1. Cyborg Anthropology: Identity (general thoughts) - Part I
By Bárbara Campos
I’ve been rambling around the subject of Cyborg Anthropology probably not
only as a way to justify my time way over spent attached to technological
limbs, but mostly because I definitely agree with the fact that we, as social
agents, have evolved into what Amber Case would define as “Cyborgs” (I had a
bit of a problem adapting to the word itself, but I’ll get to that some other
time).
The idea of studying contemporary humanity as a combo between humans
and technological objects and how it affects culture, certainly gets me to a
state of over consumption of information about the subject, almost not being
able to meditate over every word on any given view of it… But the thing that
really fascinates me the most is the perception of self when transposed into
this irrevocably existing virtual society. What makes me be me when I switch
to my metaself? Who am I when I’m voluntarily projected into that
hyperspace? Certainly not the regular analog version of myself, wich doesn’t
imply that our metaself is a fraude, but it has it’s own way of communicating,
exposing, presenting and “carrying” itself in the virtual context.
So, would it be fair to say that we educate and train our metaself based on
what we would want our analog self to be? Not entirely. I would say our
metaself is a "natural" extension of what we are on the analog society, only,
adapted to virtual codes, laws and ethics. How you present yourself in both
dimensions takes the same amount of effort, only the tools change.
Furthermore, the way others react to your manifestations, be it at the analog
or virtual society, your other self is affected positively or negatively along with
the self that was interacting… but ultimately, you are only one self. It is you,
always.

2. Erving Goffman explores this multiplication of the self basically saying that
we are almost always putting on a performance, and this performance
changes accordingly with the situation that we are in. I certainly agree. We
have many masks, many gestures, many expressions that vary depending on
the scenery or people we are interacting with. I would even add in the
weather, time, what we are wearing or how we perceived ourselves first time
we stared into the mirror that day. All this influences our social performance
in the analog society and builds up our “face-saving”, wich, according to
Goffman, is our mask... what we present to the world as a means of getting
status. In virtual society this face still exists, only the tools for building it
change. We expose our metaself mainly through socialnetworks, blogs, chat
rooms, websites that specify particular tastes and even through real time
GPS… Every part of you can be projected into virtual society, thus making you
much more exposed. But, what does it really mean to be exposed? Publically
displaying most of your personal preferences on basic subjects? Does it give
away who you really are? I don't think it does. I would even say it makes it
more mysterious. Basic tastes are getting more and more trivial.
So, how do you build face in virtual society? What makes you gain more status
online?
Well, the ability to absorb information through the web and share it. In other
words, knowledge. The more you know, the more info you find, the more
novelty you offer the more feedback you get. Positive feedback equals high
status. You start presenting yourself in a different way, needing to maintain
face. This virtual face will affect directly your analog self, be it through your
ego or through the social interactions you have in the analog dimension. This
works both ways, but it’s not an immutable fact. Although both dimensions
can reflect status through one another, in general cases, they will work
independently.