shift to a contemporary gaming
system, Xbox Live, which, as a networked gaming space that is located squarely in the
mainstream, we can use as one of Turkle‘s ―objects to think with‖ when exploring how
certain types of identity presentation are privileged within the context of commodified
gaming environments.
Xbox Live
Why pick Xbox Live to analyze the workings of identity in today‘s mainstream
gaming systems? Like Turkle‘s MUDs and today‘s MMORPGs, Live users are
networked; like Lucasfilm‘s Habitat and Sony‘s EverQuest, Live games portray fully
graphical worlds. But, unlike MUDs or role-playing games, the majority of users play
games on consoles. While Live is still a niche market, it is a niche market of about 2
million subscribers, making it about equal to the most popular PC-based MMO.
Microsoft is aiming for an eventual consumer base of about 20 million349 and has made
Xbox Live a key feature of Xbox 360, their next generation console—all 360 users will
have access to a basic version of Live by default.350 Live is a networked, graphical system
349
Allard, J. ―The Future of Games: Unlocking the Opportunity,‖ Keynote address to Game Developers
Conference, San Francisco, California. 7-11 March 2005, <http://www.xbox.com/enUS/news/events/gdc05/gdc-jallard-20050309.htm> (18 May 2005).
350
Tuttle, W. ―Live and Online with Xbox 360.‖ Gamespy. 12 May 2005, <http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox360/perfect-dark-zero/613233p1.html> (12 June 2005).
142
that affords a great deal of inter-user communication, but is nevertheless firmly located
within mainstream console gaming.
Xbox Live is a subscription-based add-on for the standard Xbox console which
allows players to game with others through Microsoft‘s proprietary Live network. Users
communicate through a headset that uses voice-over IP (VOIP), or voice chat. This
replaces the typical text-based chat of MMOs or PC games, since consoles lack the input
devices (keyboards) that allow for textual communication. While playing Xbox Liveenabled games, users form teams or compete against each other while trash talking,
making friends or admonishing other players. Microsoft‘s Live marketing site describes
the type of communication they hoped to achieve on the service:
We wanted our service to be a revolutionary, fun, and social atmosphere.
And it's hard to be social without talking to other people. Taunt opponents,
strategize with teammates, groan in despair, and exult with a war cry! It's
all in real time, and unless you've experienced it before, you have no idea
how unbelievably cool it is (those who've played games over a LAN and
heard trash talk from the next cubicle know exactly what we mean).351
The focus on sociable communication is a strategic move on Microsoft‘s part for
several business reasons. First, console gaming is more of a social pleasure than PC
gaming; PC games do not generally afford simultaneous multiplayer gaming, and
consoles are more likely to be placed in a living room, making it easier to play with lots
of other people. But what if all your friends live across town or it‘s three in the morning?
Live gives users a social experience without requiring actual geographical collocation,
which becomes a major selling point for the console. Secondly, Xbox Live‘s revenue
stream comes from subscription renewals. Presumably, users who make friends that they
351
Microsoft Corporation. ―Be Heard on Xbox Live.‖ Xbox.com. 2005, < http://www.xbox.com/enus/live/about/features-voice.htm> (10 May 2005).
143
can only communicate with through a proprietary network352 will be more likely to
continue their Live subscription, thus increasing Microsoft‘s revenue. Halloran, Rogers,
and Fitzpatrick write that the development of voice chat has ―left games producers eager
to sell games not just for entertainment value, but for their potential to enable players to
interact with friends in new ways, meet new people, and even form new
relationships‖353—as long as those relationships keep the players coming back to the
system. To that end, Microsoft is strongly focused on the expansion of Live as a core part
of Xbox strategy and has consistently introduced new features that extend sociability, like
voice messaging and the Friends List.354
Within the Live system, players are identified by their Gamertag. The Gamertag is
essentially a branded synonym for the username or nickname, but a Gamertag is unique
in that it persists across all Live games, rather than changing from game to game. This
might not seem significant, but a username can be a remarkably important identifier.
Wright, Boria and Breidenbach, in their analysis of the first-person shooter CounterStrike, write that ―names are important symbolic markers, not just for what they
communicate about a player‘s intent, but for what they also communicate about a
player‘s perceived status, interests, age, gender or sexuality… The fact is names
communicate symbolically to all users how one prefers to be perceived by another.‖355 A
Gamertag, once set, is unchangeable and non-variable, regardless of the type of game one
352
Live prides itself on its protection of personal information, which would include e-mail addresses,
instant messenger handles and the like—all the ways users could get in touch with each other outside the
Live service.
353
Halloran, J., Rogers, Y. and Fitzpatrick, G., 131
354
Microsoft Corporation. ―Get Hooked Up.‖ Xbox.com. 2005, <http://www.xbox.com/enus/live/about/features-friends.htm> (1 May 2005).
355
Wright, T., Boria, E., and Breidenbach, P. ―Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games:
Playing Counter-Strike.‖ Game Studies 2 no. 2, December 2002. Also see Ducheneaut and Moore (2004)
on how ―twitch‖ (first-person shooters) gamers rely on their names to determine reputation.
144
is playing, or who one is playing with. I see this as another demonstration of the
commodified internet‘s compulsory fixity of identity. Consider context and audience; the
context of the game, whether a military first-person shooter, fantasy RPG or sports sim,
can vary wildly, and one‘s co-players (audience) will probably fluctuate by game as well.
Regardless, the user cannot vary their Gamertag based on the game they are playing or
the people they are playing with. The Gamertag functions as a symbolic marker, but its
symbolism may be read differently depending on the game one is playing.
