The last time I taught a college course was in 1986. I’d forgotten how hard it is to teach.

About 12 people showed up for the Jan-Plan mini-course I’m leading at MIT. Last night’s topic was the Web’s effect on how we understand the self. I talked for about 30 mins along the lines I’d laid out here. Discussion was halting in part because I didn’t do a good enough job stimulating the class with questions and in part because we’re a bunch of strangers, although we did seem to be an exceptionally thoughtful bunch o’ strangers. Since this class is non-credit and doesn’t require people to have come to previous sessions, we’ll start from scratch next week also when the topic is the Web’s effect on morality. (The next class is on Tuesday, 7-9pm in room 1-390.)

Nevertheless, the conversation certainly had its merits. I got challenged at the beginning on whether the Internet is anything except more of what already existed: people already could create public selves oddly disconnected from their real world selves by publishing books and articles. Yes, but that’s like saying that all democracy did was make everyone a king. When you do that, you alter something fundamental.

Then someone said that studies show that people spend most of their time on the Internet reading about (and possibly discussing — this was vague) health information. Therefore, my contention that the Internet/Web is mainly about connection is cockeyed. And this is something that bothers me. My claim is not quantifiable. In fact, if you were to produce studies showing that the vast majority of hours spent on the Internet are consumed doing research, I’d still say that the Net has touched us so deeply not because it’s an information library but because it enables us to connect with one another. And when I say “touched us,” I really mean “touched me and the people I hang out with.” I know that I am trying to explain a phenomenon that may be quite parochial. But I make no claims to being objective. This is a general problem with phenomenology: you’ll accept an insight as true if it reveals to you the phenomenon as you experience it. Otherwise, you won’t and the phenomenologist can’t argue you into it. So, if Small Pieces helps clarify for some Western, middle-class people why the Internet has touched them but utterly fails to clarify it to a kid in a small Cambodian village, I’d be satisfied.

There was good discussion about whether the way our selves can be fragmented and varied on the Web is any different than the way they’re fragmented and varied in the RW. It seemed clearer to me than ever that there is a difference about what gives continuity. If you could magically search for everything I’ve written that’s been on the Internet, the only thing that makes these all pieces from a single identity is that the same fat-assed corporeal being sitting in a RW chair typed them all. There is no unified self on the Web that corresponds to our bodies. (If this weren’t so damn obvious it might be worth the electrons I just consumed writing it.)

So, the evening was, from my point of view, worthwhile although I wish I’d been able to inspire more of a dust-up. Please feel free to come to the next one — on morality — and wreak some intellectual mayhem.

[NOTE to the attendees: Thanks! And, yes, my comments here obviously don’t cover all that we talked about. Rather, I’m commenting on what fits with my peculiar interests, what spurred me to think, and what my poor memory recalls.]

[NOTE to those who commented on the sketch of my comments I blogged last week: Thanks! They were very helpful. In fact, I handed out copies of your comments.]

Asphodel has found a possible source of the data about how much information-seeking is done on the Internet: http://www.onemerchant.com/marketing/online.pdf

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