13 Responses to “Session 1: Individuality, Sociality and the Self”

1. Frank Paynter, on January 5th, 2003 at 5:03 pm Said:

   boo-hoo it is. This m&m is convinced today that no one knows the real me. Indeed the question regarding what is authenticity in RageBoy’s world today seems particularly poignant. Maybe you could have your sessions taped and I could rent them and then know just what it means to write myself into existence. Right now I am writing myself into depression, or “pulling a Marek” as they sometimes say.

2. Peter Tunjic, on January 5th, 2003 at 7:57 pm Said:

   Some observations :

   * New self, old self or a healthier misunderstanding of self?

   * Perhaps in Rage Boys world authenticity is qualitative and not quantative. A person who has an inner and outself is authentic ( fractured ). Equally a person that has no awareness of themself seperate to everything else (whole) is authentic. You are what you are and that’s your authenticity. You may not like it however the web may have provided a way in dealing with it.

   * The web provides a space in which to first recognise you have made a default assumption of inner and outer self.

   * The web provides a space in which to explore your new found inner and outer self. In a sence on the web you can hold both in your head without judgement. Something in real life we always seem to be beating ourselves up about.

   * The web provides a space in which to ask where I start and the web and the rest of the world begins. The unhealthy misunderstanding of inner and outerself ( part 2 : 5 ) gives way to a healthier misunderstanding of an interconnected connected self. In a sense the fractured authentic self may find a way to think of itself as whole authentic self on the web.

   * I doubt that the “new self” breaks the moral code. More like explains why in a complex interdependent system some morals or imperatives lead to healthier systems. The question I guess is which morals reinforces the separateness of being and which reinforce the connectedness of being. But that’s for another time.

3. Sarge, on January 5th, 2003 at 9:34 pm Said:

   sounds good.

4. Adina Levin, on January 5th, 2003 at 9:59 pm Said:

   Examples, demonstrations, and practice.

   This is really abstract and hurts my poor li’l head.

   – Adina

5. Chip, on January 6th, 2003 at 12:59 am Said:

   Course description: “By analogy, if we wanted to understand democracy, we would look at what it means for foundational ideas such as liberty, authority, citizenship, equality, etc.”

   Where is the segment on understanding democracy?

   What does the web mean for these foundational ideas?

   Has the web enhanced or worsened liberty as a political outcome? In the US? Globally?

   Is governmental monitoring of the net intrusive on civil liberties or necessary for security?

   Is governmental authority supported or undermined by the web? What examples support your viewpoint?

   How has use of the web supported or undermined citizenship? Do you have more close associates in cyberville than locally?

   Does the web promote equality, or only an infinite number of venues for interaction with like-minded individuals?

   Interesting report on participation in on-line polls at:
   http://www.msnbc.com/news/855213.asp?0dm=V19NN

   Is web animosity greater due to anonymity or distance?
   ###

   Is the web really safer? Consider identity theft, fraud, cyberstalking.

   Will the course be webcast, or available for d/l?

6. Rex, on January 6th, 2003 at 1:44 am Said:

   Here’s how I’d tweak the second half. FWIW. Sounds fun. Wish I could be there.

   Part 3: New public, new self

   1. The web is a public place. It is persistent and intersubjective, like the public square of village meetings and coffee-house newspapers (Spectator etc. insert Eagleton and Habermas on ‘Public Sphere’ here).

   2. And yet the web is new – public and yet different from other forms of publicity than we’ve had before. Being Ourselves in front of Others in a new place makes us rethink both ‘others’ and ‘ourselves’. Which parts of the old model were essential and which were accidents of the particular place and time when they emerged?

   3. So in the New Public that is the Internet, what does the New Self look like?
   (a) No inner self. We’re only there insofar as we are present ourselves.
   (b) Safer – can’t be mugged
   (c ) Multiple
   (d) Temporary if we want
   (e) Volitional: We write ourselves into existence. Relationship to our web self is more like relationship of author to his/her characters. (To discuss: in what ways?)

