Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

Chapter 2

The material below represents notes compiled by Robert Keel and Takako Nomi in their reading of Turkle's, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster, 1995.. They are intended for classroom use. They are intended for classroom use.

The Triumph of Tinkering

Questions in this chapter:

From the modern era and to the postmodern era (through technological development/evolution) what is the impact of technology and computers on our construction of reality?

• Change in the concept of reality; What is real? What is reality?
• Change in the way we think, see, conceptualize and construct the world and its reality
• Change in the way we approach to the world

Modern v. Postmodern

• Hard v. Soft
• Planning v. Tinkering
• Abstraction and propositions v. Concrete and Object

Values seen in the Modern era:

• Abstract thinking in scientific knowledge seen in Western societies
• Understanding of causality and mechanism
• Methodology: logical progression, lineal thinking, and systematic analysis.
• Scientific knowledge as a mode of knowing: "move abstractly and hierarchically from axiom to theorem to corollary"

Planning and Proposition

Computers as a object to think with:

• Programing, calculation, understanding of rules and mechanism, and manipulation based on understanding.
• Approach to computing--rationality and relationships with a computer A sense of separation between users and computers--no sense of belonging to the world on screen A sense of control and power over the machine

The Postmodern era : a new way of knowing and approach

Bricolage: the way in which individuals and cultures use the objects around them to develop and assimilate ideas Concrete thinking by using objects: exploring, arranging and rearranging a set of well-known materials Learning by playful exploration: instead of having to follow a set of rules laid down in advance, learning about how things work by interacting with objects, and understanding through exploration-Tinkering Learning while you play v. playing after you learn (Modernists approach) "Don't let it bother if you don't understand. I just say to myself that I probably won't be able to understand the whole game anytime soon. So, just play it"; "To learn to play you have to play to learn"

Bricolage as a way to organize work-- What made this possible? Technological development, especially, Computers

Computers in the Postmodern era Simulation--

• Virtual reality: "Taking computer representations of the world as the world"
• "Ways of knowing that depend on the concrete manipulation of virtual objects on the screen"
• The manipulation of simulation

An example: Sims Game

• Construction of a community or an ecosystem, or designing a public policy by using virtual objects
• Not a Win-or-Lose game
• The abdication of authority and the seduction of simulation
• The fear of modernists: Detachment from one's work and from real life. No longer in complete control

Computer reality=Reality? What is the real world?

Responses of users to the seduction of simulation

1. Simulation resignation--Acceptance
2. Simulation denial--reject
3. Simulation discrimination--critisism and challenge; Simulation as a means of consciousness-raising
4. " It would take as its goal the development of simulation that actually help players challenge the model's built-in assumptions"

The key elements of the political power--Understanding the assumptions underlying simulation

• The essence: Simulation as a means of consciousness-raising Complexity: Our relationships (mutual relationships) with simulation.
• What are the relationships between reality in the physical sense and reality in simulation--policy making by using simulation, simulation war and real war?
• The assumption of simulation game and the assumption of the real world
• New criticisms: "The cycle with a simulation comes to count as 'realistic' despite its explicit denial of an important category of the object it purports to simulate"

Questions

• What is real? the model or reality?, or Is the model real?, To what degree we accept?
• What are we willing to count as real?
• How do we keep a sense that there is a reality distinct from simulation?
• Would that sense be itself an illusion?

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/280/turkle/turkle2.htm
Owner: Robert O. Keel: rok@umsl.edu
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 11:36