If we assume that the ability to play with identity is inherently positive –
something I am not convinced of – we must still take into account that studies examining
Xbox Live have concluded that the persistence of identity through Gamertags contributes
significantly to increased sociability within the system. Halloran, Fitzpatrick, Rogers and
Marshall studied Live players‘ interaction and found that players were more likely to be
sociable in-game if they knew who was talking; they surmised that Gamertags actually
increased the usability of the communication technology.356 A similar study by Wadly,
Gibbs, Hew and Graham found that the persistence of Gamertags increased player
accountability (and by proxy implied trustworthiness), sociability, and egalitarianism.357
The latter quality assumes that all Gamertags are created equal, which is predicated upon
anonymity; this will become important as we look at user-created Live communities.
Finally, a study by Halloran, Rogers and Fitzpatrick determined that people were unlikely
to ―play‖ alternate identities within Xbox Live, making the question of variability
356
Halloran, J., Fitzpatrick, G., Rogers, Y., and Marshall, P. ―Does it Matter if You Don‘t Know Who‘s
Talking? Multiplayer Gaming with Voiceover IP.‖ CHI 2004, Vienna, Austria. 24-29 April 2004, ACM 158113-703-6/04/0004, 2
357
Wadley, G., Gibbs, M., Hew, K., and Graham, C. ―Computer Supported Cooperative Play, ‗Third
Places‘ and Online Videogames.‖ In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Australian Conference on Computer
Human Interaction (OzChi 03), eds. S. Viller and P. Wyeth. University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia,
26-28 November 2003, 241.
145
somewhat moot.358 For example, although Live allows players to transform and thus
anonymize their voices through the VOIP, very few do so, meaning that voice cues
(accent, gender, age and so forth) provide insight into who a player ―really‖ is, making
radical role-playing improbable.
Xbox.com and Gamertagpics.com
I want to turn away from the service itself for a minute and talk about two Xbox
community sites, one official and one decidedly un-official: Xbox.com and
Gamertagpics.com. The first site is a major part of Microsoft‘s marketing strategy for
their flagship gaming product, and has been designed to be a ―third place‖ to facilitate
increased sociability between Xbox gamers. The site consists primarily of marketing
material promoting the latest Xbox games, features, and news items, combined with an
extensive Community section comprised of articles and message boards. The Gamertag
functions as the user‘s identity as he or she moves throughout Xbox.com, serving as the
username for posting on forums and participating in community activities. Users are thus
required to maintain a singular identity within Xbox.com in order to take part. The idea
that a user might want to vary his or her identity based on the forum he is posting in or
the people she is talking to is not supported by the site infrastructure.
First-time visitors to Xbox.com are encouraged to sign in with their Microsoft
Passport, Microsoft‘s identity management system that persists across most Microsoft
sites, including Microsoft.com, MSN.com, Hotmail.com and various other parts of the
MS web empire. Most of the content on Xbox.com is not available unless you sign in
358
Halloran, J., Rogers, Y. and Fitzpatrick, G., 131.
146
with a Passport, providing an incentive for users to register with Microsoft.359
Furthermore, not only are users required to have a Passport, they are encouraged to link
their Passport with their Gamertag in order to ―get access to all kinds of cool stuff,
including developer interviews, music videos, fan profiles, exclusive game invitations,
and more!‖360 While Xbox.com maintains player-to-player anonymity—information
beyond the Gamertag is not provided to other users—this same privacy does not extend
to Microsoft‘s dealings with its users. By linking the Passport and Gamertag, Microsoft
has access not only to the standard Live subscription information (credit card number,
real name, address), but all of the personal data associated with Passport-associated sites
like MSN and Hotmail.
Despite Microsoft‘s emphasis on player-to-player anonymity, Live players have a
strong inclination to find out more about their fellow players. Wadley, Gibbs, Hew and
Graham‘s study of Live found that players were overwhelmingly curious about the ―real
life‖ identities of their co-players, particularly age, gender, and location (the exact
parameters of the infamous ―a/s/l‖? question on instant messenger).361 Since Microsoft
actively avoids providing this information, and in fact makes it impossible for users to
find it through the service, home-brew sites like Gamertagpics.com have sprung up in
response.
Gamertagpics is a somewhat amateurish but highly trafficked website which
boasts ―1000s of Xbox Live Members!‖ On the day I visited the site, it claimed 58,167
359
An extensive discussion of Passport is beyond the scope of this chapter. For more, see Slemko, M.
Microsoft: Passport to Trouble. 2001, <http://alive.znep.com/~marcs/passport/> (28 June 2005); Kormann,
D. P. and Rubin, A. D. ― Risks of the Passport Single Signon Protocol.‖ Computer Networks 33 (2000): 5158; and Opplinger, R. ―Microsoft .Net Passport: A security analysis.‖ Computer, 36, no. 7 (2003): 29-35.
360
Microsoft Corporation. Xbox.com. 2005, <http://www.xbox.com> (1 May 2005).
361
Wadley, Gibbs, Hew and Graham.
147
total photos (presumably more than one per user). Gamertagpics users create profiles that
are similar to those on social networking or personal ad sites; each profile includes the
user‘s name, age, and location, favorite games, and, optionally, photos. Visitors to the site
can search profiles by Gamertag or game title to find more about players that they have
encountered online. Like social networking sites, Gamertagpics incorporates a variety of
features calculated to increase sociability, such as weblogs, homepage hosting for
premium members and instant messaging. Users can also browse user photographs and
rank their favorite profiles based on attractiveness; the winners are displayed on the main
homepage under a banner proclaiming the ―Daily Top Five Hot Votes (Girls and Guys).‖
The existence of user-created sites like Gamertagpics seemingly contradicts the
idea that users want multiplicity within Live; in fact, the studies cited in the previous
section strongly suggest that users like Gamertags and in fact want even more singularity
and presumed ―authenticity‖. Gamertagpics.com bears more similarity to Match.com or
MySpace than a MUD. What accounts for the difference between how today‘s users
present themselves ―authentically‖ within Xbox and the emphasis on multiplicity and
playfulness in the early work on role-playing in games?