   4. Breaks old moral model: Where there was integrity and sincerity, now there’s play. What is authenticity in RageBoy’s world?

   5. So what of this new, web-inspired model of self-hood and togetherness in new, and what is old? What is essential and what is accidental to our circumstances? Web reveals our social nature: we are not primarily individuals. E.g., weblogs going from self-assertion to shared conversation. More important: 20 billion pages in which we turn towards the world together. (Maybe: Shared interests are always a way of living in a shared world; sociality not as person-to-person but people-to-world.)

   Part 4: Open discussion topics

   Privacy in the New Paradigm

   1. So in this new situation we have a new sense of what it means to be a ‘self’ and what it means to ‘be with others’.

   2. We have an enormous amount of laws and intutions and standards about ‘privacy’ that rely on the old view of ‘selfhood’ and ‘being with others’. Are our concerns with privacy moot in light of this new, web-inspired understanding of selfhood etc.?

   3. Hells no!

   (3a. This guy named Heidegger wrote all this stuff about our fundamental internconnectedness with the world and other people. Turned out he was a Nazi. Just as the old view of understanding personality has a pathological exageration that leads to hyper-Hobbesianism, the web-based view of personality has its own unhealthy pathologies, N.B.).

   3 (continued). Issues of privacy, sharing of information, etc. are still important. But they must be recast in a new idiom so as to accomodate the new regimes of information and selfhood we now live in.

   4. What would that look like? What sort of concrete judicial and political changes would have to be undertaken to get the privacy correlaries of these new understandings inscribed in law.

   5. Finale: Does the Web really have anything to tell us about what it means to be a self among others? If the web-style version of selfhood and otherness points to eternal truths about humans (which are just particularly visible in this particular circumstance) then can’t we find the hints of this self-understanding even in the old, non-web view of the self? I.e. what’s particularly new about the web?

   6. The web points to something important about how we live our lives with others. If I was to tell you the internet was about something fundamentally new never before encountered by human beings EVER, then you could and ought shoot me with a clean conscience.

   7. The web may not be new but it is different. The things that make it different may have slumbered within the worldviews of past worldviews, but now they’re busting out all over. We could all try living this way. Perhaps you should give it a try? Let me know how it goes – you can get in touch with me over email :)

7. Dorothea Salo, on January 6th, 2003 at 9:54 am Said:

   I would argue pretty strenuously against 7(b). We may be physically and economically safer on the Web than in meatspace (though I know some people who would argue even that), but our Web-selves are just as vulnerable as meatspace selves to a great many hurts, injustices, and insecurities.

   Differently vulnerable, I grant you. But still vulnerable. Frank, perhaps you’d be willing to agree?

8. David Weinberger, on January 6th, 2003 at 11:01 am Said:

   Yikes. Great comments one and all. Herewith some random responses, in chrono order:

   Peter: ” The web provides a space in which to first recognise you have made a default assumption of inner and outer self.” Yup. It’s not the only way to come to this realization, but it’s a good way. And as to breaking the moral code, I meant only that it breaks the old model of integrity that looks at the relation of the inner and outer selves.

   Adina: What, make the case clearly, based in reality, without exaggeration and empty claims? Not my style!

   Chip: Well, Chip, we know where your interests lie! Not that you’ve tried to hide ’em. But the analogy to democracy is only to illuminate the approach to the Web; actually fleshing out the analogy wouldn’t help make the point any better. You’re right that it’s a great topic, though.

   Rex: Thanks for the Habermas reminder. I don’t know Eagleton, though. Sounds like I should. And thanks for the great discussion questions. And I agree with you about the danger of thinking the Internet makes something new. The overall point of SPLJ is that the Web reminds us of stuff we’ve known all along. (As for your comment about Heidegger’s Nazism: I actually think it’s not that hard to pull the Nazism out of his ontology without much loss/damage. It shows up mainly in his proclamation of Volk as the only truly authentic being (which means it also infects his overall view of authenticity). Sure, it also leads him to overvalue German philosophers, but you don’t have to be a Nazi to fall into that. I know some serious scholars disagree with me, so perhaps all I mean is that you can pull the Nazism out of the parts of Heidegger that I care about.)

