Meanderings within Meanderings
 | Even as a lowly graduate student at Washington University in the 1970s
(where, by the way, PhD candidates could order a computer generated, online
search of dissertation related source material for only $25.00) I was
becoming interesting in the relationship between technology, social
structure and social interaction. My, as of yet unfinished,
dissertation focused on the social reality of the "self" through
an investigation on the impact of traumatic spinal cord injury on an
individual's social world. I discovered the important role of technology
(both biological as well as mechanical) in forming a basis for human
interaction and the construction of meaning. |
| For various reasons I drifted away from school and drifted into the world
of woodworking. Here, again, I came to be confronted with the relevance
of technological competence as a part of our human identity, and as an
element which structured modes of interaction. |
| After I became somewhat centered at UMSL, my
interests in
the technologies of
communication led me to once again develop a focus on emerging
technology and the critical relationship between social forms and
technological structures. |
|
Along the way I encountered the work of Sherry Turkle
(Second Self, Life
on the Screen) and was drawn to her ideas about computers as "objects to think with." |
"Computers would not be the culturally powerful objects
they are turning out to be if people were not falling in love with their
machines and the ideas that the machines carry....Today, the personal computer
culture's most compelling objects give people a way to think concretely about
an identity crisis. In simulation, identity can be fluid and multiple."1
| Her discussion of the possibilities of interactions within the
Internet give rise to expanded notions concerning the structures of this
"thing" we call our self, and suggested the possibility of
multiplicity. |
| I came to see that the line between "virtuality" and
"reality" was one that was artificially constructed. This
distinction represents merely a means of
structuring our understanding of ourselves in an age defined by
change and information. |
| All this also suggests we also have the opportunity to explore multiple modes of
interaction, and that (as Turkle points out) tinkerers are part of the emerging world of the Internet. |
"For planners, mistakes are steps in the wrong
direction: bricoleurs navigate through midcourse corrections. Bricoleurs
approach problem-solving by entering into a relationship with their work
materials that has more the flavor of a conversation than a monologue."2
| I began to tinker with the way I taught and
interacted with my students. |
| I also began to develop an interest in how society shapes technology, as
well as how technology shapes society. |
Notes:
1. Sherry Turkle, 1995. Life on the Screen: Identity
in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster: New York. Page 49.
2. Turkle, 1995. Page 51.
URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/meanderings/virtuality.htm
Owner: Robert O. Keel
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 03:59 PM
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