It may be the case that today‘s gamers completely distinguish in-game and outgame identity, and the idea of ―multiplicity‖—while still in existence—can no longer be
regarded as inherently revealing. A paper by Ducheneaut and Moore on ―alts‖ – different
avatars played by the same person in the same game – concludes that while ―games need
to move away from the restrictions imposed by the one body/one machine/one person
paradigm,‖362 the solution is not completely abandoning unitary concepts of in-game
identity, but rather allowing a single user to manage multiple characters simultaneously.
362
Ducheneaut and Moore, 1
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For example, a person might switch from an Elf to an Ork in order to better solve a tricky
in-game puzzle, but their ―real‖ identity, the one that manages both ―alts‖, would persist
across these multiple avatars. The same study points out that people have a hard time
forming social ties with a person in-game if they are constantly changing their character;
again, persistent identity encourages sociability.363 Not only does Live privilege unitary,
―authentic‖ self-presentation, this is desired and encouraged by gamers themselves.
Gaming has changed considerably in the last twenty years, to the point where we
must continually revisit past theories and conceptions in order to analyze today‘s
technology with any sophistication. In the next section of this chapter, I want to look
ahead to the next generation of console technology, and locate it within a spectrum of
commodified identity that looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Xbox 360
On May 12, 2005, MTV premiered a 30-minute Microsoft infomercial starring
Lord of the Rings hobbit Elijah Wood called ―MTV Presents: the Next Generation Xbox
Revealed.‖364 The flashy program, taped at an LA nightclub filled with celebrities and
unusually attractive gamers, consisted primarily of short clips of next-gen games like
Tony Hawk‘s American Wasteland and Perfect Dark Zero interspersed with
performances from popular alternative band The Killers.365 Coming a week before E3,
Microsoft‘s intent was clearly to get a jump on similar next-generation announcements
from rival manufacturers Sony and Nintendo. Details about the 360 were covered in trade
publications and major newspapers, publicity shots of the sleek, shiny white console were
363
Ibid., 1-2, 3.
MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed, MTV, New York, 9:30pm, 12 May 2005.
365
Kohler, C. ―MTV Pimps Xbox 360.‖ Wired News. 13 May 2005,
<http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,67519,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2> (13 May 2005).
364
149
omnipresent on tech blogs and websites, and the online gaming community was abuzz
about what the launch would mean for the industry.
With the Xbox 360, Microsoft is taking Sony‘s lead and positioning itself as the
next ―Trojan horse‖ of gaming. The 360 runs Windows Media Center Edition, an
operating system designed specifically to allow home convergence: namely, to let users
play DVD‘s, watch downloaded movies, listen to MP3‘s and play games all in their
living rooms. Moreover, Xbox 360 takes advantage of the massive home theater market,
supporting high-definition television and wide-screen gaming.366 The next version of the
Xbox brings Microsoft closer to capturing the home entertainment segment that they have
been gunning for all along.
This is all marketing hype, of course. It remains to be seen whether or not the
Xbox 360 will revolutionize the home market, push convergence, facilitate the creation of
amazingly immersive gamespaces, spur an increase in hardware and software sales,
attract customers outside the already well-defined hardcore and casual gamer markets, or
anything else that Microsoft may claim. But what is interesting for my purposes is
Microsoft‘s announcement that Live will be more fully integrated into the product. A
Wired magazine cover story on the 360 reads:
Xbox 360 will introduce gamers to a world where they can create and
maintain a persistent, evolving online persona regardless of which game
they're playing. A user profile, maintained at a Microsoft data center, will
follow you around and track your progress from game to game. That way,
if you're a Halo 3 ace, you won't get thrown into a multiplayer Splinter
Cell session with a bunch of newbies. The Xbox Live network will also tie
into real-world payment systems - à la PayPal - so players can buy, make,
and sell virtual weapons, car parts, and clothes via micropayments.367
366
Marriot.
McHuge, J. ―The Xbox Reloaded.‖ Wired. June 2005,
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/xbox.html?tw=wn_tophead_3> (13 May 2005).
367
150
There are several positive implications to these developments. The profile-based
system directly addresses some concerns of academic researchers with regard to
reputation management within video games.368 A long-time gamer who has high social
capital within a particular game will no longer relinquish it by default when playing a
new title that she has no experience with. And, presumably, the next generation of Live
will continue to roll out features that afford greater sociability, like the recently launched
Friends Lists.369 It‘s also likely that Live users will enjoy many of the new features.
However, what is key in this announcement is the idea that a gamer profile will
become primarily a consumer profile above all else. The Gamertag will be replaced by
something called a Gamercard, which stores personal information, preferences and game
data and is persistent throughout the system. For example, the Gamercard keeps track of
the user‘s taste in music and varies game soundtracks accordingly. More significantly, the
Gamercard includes credit card information so that users can instantly buy co-branded
accessories called ―mods‖ for their game characters.370 Famed Xbox cofounder J. Allard
appeared on the MTV special to demonstrate this feature, showing users buying virtual
clothing for their avatars, or stickers to be placed on custom NASCAR racers.371 For
example, Microsoft might license the Calvin Klein brand name, which would then be
leveraged across virtual jeans, t-shirts and sweaters. Players would be able to buy CK
gear instantly and then turn up in-game wearing it. The production cost of these
accessories is very little; players are basically paying for the privilege of advertising
Microsoft‘s business partners.
