Chapter 1

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.

A Tale of Two Aesthetics

The transition from Modernism to Postmodernism.

• Changes in the nature of our relationship with technology and computers.
• The effects of this shift on how we "know" the world and our sense of the self.

Modernism: A rational orientation. Discovery of meaning through the investigation of the underlying structures of the world around us. We seek understanding, explanation, control and manipulation.

Postmodernism: A world of shifting surface. There is nothing as "real", no ultimate meanings, everything is fluid.  We can only touch with the surface of things. There is no beginning, or end.  All is narrative.

Three different modes of relationships with computers: The Players

HACKERS Macro-understanding of computers.  What are the limits of the computer? Analyzing large computer systems: "Programmer virtuosos" (31), Thrill-seekers "walking on the edge of a cliff"(32)

HOBBYISTS Micro-understanding of computers; what are the computers' simplest parts?  Work with the hardware and minutiae of the computer in orer to control how the computer operates

USERS I don't care how it works, as long as I can use it! Antithesis of hackers.  Computer is for instrumental purposes only.

Conceptualization of the players and their relationships with a computer also shift along with technological changes

Transition from Modernism to Postmodernism characterized through shifts in our relationships with computers

Modernism

IBM MS-DOS: Access to the inner workings of the computer What does an individual do with a computer?; analyzing and understanding mechanism, structures, and rules in order to reduce complex things to simpler elements, which in turn gives a user a sense of control. Giving a "command" to a computer : A sense of power over a computer

The mode of knowing: Figuring out the hierarchy of underlying structures, rules and meanings Understanding how things are working and what makes this work Search for the depth, the origin and mechanism: "epistemologies of depth" The manifest refers back to the latent, and the signifier to the signified.

Postmodernism

MACINTOSH One can easily see how to make the computer work Inside is hidden from users. One stays at a surface level of visual representation The "transparent" computer (it does not mean "transparent understanding. Notice the change in the interpretation of the word!) Maybe technology opaque?

IBM WINDOWS

• Similar with MACINTOSH, however, you can still reach inside the computer
• The relationships of individuals with Windows and their purposes for their use are more various

A new mode of knowing

• Assumption: no underlying meanings, or we shall never know meanings.
• Simulation rather than "real": Virtual reality
• Understanding is only through exploration of surface
• What is the world that we see though World Wide Web, Net surfing, the windows, icons....

Object-To-Think-With

" The turbine, smokestack, pipes, and conveyor belts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been powerful objects-to-think-with for imagining the nature of industrial modernity. They provided images of mechanical relationship between body and mind, time and space." (44)

Questions: Do we have this kind of objects-to-think-with in the postmodern era? What is a computer as a object-to-think-with? The technologies of our everyday lives change the way we see the world: A new way of constructing of reality