While doing this week's reading and also looking at the blog posts thus far - I keep thinking about identity. It is pretty crazy to think that the way in which people expressed themselves even just twenty years is completely different than today. Twenty years ago people probably used the way in which they dressed and the music they listened to as the main forms of expression ... when today the use of technology has changed everything to digital expressions of 'who i am'.
facebook, MySpace, blogs, ring tones, iPods --> iPhone, email, digital photography, laptop, cellular phone, satelite tv ---> satelite surveillance .... the list could go ON and ON and ON about the ways in which technology completely consumes, molds and directs our lives. Yea - so what? We already knew this right? I'm sure that everyone understands this ... but this post is basically just an attempt to ask everyone to take a look outside themselves and see how much of their personal identity is expressed digitally (in ways that could not have been expressed twenty years ago.)
For example - these are only a few of the ways in which my identity is expressed digitally: I have a ringtone that is my favorite song that people hear everytime my phone rings (I actually use http://mobile17.com/ regularly to upload music from my computer as my ringtones for free) . I use facebook and MySpace to keep in touch with my friends. I create photo albums on both to share personal digital pictures with friends and family. I email with my family (some weeks more than actually talk on the phone) to send them digital pictures of what I am doing. My iPod is constantly plugged into my car stereo or always in my purse. My interests on facebook and MySpace include my favorite television shows and sometimes websites. Many conversations I have with friends include some topic about new media and new technology --- usually without us even realizing it.
So this may seem boring ... but if you really take the time - only a couple of seconds - to analyze how it is that you express your personal identity and who you are you might be suprised. It would be interesting to hear ways in which people use technology to digitally express themselves other than what I mentioned before.
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I wouldn't say a digital identity is that far off from self-expression twenty years ago. Like you said, twenty years ago, it would have been through "the way in which they dressed and the music they listened to..." But a Facebook profile isn't all that different. You list your favorite music, movies, etc. Clothes could be interpreted through photos posted online. We've just taken the old way of forging identity, and simplified it into a few forms you have to fill out. (For better or for worse.)
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