368
Ducheneaut and Moore, 3.
Microsoft Corporation. ―Get Hooked Up.‖
370
McHuge.
371
MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed, MTV, New York, 9:30pm, 12 May 2005.
369
151
While some of the personalization features may be appealing, the ability to
purchase virtual gewgaws with one‘s Gamercard is unlikely to contribute to better
gameplay, sociability, learning, or any of the other positive qualities that academics and
ludology pundits associate with advanced console gaming. It is far more likely that
increased convergence of Xbox 360, Passport and Live will simply extend the reach of
the Gamertag beyond the gamespace and into Microsoft‘s other properties.
J. Allard reiterated these themes in the keynote address at the 2005 Game
Developer‘s Conference, the major gathering for the industry‘s main technical
personnel—in other words, the people who will be creating, promoting, and designing the
next generation of games:
In an era where the people out there all value self expression above just
about everything else, you have created the one form of entertainment that
yields the role of the protagonist to the consumer. It's a perfect marriage. I
believe that the games industry is right at that precise point in time, in that
before-and-after transformation. 372
Self-expression within Live, then, becomes a series of consumer purchasing decisions,
and identity is transformed into another thing that you can buy.
Whether or not these new features will be implemented as Microsoft currently
demonstrates them remains to be seen. It‘s clear that Xbox Live‘s overall customer
strategy is to centralize as much information about a user as possible, and ensure that the
information is persistent throughout the gaming experience. The idea of playing an
alternate character, or varying your in-game self-presentation based on your co-players or
the context of the game, is entirely precluded by this singular emphasis.
372
Allard.
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Framing Gaming as Commodity
Quite obviously console games are built and sold by corporations. In order to
create a game for Xbox, a game developer needs to strike a deal with Microsoft, tailor the
game specifically for the Xbox hardware and hope that Microsoft chooses the game to
promote as a major release.373 This is somewhat different from the PC gaming sphere, in
which independent game developers ranging from fifteen year old CounterStrike
enthusiasts to Christian parents looking to create educational environments can program
and sell their own titles. The extent of this difference should not be exaggerated. Even
given the PC‘s open architecture, the major titles are created, produced and distributed by
corporate game entities. A major PC title extensive enough to compete with a console
game requires a budget comparable to a motion picture, and that sort of funding is
difficult to generate sans venture capital or deep corporate pockets.374 Practically
speaking, the real estate in brick-and-mortar video game stores like Electronics Boutique
and GameStop is so limited that even a successful new title has only about 3-6 months on
the shelves before it is no longer heavily promoted, put on sale and eventually
remaindered.375 The profit window for even major PC titles is very limited, while
373
Microsoft only allows licensed developers to make titles for the Xbox platform. There is an ―incubator‖
program which allows smaller developers to work with Xbox development tools prior to getting a
publishing tool. See Barker, M. ―Microsoft Opens the Xbox Playing Field.‖ Gamasutra. 8 November 2005,
<http://www.gamasutra.com/newswire/bit_blasts/20001108/index3.htm> (29 June 2005).
374
For example, game developers who want to make Christian games have been unable to raise the
$500,000 fee to use the Xbox game engine, plus $2.5 to $4 million for the game development, plus ―a
marketing budget of about 150 percent of that.‖ See Dee, J. ―PlayStations of the Cross.‖ The New York
Times Magazine. 1 May 2005,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01GAMES.html?ex=1272600000&en=354edfec675651b
7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss> (15 May 2005).
375
Mulligan, J. and Patrovsky, B. ―Online Game Marketing and Distribution Concerns: Retail Box,
Download, or Both?‖ Peachpit.com. 18 April 2003.
<http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31548&seqNum=3&rl=1> (16 May 2005).
See also Pham, A. ―Battle for Video Game Recognition.‖ Los Angeles Times. 30 October 2002,
<http://www.larta.org/LAVox/ArticleLinks/2002/021111_latimes.htm> (16 May 2005).
153
independent games have an infinitesimally small chance of making it into the store in the
first place.376
Kline, Dyer-Witheford and DePeuter write in their book Digital Play: The
Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing that the location of gaming within
corporate culture has direct effects on the type of messages and game situations that are
promoted:
Player involvement in the storylines of ―militarized masculinity‖, the
user‘s technology-based experiences of immersive and accelerated virtual
environments, and consumer identification with synergistic corporate
brands all combine to give interactive gaming a powerful bias—one that
arises from and reproduces the cultural, economic and technological
structures of globally dominant, heavily militarized, digitally networked
transnational information capitalism.377
The recent rise of game studies in the academy intimates that games are being taken
seriously as texts for study. If we are to seriously consider gaming as the next generation
of storytelling, as a non-linear form of literature, or as a space where we can experiment
with our most basic notions of self, narrative, embodiment and presence, it is crucial that
we contextualize our understanding within political economy. Unlike the early MOO‘s
and MUD's which were free homespun programs run primarily by hackers and students
on academic web servers, today‘s MMORPG‘s, first-person shooters, console games and
multiplayer sim games like The Sims Online and Second Life are produced solely by
programmers and game designers working for massive corporations with deep ties to the
376
The top ten best selling PC games of March 2005 included 3 games by Maxis (owned by Electronic
Arts), two games by Blizzard and Sierra, both owned by Viviendi Universal, a game by Microsoft, a game
by Sega, two games by Lucasarts (founded by George Lucas) and one game by Ubisoft. These are all major
game developers. See ―Top 20 Bestselling PC Games for March 2005.‖ Computer Games Magazine. 21
April 2005. <http://www.cgonline.com/content/view/834/2> (16 May 2005).