   Dorothea: The ways one can be hurt on the Web is a subset of the ways one can be hurt in the RW: in the RW I can call someone names and beat him up. Now, it’s certainly true that the Web makes it easier for someone to call me names, but the Web still feels safer to me because I don’t have to worry about ending up on crutches. That’s not to say that the Web is safe. Just safer. (I’ve had my identity stolen twice, and have been flamed pretty bad.)

9. John Gibbs, on January 6th, 2003 at 12:21 pm Said:

   I can?t much account for my timing here. I?m not sure why I would want to respond to an invitation for comments prior to a presentation at MIT with anything other than to express my regrets that South Texas (where I am) is such a long way from there (in more ways than geography).

   But there is an image that came to me that I wanted to share. Years ago, I spent a very difficult year (my first out of seminary) as a youth minister in a mainline protestant suburban congregation. I couldn?t exactly put my finger on what was wrong until I had a sort of a ?cluetrain experience.? That my (mid-eighties) epiphany had nothing to do with the web hopefully illustrates all the more strongly the reality of what happens much more readily (though not exclusively) because of the internet.

   My epiphany came when I fell in with a circle of adults in that congregation whose identity was neither subversive nor conformist. As one of the men in the group put it, ?The difference between us and your youth program is that we don?t have adult supervision.?

   How interesting it is to see how people respond to the unmistakable Lord-of-the-Flies-ness of our current social reality. Obviously, humor is one of the best (but unfortunately all too scarce) responses. Denial is far more common. That there is never enough protection from each other?s cruelty is not that hard to figure out, but to invoke an old cliche, the cure is often worse than the disease.

   Needless to say, the social construction of what it means to be a grown up has shifted in some irreversible ways. Access to technology has had a lot to do with that. It is not just the internet, or even, more broadly, information technology, that is at play here; it?s the whole crest of the wave effect of the industrial revolution working itself out of its old job (i.e., eliminating scarcity).

   And it is about democracy working (quite better than we would like sometimes) in spite of, as well as because of, the systems that are in place to uphold it.

   This genie (for better or worse) is not going back in the bottle. I guess if I were to respond directly to the topic of your MIT series, I would just want to say that my own experience of the internet as an idea is that I had to actually start showing up for it in order to get it, and that not being able to explain it (whatever the idea is that it is) doesn?t obviate the need to talk about it.

   And maybe even more to the point, there is a need to build ?thick descriptions? in order break the spell that shiny gadgetry can cast upon us. The internet may not foster necessary human qualities such as trust, but hopefully it can provide something of a medium for a wake up call that would turn our attention to the actual human connection (involving historical resources as well as real time resources) to discover what really matters to us.

10. David Weinberger, on January 6th, 2003 at 12:57 pm Said:

    John, beautifully put. Love your last paragraph particularly. It puts in a couple of sentences what much of “Small Pieces” is about. Thanks.

11. Euan, on January 6th, 2003 at 4:25 pm Said:

    Hi Dave

    great stuff as usual. I posted recently on maps, their subjectivity through the ages and how this relates to the “space” of the web and how we visualise it. I then got into even more dangerous writing about different ideas of God and how these relate to responsibility, organisations and society.

12. Adina Levin, on January 6th, 2003 at 4:29 pm Said:

    David,

    It sounds like fun. Would you be willing to do an open, internet version of the course? Is there an amount of money that a bunch of people could/would be willing to pay by paypal, say, that would make it worth your while? Could this be done over the internet in a way that would be effective and interesting?

    – Adina

13. Anonymous, on February 26th, 2004 at 12:19 pm Said:

    this site is awful and goes on for ever

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