Second Learning Journal: The Digital and Material Identity
Reading We Are Data gave me further insight into the
intricacies of digital and material identity. Identity in the real world is
already a very tricky topic. It's something that is simultaneously
discoverable, creatable, changeable, and ever-altering. You might find out
something about yourself only to later discover that it changes organically a
few years down the line. Or maybe you want to make a change and set out to
alter parts of your identity. The digital identity only ever convolutes this
process further. This isn't to say that a digital identity is a bad thing, but
it is something that intertwines deeply to the real world identity. A person's
identity in the real world is a combination of what you make it to be and what
those around you interpret it to be. You can't typically control 100% of what
you end up putting out in the real world. The smallest things such as body
language or choice of language are open for each individual to interpret.
Online, however, you have the liberty to edit your words, photos,
and life. You are, to an extent, who you want to be seen as. The extent of
freedom you have online, however, is also the extent of restriction you have
over your identity in the digital space. You are no longer outputting
information to a real person directly and to whom you want to know you, but
rather, have your information processed and sent out according to the will of
the algorithm. There is a middleman involved here that has specific interests
in mind that may or may not align with your own interests. In this sense, you
don't have any real control over what the internet and algorithms do with your
data.
Algorithms have the ability to accomplish goals and tasks at
far greater efficiency than humans could, but they lack human intelligence and
common sense. These things are also part of your identity, and because
algorithms lack this ability, they can never truly represent you. One of the
ways one can view identity is to view it as a truth about a person. It is who
the person is, was, and will become. Changes in identity is not necessarily a
change in the truth of a person.
The book states that one idea of data is that it is
something that does not exist naturally, but it is something that humans
collect and manipulate (Cheney-Liploid, 2017). The collection and observation of data can give us
insight to the truth, or the identity of a person, but we can always be missing
data, or misinterpreting data. For this reason, capturing the identity of a
person based on circumstantial evidence such as that collected by the algorithm
is not enough to accurately and completely represent a person as a whole. This conclusion
seems very basic and is probably common sense to many people. However, in a
world that is becoming increasingly dependent on technology, it is important
both for ourselves and other people to be aware that what we see isn’t necessarily
the entire picture.
There probably isn’t much of a significant change I would
make to my usage of the internet. I think I’ve been exposed to enough of it to
build my relationship with technology how I want it to be. If anything, the
reading only served as a reminder that technology is amazing, but has its
limitations. Technology is simply a tool to be used, and it is up to the user
to decide how they want to use it.
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