377
Kline, S., Dyer-Witheford, N. and De Peuter, G. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture
and Marketing. (Montreal, Quebec, Canada: McGill-Queen‘s University Press, 2003), 297.
154
mainstream entertainment industry.378 As such, these games have a vested interest in
encouraging play that matches the goals of the gaming industry.
This is particularly the case within Xbox Live. To meet Microsoft‘s goals of
increasing ―sociability‖ within the system, every new title must incorporate in-game chat
and the use of persistent Gamertags. While Gamertags may contribute to in-game
sociability, and, indeed, may be desired and enjoyed by users, they prevent the type of
postmodernist identity exploration that has persistently been linked with gaming in
cyberculture studies. Indeed, the incorporation of VOIP makes it difficult even to appear
as an alternate gender. It is far more likely that we will see increased emphasis on these
types of ―authentic‖ interactions in game environments than a return to the free-for-all
anonymity of MUD‘s and MOO‘s. Gamespaces have become simply another corporate
realm through which users interact in strictly bounded and regulated ways, provided that
they furnish an authenticated credit card number.
378
Games are a key part of entertainment synergy, with properties like Spiderman, Lord of the Rings,
Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider and Star Wars all existing as films, games and toys.
155
Conclusion: Reflections
Introduction
When I began my research for this thesis, my goal was to create a new model of
subjectivity that would allow cyberculture studies scholars and application designers to
reconceptualize identity, given the commodified nature of today‘s internet. I now
understand that this may have been a slightly lofty goal for a MA thesis. Regardless, the
meandering paths I have taken in the last year have led me to some fascinating places,
both intellectually and technologically. While I have not managed to create a unified
theory of identity, there are a few loose ends I have encountered along the way that
deserve mentioning before my final conclusion.
First, I devote some time to summarizing my findings on authenticity, a concept
that has loosely threaded itself through every chapter of this thesis. While we already
know that authenticity is a construct, the ways that this construct operates with regard to
offline interactions or in online communication is quite different from the way it is
privileged within commercial applications. Second, given the ideas explored in the
previous chapters, I return to the theories discussed in the first chapter to suggest some
possible ways that we can conceptualize identity, moving forward. Third, I analyze what
I see as a false dichotomy between ―good‖ and ―bad‖ internet sites, the danger inherent in
following a corporate/independent binary, and propose an alternate way to conceptualize
websites with regard to identity management. Finally, I look into the future at the new
models of identity management being proposed by major software companies, and
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emphasize the necessity of undertaking cyberculture studies work in a context of political
economy. I close with some personal thoughts on my experiences studying technology.
Authenticity
If we look at how ―authenticity‖ operates in the offline world, it is remarkably
variable and site-specific. As discussed in the first chapter, what is judged as ―authentic‖
depends not only on the social context of the object being evaluated, but on the personal
experiences and understanding of the evaluator themselves. Moreover, ―the authentic‖
can only appear so when positioned in opposition to the ―inauthentic‖. Despite this
recognition of authenticity as a construct, the discourse of authenticity is persistent and
persuasive. It extends not only to tourism, food, performance, fashion (and the like) but to
our most fundamental concepts of selfhood: to thine own self be true. We use the
authentic as an ideal against which all else is measured. The fact that this ideal is everchanging and inconsistent does not negate this understanding.
Turning to the internet sphere, we can identify several different ways in which
authenticity operates online. Naturally, users evaluate subcultural performances as
authentic or inauthentic in the same way that they would offline, but, due to the lack of
visual or bodily cues in internet forums, they use a different set of criteria. Williams and
Copes, in evaluating a message board devoted to discussions of the punk subculture
―straightedge‖, write:
When interacting face-to-face with other subcultural members, it is
possible to express one‘s authenticity through a variety of ways, including
argot, style of dress, and behavior. In the internet forum, however, it is
difficult, if not impossible, to identify other users in such embodied
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terms… the primary way to show others one‘s authenticity is through
text.379
The authors further point out that forum members claim authenticity through the
construction of ―symbolic boundaries as a means of differentiating themselves as
authentic from certain other forum participants whom they see as poseurs.‖380 In other
words, authenticity online, as defined by users, operates in a similar manner to how it
operates offline: by constructing in-group/out-group identity, and through the display of
symbolic markers within self-presentation.
The difference between online and offline concepts really comes into play when
we talk about definitions of authenticity that are placed on to users from commercial
applications. Whereas within the straightedge forum, an ―authentic‖ user might be one
who is conversant with obscure bands, knows appropriate terminology, or demonstrates
many years of dedication to the subculture, within commodified contexts, the only
acceptable markers of authenticity are pieces of accurate personal information. In order to
be deemed authentic on Friendster or Amazon, users must be willing to provide tokens of
presumably ―correct‖ personal information, specifically personal information that is
useful to corporations, such as name, credit card number, social security number,
household income and address. Within online subcultures, authenticity is social capital,
whereas within corporate structures, it is literal capital.
Furthermore, this authenticity is equivocated with trust. The authentic is deemed
so in distinction to the non-authentic, which is viewed as non-trustworthy. Many
corporate sites further a rhetoric of trust which maintains that online safety depends on
379
Williams, J.P and Copes, H. ―How Edge Are You?‘ Constructing Authentic Identities and Subcultural
Boundaries in a Straightedge Internet Forum.‖ Symbolic Interaction 28 Issue 1 (2005): 75-76.
380
Williams and Copes, 76.
