Identity – toward augmented reality

To the fine folk over at Cyborgology, many thanks. I’ve been trying to find terms for these concepts¹.

On the idea that online is real: different world-views

They’ve come up with two world-views: digital dualism and augmented reality (just today, Jurgenson added two “levels” of each). In short:

Strong Digital Dualism: The digital and the physical are different worlds, have different properties, and do not interact.

Mild Digital Dualism: The digital and physical are different worlds, have different properties, and do interact.

Mild Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality, have different properties, and interact.

Strong Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality and have the same properties.

First off, I dislike equating reality and worlds, as he does implicitly here. A world is defined in context: what kind of a world? Our social world is not our physical world. They interact. Is that cause for dualism? Or are they both part of the same reality, and thus are different modes of looking at it? By using different terms, the categories become non-mutually exclusive.

If you substitute reality for world in the two dual realisms, and I find that they’re non-exclusive again. An example: a person who plays World of Warcraft is in a different world altogether, and the different worlds interact through him and in him. So can’t do that.

Accepting the definitions of the strong and mild augmented reality, and substituting a generic placeholder thing in the definitions of mild and strong dualisms (or in all FOUR), I can move on.

What are these categories of?

I call them world-views. This is a person’s idea of the relationship between digital and physical². So everyone most likely has an idea of where they fall, and if not they can find out by playing a little game. After we play the game, we know at our perception of that relationship (whatever the actual relationship may be), as the person changes, the perception too may change.

Some basic terms before going forward

I’d use these two excellent definitions by Fontana:

Online [...] refers to any activity or entity that needs a connection to internet to exist. A tree can exist without the net; a tweet simply can’t.

Digital, from a looser point of view, may mean all the activities and parts of one’s own identity which are primarily based on some silicon resource: computers, tablets, internet, etc. Yes, it’s increasingly difficult to make a clear distinction between what’s digital and what’s not in our daily life (especially for the younger generations) but it’s still important to do so; if for no other reason than to clarify what dichotomy we’re rejecting.

and record my response to the questions in the conversation that starts off Whitney‘s post:

Digital Dualist: So ‘online’ and ‘offline’ are different, but not different worlds?
Me: Correct.
Digital Dualist: But if they’re not different worlds, then what kind of different thing are they?

They’re a different experience, perhaps a different mode of experience. That they’re a community that isn’t anchored in place³. To me, that means they’re a different social world⁴; this doesn’t mean that there isn’t overlap. They aren’t independent. But they are not the same, they are both real.

When Jurgenson applies augmented reality to the large scale protests aided by new technologies and social networks around the world, he’s talking about the whole shibang. The hard-to-define thing from Whitney’s conversation. I want to talk about identity and perhaps see if my hypothesis can be extended to that hard-to-define thing.

The perspective that physicality and digitality are separate has always been⁵, and is increasingly, false. I have argued that this “digital dualism” could be profitably replaced by viewing the on and offline as enmeshed, what I call augmented reality.

he says, in that article, and I agree.

involvement in online identity and perception of worldview

I see my online identity as a facet of me. My worldview is firmly in mild augmented reality. It is my belief that:

The worldview of a particular person is determined by the degree of social immersion into and activity in online networks.

Consider the four categories to be stages a range in the order Jurgenson presented. I believe you move from
Strong Digital Dualism → Mild Digital Dualism → Mild Augmented Reality → Strong Augmented Reality⁶.

Of course, a person who attempts to be anonymous is trying to achieve a separation of themselves from their actions online⁷.

One would not expect, therefore, for them to accept or believe in the sameness of the two worlds. These people who have not “adopted” the idea of an online extension to their personality would be strong digital dualists, or in the language of Diffusion of Innovation, laggards/non-adopters.

It would require someone who is willing to let the worlds merge to believe in any of the other three worldviews. But given that they are willing to extend their “real”⁸ identity into the digital domain, my thesis is that the degree of immersion and activity would determine where they are among the other categories.

* Where degree of social immersion is similar to in-game immersion. Brown and Cairns (2004) suggest that there are three levels of this: engagement, engrossment and total immersion. I’d imagine that the move you become involved in these networks, the more you interweave “your” personality with the online one, you would begin to believe that the two worlds are not different.

* Where activity is frequency od use and diversity of networks/people encountered.

Note: I tend to use blog posts as think-out-outs, along the lines of “writing as thinking”. Comments and critiques are welcome.

Edits 7:54pm CST: fleshed out thesis a bit.