• Life on the screen

    Date: 2009.10.08 | Category: Reading Reviews, Unit SSK12 | Tags: ,,,,

    Reading Review
    Unit: SSK12
    Week: 1-5 (in Week 6)
    Date: 08 October 2009

    Book title: Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
    Chapter title: Introduction: Identity in the Age of the Internet
    Author: Sherry Turkle
    Publication Date: 1995

    Thesis:
    Turkle details how the computer has changed our understanding of the self and how this understanding has shifted from the modern concept of computational calculation to the postmodern concept of simulation.

    Main points:
    1. The fragmented self illustrated in the MUD (multi-user domains)
    2. Lessons learned regarding the fragment self from the great French Postmodernist philosophers.
    3. Culture of change embodied in the shift from computational calculation to simulation

    Review:
    I enjoyed the analogy Turkle creates using the multiple windows of a computer to explain the postmodern understanding of self. The postmodern theory of self is that of a fragmented one. The computer, especially for Turkle in the concept of the MUD (multi-user domains) on the internet, embodies the postmodern theory of the fragmented self through its many windows and multiple live and identities one can have in these separate online windows. This book was written in 1995 and so, I did feel that computer and internet related content sounded dated, but nevertheless the concepts Turkle puts forward are still valid.

    Reference:
    Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Introduction: Identity in the Age of the Internet. In Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. 9-26. New York: Simon and Schuster.