158
authenticity. For example, as quoted in chapter three, Friendster‘s public relations agency
claims that the Fakester purges were ―about consumer protection… We do, as a policy,
strongly discourage fake profiles. A rogue user hiding behind a Jesus profile, for
example, has the potential to abuse the service or users in many ways.‖381 The fact that
the application requires a certain type of authenticity means that people who present in
different manners are judged ―inauthentic‖, which is further deemed unscrupulous and
characteristic of cyber-predators. This rhetoric creates an atmosphere in which the
corporate view of what is deemed authentic will be privileged not just by the application,
but by other users.
The structural emphasis on certain types of authenticity (for example, being
unable to create a profile on a site without providing an accurate and verifiable address)
combined with the contextual rhetoric of authenticity, severely restricts individual ability
to present in site-specific ways. This is compounded when we consider cookies, data
aggregators, universal identity management systems and the like that persist across
internet structures. Furthermore, if we are constantly surrounded by discourses that
encourage and emphasize singularity of self, and we ourselves gravitate towards accounts
of ourselves as narrative heroes, the impetus to present as authentic exists even before the
user moves online or into an application.
The fact that many websites position us as authentic in particular certain ways,
and the persistence of the human impulse to view ourselves as singular selves, should not
be surprising. The fact that this view fits seamlessly into the profit models of online
381
Lisa Kopp quoted in Terdiman, D. ―Friendster‘s Fakester Buddies.‖ Wired News. 12 July 2004,
<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64156,00.html> (7 May 2005).
159
corporations, too, should not be a great shock. What is surprising is that these
developments have not been acknowledged in cyberculture scholarship.
Back to Theory
Our understanding of what makes up ―the self‖ is constantly debatable and everchanging. Whether we are each a series of social constructs, a performer constantly
reacting to her environment, or a self that exists only through discourse, in Western late
modernity, we think of ourselves as singular selves. The theoretical debate over
essentialist concepts of self, therefore, is really irrelevant to this discussion. Regardless of
the veracity of the model of a single, essential ―self‖ inextricably linked to a body, we are
likewise treated as singular selves.
At the same time, the way that we formulate these ―selves‖ is often through the
purchase, use and display of commercial goods and services. A woman wearing iPod
headphones, designer jacket and expensive German sneakers is demonstrating a
particular set of characteristics, whereas a man with thrift-store cords, pointy boots, a
shag haircut and a bandanna is signifying something else entirely. The only people who
can interpret these signifiers, however, are people with the social knowledge to ―read‖
them, which is individually variable; this understanding, therefore, is incredibly mutable
and ever-changing, and varies greatly depending on context. Furthermore, as discussed in
the second chapter, this construction of self through consumerism is a complicated
process that allows for incorporation and subversion of ―intended‖ messages. Finally,
since our sense of self is so often linked to a purchasable lifestyle, and the lifestyles
available or desirable to us are constantly being re-negotiated, it means that even singular
identities are very much subject to change.
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Given this, how can we think about identity in ways that are useful, considering
the commodified context of not just the internet, but our social milieu overall? Any
understanding must be applicable to two disparate paradigms: theory and practice.
Theories of internet identity must expand to allow for further analysis of the political
economy of identity management and self-expression, both online and offline. Moreover,
this understanding should be extended to the practice of application design. It is not
enough for us to theorize about identity. Our theories must be applicable to technological
production.
Technology is generally a bit simpler than theory, so I will start there.
Applications first and foremost need to allow for flexible self-presentation based on
context and audience. This performance needs to be able to take place both online and
offline, and it needs to be up to the user‘s discretion. Applications that privilege limited
conceptions of authenticity for instrumental ends should instead focus on user choice and
empowerment.
Simultaneously, within applications, we must allow people the freedom to think
of themselves as singular, if that is what is desired. Returning to the first chapter, recall
that people inherently believe that they are connected to a singular body; this does not
change as they move online. For example, as discussed in chapter four, studies on Xbox
Live demonstrated that users like the Gamertag, a type of universal identity management
system. It allows them to maintain relationships with other gamers, personalize their
gaming experiences, and preserve certain levels of expertise from one game to the other.
The fact that users are fond of the Gamertag, however, does not discount that the
161
principles behind corporate privileging of certain types of authenticity, for instrumental
ends, are problematic.
Turning to theory, it is unfortunate that in order to reconceptualize internet
identity, we will have to put aside the idea of online interaction as being inherently
liberatory. In chapter two, I identified three ways in which theorists believe that
interacting through the internet can destabilize essentialism. First, playing or performing
with alternate identities through internet communication encourages people to view all of
their identity expression as potentially multiple, which facilitates alternate types of selfpresentation rather than what is seen to be inherent. Second, post-humanist scholars
maintain that online communication can de-couple the ties between subjectivity and
seemingly inherent corporal characteristics (gender, race, etc.). Finally, the ability to
perform alternate genders, races, and sexualities online can reveal the performativity of
these characteristics in everyday life offline.
The second chapter provided a thorough critique of these principles by critical
cyberculture scholars; we can no longer assume that internet communication has a
monopoly on potential destabilization, if such destabilization is even possible. However,
given the lens of commodification discussed in chapter two, we must consider that even
users‘ ability to play multiple identities online has been quashed within commercial
structures. And there lies the danger. We can reject the idea that online multiplicity of
identity will somehow break down oppressive categories, and still recognize that identity
does vary. Thus, we must reclaim the ability of users to perform in a wide variety of ways
and resist the forced singularity of commercial applications.
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The Evil Empire vs. The Creative Commons: False Dichotomies in Cyberculture Studies
The popular position to take while studying internet sites is to assume that
corporate sites are universally ―bad‖, while independent sites are universally ―good‖.
This is a simplistic dichotomy that relies on the utopic/dystopic binary so common to
cyberculture studies, and it should be examined critically. Although a deep discussion of
this fallacy is outside of the scope of this thesis, I will address it briefly before
concluding.
