Thought provoking and informative, Seeing Ourselves Through Technology by Jill Walker Rettberg, gives a history of how humans have expressed themselves throughout time. Throughout the chapter, she discusses various forms or “modes” of self representation and their modern day counterparts. She explains how technology has altered the formats, and how it has changed our view of ourselves and others.
Keeping a personal journal has been commonplace for as long as anyone of our generation have been alive but, that wasn’t always the case. Illiteracy and expensive materials were huge barriers to keeping a daily journal. When they did eventually become common, they were often religious in nature. Today, a vast number of people keep a journal either on paper or online (sometimes both). These journals may not start with “Dear diary, today…..” but, they are all around us. Consider social media for a moment. How often do you make a post? Your friends? Your family? I’m willing to bet you know at least one person who posts several times each day. Those posts reflect how someone is feeling, or describing an event that happened, or talk about something they read. All of those posts are entries into a public journal. They show what we were thinking about, how we felt, or sparked a conversation. Technology allows us to simultaneously record ourselves and see our self-representations.
Another way we might represent ourselves online is through visual formats. Selfies have become extremely common with the invention of the front facing cameras on our devices. This practice has been around for many years. When cameras were becoming more and more of a household gadget, it was easy to take a picture of yourself using a mirror. When the digital camera came along, not only could you take the picture, you could also review it and decide whether keep it or delete it. Along with the ability to immediately delete pictures you didn’t like, we gained a way to “filter” our self image. We could become selective with how we presented ourselves. Fast forward to the present, and now we walk around with cameras in our pockets. On top of that, those cameras are connected directly to the internet! Now we can select the pictures we like and share them with the world in a matter of moments. Our self-representations are then viewed by others and they can make their own impressions of you. But, their impressions of you could be “distorted.” You might be thinking, “Distorted? No way, I only post clear pictures!” That’s not the kind of distorted I’m talking about, but more on that later.
An abstract way that we can represent ourselves is through data. Data could mean a large variety of things. One of the ever growing ways could be by posting the daily results of an activity tracker. It tells a story, though one that requires some interpretation, of your day or week. It might show how much, or little, sleep that you got. It might show the world that you completed a marathon in only 4 hours! Teachers and parents might use it to keep track of how well a child behaves, through use of a star chart. Quantitative, or data driven, self-representations are likely some of the oldest forms. Personal accounting of one’s possessions or business are likely the most common.
Now, back to the distortion of our self-representations. When we share our thoughts, pictures, or data with others, we can be selective in what we display. If you’re sending that information to someone you know well, it likely won’t be as distorted. Consider, however, that you are having a conversation online with someone you have never met… All that person has to go by, is what you send them. Pictures that only show your “good side,” activity data from when you had a really good workout, your best thought out summary of an article, and so on. The person on the other side you the text then makes his or her impressions of you but, is it accurate? Probably not. Not that you untended to distort yourself, just that you only showed your best side.
When you go to make a post on social media, or share your ideas with others, consider how they might view it. Are you representing yourself how you want to? Or, are you only showing what you think other want to see? And, when you read somebody else’s posts or articles, try to remember that there is human being behind the text. A computer can’t express itself. At least, not yet…..
Cranial Notations 