Understanding Ourselves in the Age of the Internet Essay -- Sherry Tur

Understanding Ourselves in the Age of the InternetIn her book, manner on Screen Identity in the Age of the Internet, author Sherry Turkle explains the military unit technology has on the way individuals public opinion themselves, and how this relates to the growth of postmodernistist thinking. jibe to Turkle, the rapid expansion of network technology, specifically the Internet, is responsible for introducing millions of people to peeled spaces and ways of interactivity with one another.This revolutionary method for relating to others is swiftly changing how we view our minds, our sexual interactions, the forms of our communities, and even our own identities (Turkle 9). In the excerpts selected for our class reading, Turkle cites Internet discourse technology such as chat rooms, MUDs (Multi-User Domains) and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) as the bag for the further exploration of our identities because, it is on the Internet that our confrontations with technology as it collides wit h our nose out of human identity be fresh, even raw. In the real-time communities of cyber space, we are dwellers on the thres learn between the real and virtual, unsure of our footing, inventing ourselves as we go a want (Turkle 10). As we invent new identities in order to concur with the changing frontiers of technology and society, our culture moves from the modernist idea of calculation to a postmodern concept of pretence (Turkle 20). To understand the difference between the postmodernist impaction on contemporary thought as opposed to the modernist view, it is important to hold a basic understanding of both ideas. Modernist thought is difficult to accurately define - the gradual evolution of philosophy makes it hard to determine how long modernism has ex... ...l life and what is considered computer simulation. After all, most chat users argue, why grant such superior status to the self that has the body when the selves that dont become bodies are able to have different k inds of experiences? (Turkle 14). The technological culture of simulation is gradually affecting the way we view our minds as well as our bodies, and a majority of mainstream computer programs are designed with this postmodern solve in mind. Rather than expecting to program aptitude directly into their computers, programmers now conceive it is the interaction of smaller subprograms to each other that can create a greater intelligence. The relation of these programs to each other may become too complex to properly define or completely understand, but so are our brains - and this never prevented them from functioning competently (Turkle 20).