Generally, when scholars and technophiles label a site or company ―good‖, it
meets one or more of the following characteristics: independent, usable, open source,
community-based, allows lots of customization, encourages user participation, and is run
by an entity that listens to users. Furthermore, we tend to consider non-profit sites on face
to be ―better‖ than commercial sites, especially if they do not use copyright models that
are seen as unfair, such as digital rights management or software patenting. A ―bad‖ site
or company, on the other hand, might be run by a large corporation, made up of closed
code, implement features without taking user input into account, privilege monetization
over usability, be difficult to use, developed from the ―top down‖, and engineered in
accordance to digital rights management, software patents, or the support of strict
copyright laws.
Obviously, as internet scholars, we would all like to see more usable sites and less
unusable sites. However, the laundry list of characteristics above do not fall into a simple
corporate/non-corporate dichotomy. I would like to propose a more sophisticated way to
evaluate commercial sites. A very large, corporate site can be useable, useful, and a
positive experience for users if it is user-centric and designed in accordance with what
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users actually want and need, rather than what is easier for the company or site owner.
For example, the information architecture of corporate sites is often based on the internal
organization structure of the company, rather than emphasizing access to frequently used
tasks. But these types of organizational mistakes are just as prevalent on independent
sites as corporate entities.
Indeed, there is little chance that the internet will become less commercial.
Instead, we should focus on supporting independent structures that do not use oppressive
business practices, while also patronizing large corporations who restructure their
business so as not to exploit personal data and information. Our goal should not be to
eradicate the corporate internet. Rather, our goal should be to transform it.
Finally, keep in mind that there are different degrees of the ―corporate internet‖.
As discussed in the second chapter, many of the structures that we think of as
―independent‖, such as blogging software, are actually owned by larger corporations.
And even huge corporations such as Google and Apple are thought of more fondly than,
say, Microsoft. We should be careful to think through our presuppositions based on
corporate branding rather than rejecting or accepting software or internet sites simply
because of the parent company. Indeed, many of the people who work within the internet
industry are fully aware of these contradictions. In the spirit of self-reflexivity, I will
point out that although I would align myself fully on the side of independent, ―Free
Culture‖ internet users and developers, I worked at Microsoft for four years and even did
publicity for the notorious Trustworthy Computing initiative. Issues are never neatly split
into binaries.
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Identity Management Moving Forward
When I began this project, I hoped to reconceptualize identity online and create a
new model of subjectivity that would allow for resistance to these trends and structures.
These trends, however, are overwhelming, and while researching identity I found little
that was encouraging. For example, at the moment, large software corporations are
diligently working to create new models for identity management. Microsoft, for
instance, is working on the architecture for an ―identity metasystem‖382 called InfoCard
which has been designed to replace Passport.383 Microsoft‘s white paper explains how the
system would work:
An identity metasystem… would supply a unifying fabric of digital
identity, utilizing existing and future identity systems, providing
interoperability between them, and enabling the creation of a consistent
and straightforward user interface to them all. Basing our efforts on the
Laws of Identity, Microsoft is working with others in the industry to build
the identity metasystem using published WS-* protocols that render
Microsoft's implementations fully interoperable with those produced by
others.384
Claims of interoperability aside, what is clear is that Microsoft will take the lead in
establishing the standards by which identity will be managed online, while other entities
will be free to abide by them. Besides InfoCard, there are several other protocols being
developed to handle universal identity, including Lightweight digital ID (LID), Simple
eXtensible Identity Protocol (Sxip), and the Identity Commons.385 Meanwhile, major
382
Microsoft Corporation. ―Microsoft‘s Vision for an Identity Metasystem.‖ MSDN Library. May 2005, <
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwebsrv/html/identitymetasystem.asp>
(24 July 2005).
383
Joyce, E. ―Microsoft Moving From Passport to InfoCard. ‖ Internet.com Developer. 24 May 2005,
<http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3507241> (24 July 2005).
384
Microsoft Corporation, in conclusion.
385
Powers, S. ―I, URL.‖ Burningbird. 10 January 2005, <
http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/2005/01/10/your-digital-self/> (25 July 2005).
165
vendors including IBM, Sun, Novell and Oracle are working on application suites for
federated identity management.386
The impetus behind this surge into the identity management space is not
benevolent in nature. Rather, corporations are increasingly concerned that internet users
are avoiding e-commerce and online shopping due to the dangers inherent in identity
theft, phishing, credit card fraud, and the like. A recent Gartner study found that ―more
than 42% of online shoppers and 28% of people who bank online are cutting back on
their activity because of "phishing" attacks and other assaults on sensitive data.‖387 A July
4th Newsweek cover story called ―Grand Theft Identity‖ painted a bleak picture of the
landscape:
Today the easy money is still in banks—databanks: vast electronic caches
in computers, hard disks and backup tapes that store our names, Social
Security numbers, credit-card records, financial files and other records.
That information can be turned into cash; thieves can quickly sell it to
―fraudsters‖ who will use it to impersonate others. They visit porn sites,
buy stereo systems, purchase cars, take out mortgages and generally
destroy the credit ratings of innocent victims, who may be unable to get
new jobs, buy houses or even get passports until the matter is
painstakingly resolved.388
This ominous rhetoric is doing little to increase consumer confidence. The motivation
behind federated identity systems, then, is profit-driven at its core: increase consumer
trust in the internet economy while ensuring that corporations have timely and accurate
access to personal information.
