Random Thoughts
In a sense, the digital self sees itself not in opposition to such a thing as a “real self”, but as an extension of our “first life”, that is, our existence in tangible, offline worlds. But our second life - the set of activities and practices that our avatar performs in digital spaces - requires by definition the previous one. Thus, one must not forget that there is a third life, which is the combination of the first and second lives. [yes, I am still thinking about Here, There, Noware]
The third life exists in multiple planes of realities. It occurs when we are simultaneously in first and second worlds. It’s the life of the cyborg, a human being whose body and mind is expanded by prosthetic devices and interfaces. A cyborg is not simply present: it is electronically present, dispersed, and multiplied. As Vivian Sobchack suggested in a seminal essay more than a decade ago,
“Electronic presence has neither a point of view nor a visual situation, such as we experience, respectively, with the photograph and the cinema. Rather, electronic presence disperses its being across a network, its kinetic gestures describing and lighting on the surface of the screen rather than inscribing it with bodily dimension (a function of centered and intentional projection)” (Vivian Sobchack, 138)
[from Vivian Sobchack, "The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic 'Presence'," in Materialities of Communication, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfieffer (Stanford, Calif., 1994)]Today, more than ever, our presence is distributed across a plethora of worlds. Our agency changes according to the conventions and limitations of the spaces we inhabit though our avatars. “Media determine our situation” wrote Friedrich Kittler in the introduction of Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Kittler also argued that the subject speaks within discourse systems – and that discourse systems are constituted by the technological devices we create. It is not just a matter of technological determinism. The notion of the Heideggerian dasein (Being-There) needs to be updated because we are now living in multiple Theres.