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Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies
on their own, make a fully intentional choice about who they want to be in cyberspace.
Some are partially aware of their choice and with help or through experience become
more aware. Others resist any self-insight at all. Th ey live under the illusion that they are
in control of themselves.
We express our identity in the clothes we wear, in our body language, through the
careers and hobbies we pursue. We can think of these things as the media through
which we communicate who we are. Similarly, in cyberspace, people choose a specifi c
communication channel to express their selves. Th ere are a variety of possibilities and
combinations of possibilities, each choice giving rise to specifi c attributes of identity.
People who rely on text communication prefer the semantics of language and perhaps
also the linear, composed, rational, analytic dimensions of self that surface via written
discourse. Th ey may be the “verbalizers” that have been described in the cognitive
psychology literature – as opposed to “visualizers” who may enjoy the more symbolic,
imagistic and holistic reasoning that is expressed via the creation of avatars and web
graphics. Some people prefer synchronous communication – like chat – which refl ects
the spontaneous, free-form, witty and temporally “present” self. Others are drawn to the
more thoughtful, refl ective and measured style of asynchronous communication, as in
message boards and e-mail. Th ere are personalities that want to show and not receive too
much by using web cams or creating web pages; to receive and not show too much by
lurking or web browsing; and still others who want to dive into highly interactive social
environments where both showing and receiving thrive.
Contemporary culture has been technologized on a scale and with a speed that is wholly
unprecedented. We live in a world where nation-state boundaries become permeable, if not
insignificant, when considered in terms of the flow of digital resources, the interoperable
interconnected infrastructures and the perpetual interfacing of the screened world. Th is
new world order of reflexive or “soft ” capitalism promises a reconstruction of the polity,
inaugurating a process of global/glocal civic connection, reconnection and renewal.
Here the new global economy, information culture and political systems are inseparably
entangled within a flattened and convergent “technological culture” (Lash and Lury,
2007). Th e only way you make sense of people’s relationships with technology is to make
sense of their broader cultural patterns, because people’s relationships with technology do
not operate in a vacuum. It is very important to understand the bigger picture in which
technologies exist, in order to understand why people use them. Th e way we think about
mobile phones, the things we use computers to do – these are things we have done for
hundreds or thousands of years. Th ey are all about communicating with people. Th ey are
about sharing information, and they are about forms of social networking and reciprocity
or as Geneviev Bell pointed out: “One of the things that makes a successful technology is a
technology that supports experiences that people want to have” (Bell, 2004: 1).
Modern society is considered as not being responsible for the welfare of individuals, but
the individual is considered as being solely responsible for his/her own welfare, fate and
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