Given this, there is no easy answer to these problems. And they are problems. In
the worst case scenario, we are envisioning a future where one‘s personal information is
386
Kearns, D. ―Issues That Will Shape ID Mgmnt. [sic] Over the Next Year.‖ Network World. 18 July
2005, < http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/dir/2005/0718id1.html> (25 July 2005).
387
Richmond, R. ―Internet Scams, Breaches Drive Buyers Off the Web, Survey Finds.‖ Wall Street
Journal. 23 June 2005, B3.
388
Levy, S., Stone, B. and Romano, A. ―Grand Theft Identity.‖ Newsweek 146 issue 1 (4 July 2005):40.
166
more accessible to corporations than oneself (for example, having to pay to see a credit
report, which was standard practice until 2004).389 If current business practices persist,
personal information will continue to be collected without user consent or much
regulation, and sold to any entity that wishes to access it, including governments. Chapter
two discusses convergence, and the increasing tendency of corporations to convert extant
social relationships offline into potentially profitable networks and contacts online.
Besides one‘s own personal information, one‘s status as a node in a larger network will
become a valuable asset. Friendship, family ties and romantic relationships will all
become sources of potential profit. Since people are already seemingly willing to
commodify themselves for potential consumption, it seems unlikely that a resistive space
will open up in which commodifying others will be seen as taboo.
The history of technology has shown us that when we have many competing
protocols for a new technology, one will win out in the end, as long as it can maintain its
competitive advantage.390 As such, at this point it is impossible to tell which identity
protocol will be widely implemented. However, it is likely that the winning solution will
be rolled out gradually without public discussion or input, but with much commercial
fanfare. Couched in the rhetoric of personal choice, security and empowerment, we are
moving towards a world in which our medical records, financial information,
entertainment choices and political preferences are simply lines in a database belonging
to a megacorporation.
389
Federal Trade Commission. ―Your Access to Free Credit Reports.‖ FTC.gov. November 2004, <
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/freereports.htm> (25 July 2005).
390
For example, VHS replaced Betamax as the standard for video, and has now been taken over by DVD;
similarly, in the browser wars, we can trace the dominance of Netscape over Mosaic, Internet Explorer over
Netscape and now the slow yet steady rise of Firefox against IE.
167
As scholars, we must move forward on these issues. Corporations and
governments are spending millions of dollars to develop new methods of capturing and
profiting from identity online, while academics are still conceptualizing the internet as a
unique communication technology with a peculiarly freeing affect. It is absolutely
essential that we look at identity as a political and economic issue. As with the
development of HTML, companies will move ahead full speed on these issues while
scholars are still debating the best way to think of identity online. We cannot afford to
wait; there is much at stake.
Conclusion
Our need for a practical philosophy of self-knowledge has never been
greater as we struggle to make meaning from our lives on the screen. 391
Sherry Turkle concluded Life on the Screen with this call to action in 1997. Eight
years later, what Turkle referred to when she talked about ―cyberspace‖ has been almost
entirely transformed. When David Bell summarized the issues ahead for cyberculture
scholars in his 2001 book An Introduction to Cybercultures, he wrote, ―the arguments
about virtual identity bring into relief the problematic negotiation of the
cyberspace/meatspace boundary.‖392 Today‘s college students, with text messaging,
instant messenger, mobile phones and email at their fingertips 24/7, would think the
distinction between ―cyberspace‖ and ―meatspace‖ to be quaint, if they understood it at
all.
Gone are the days when computer geeks logged on to VAX systems and used IRC
to chat with anonymous users at universities flung around the world. The internet now
391
392
Turkle, S. Life on the Screen. (New York: Touchstone, 1997) 269.
Bell, D. ―Last Words.‖ An Introduction to Cybercultures. (New York: Routledge, 2001) 206.
168
resembles the telephone book more than it does ham radio. We are living in a time in
which our secret pleasures, once buried deep inside circuitry and found in the familiar
sound of modems connecting, have been opened and exposed and shared with the world.
The internet is completely mainstream. It is not a separate facet of everyday life; it is
everyday life.
As scholars, it is sometimes hard to say goodbye to beliefs that have sustained our
scholarship and made our explorations so exciting. When the internet was the shared
surreptitious interest of true believers, hackers, hobbyists, and geeks, we could trust in its
transformative power. During the dot.com era, that transformative power even came true,
in a way. But most of us fantasized about a social transformation that would be larger
than the ability to buy an infinite array of baubles and gewgaws around the clock with the
click of a mouse.
For the last year, when people at cocktail parties have asked me about my thesis, I
have obediently recited ―It‘s about identity in the age of the commodified internet.‖ (A
pithy answer that ensured that only the most curious technologists would question me
further). When I began, I was frustrated with what I saw as a schism between what the
technology industry thought about online interaction, and how the academy was
conceptualizing it. I still believe that there is a schism, and I do believe we must
acknowledge it. But I didn‘t realize that when undertaking this research I would be
reliving my own history with technology as I did so. As dismissive as I may be of the
early cyberculture researchers who earnestly believed that talking to others over textbased chat rooms could help us to destabilize our most cherished notions of gender, I am
grateful to them. And I am nostalgic for that sense of possibility.
169
The fact that the internet is now a mainstream, highly-developed commercial
structure does not mean that our work is done, that we have somehow lost. Rather, it
means that there are far more tools at our disposal than there were in 1997. What is
Wikipedia but a million detailed FAQ files? Could developing economies have
leapfrogged land-based infrastructure entirely when setting up their first internet
networks? Could developers have collectively built operating systems, browsers, and
video applications that threaten those created by the most powerful software company in
the world? It is our responsibility, as scholars and as internet users, to maintain our
adherence to the values of respect, information sharing, independence and curiosity that
characterized the early days of the internet. I hope that this thesis has contributed to
those values in some small way.
170
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