Otherness: Identity in the Age of Information Technology

Amanda Jensen

“Identity refers to the sum of beliefs held by an individual about who they are” (Craig
262), and with the advancement of information technology (IT), those beliefs are being shaped
by the Internet, which “has become increasingly intertwined with personal and social routines”
(Carter 932). The Internet erases the separation “between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’” (Winokur
187). “Today [everything online] can … constitute a composite sketch of [who we are]”
(Harcourt 1), and this has perhaps become more real to modern society than the co-present,
physical world. New technologies “are attaching themselves as much as possible to human
existence” (Burgos 123), and it is having a profound effect on how we identify ourselves. In
“Romancing the Anti-body: Lust and Longing in (Cyber)space”, Lynn Hershman Leeson focuses
on “media-based reality in which identity is threatened” (79), and how people respond to such
threats by creating their own virtual identities, which are defined by what is absent – or “other”
(75) – rather than what is present. Analysing Hershman Leeson’s work against other works on
the contemporary IT culture, patterns of changing identity emerge. The advancement of IT,
especially the Internet, has impacted identity by: creating a self-policing society, paranoid of
surveillance; developing a virtual space where people are identified by disembodied masks; and
forcing people to occupy multiple spaces and roles, forming a culture based on constant
comparison, which leads to cultural alienation.
With the widespread prevalence of the Internet, “everything … can be recorded, stored,
and monitored” (Harcourt 1). The rise of the “surveillance state” (Harcourt 54) has led to an
increasingly paranoid population as our “actions are constantly under surveillance” (Hershman
Leeson 72). As the possibility of surveillance is always present within IT, people have learned to
“internalize the notion of a surveyor” (Winokur 177). “Subtle forms of social control” (Edgley),
particularly internalized control, are very powerful as “those who believe they are watched will
instinctively choose to do that which is wanted of them” (Harcourt 80). Self-policing can “help
save us from ourselves and from each other” (Burgos 129), but can also be dangerous when
taken to extremes, when people take surveillant roles. “Any individual, taken almost at random,
can operate” (Foucault 99) as the surveyor, especially towards themselves, as “internalised
beliefs influence our deliberative actions and how we willingly submit to others” (Edgley). Using
“reflection as a means of portraiture” (Hershman Leeson 81), Hershman Leeson’s work “engages
ideas of reflection, tracking, surveillance, and voyeurism” (81). Since “the state of society is a
reflection of the state of minds” (Burgos 129), it can be said that people within this society are
voyeuristic and seeking some form of spectacle, and in the era of the Internet, “spectacle is
replaced by surveillance” (Winokur 177). In “The Ambitious Panopticon”, Mark Winokur
describes this in the gaze of “the lurker” (183), who is “voyeuristic, [desiring] to see without
being seen” (183), which implies that this gaze does not affect the surroundings of those who
employ it. But as Hershman Leeson says, “the very act of looking initiates the action” (81).
Much of Hershman Leeson’s work is “about surveillance, voyeurism, and the inherent dangers of
technological systems” (79). New technologies have blurred the lines between surveillance and
voyeurism, and it is unclear which is more pervasive or dangerous. “Voyeurism and surveillance
tactics have become extensions of [ourselves]” (Hershman Leeson 83) and IT has instilled in
people a “paranoid fear of being watched” (Hershman Leeson 82), which highlights “the
relationship of paranoia to voyeurism and surveillance” (Hershman Leeson 82). “Neurosis is
only ever experienced as a repetition” (Galloway 119), and as technology has advanced, a pattern
of “reliance on tracking and surveillance techniques has resulted in a culture that has a peripheral
vision that extends beyond normal human physiology” (Hershman Leeson 83). All forms of
modern IT are both voyeuristic and surveillant to some extent, which supports the Orwellian
paranoia growing within our culture that “Big Brother is watching” (Orwell 10). With modern
technology, “the monitor through which we view the world is always monitoring us” (Winokur
178), which is especially prevalent on the Internet, “where invisible observers track our digital
footprints” (Winokur 176). We have reached a point where “society itself is ... a prison-house in
which surveillance is distributed in a manner that makes us our own prisoners” (Winokur 176).
We have all contributed to this through our widespread obsession with IT, and now we are
paying for it in paranoia and constant, internalized surveillance.

Information technology is often viewed “as a medium for presenting who people are”
(Carter 934), yet it has the effect of severing people from their physical bodies, so they no longer
have fixed identities. Our personal identities become disembodied masks in the era of IT.
Cyberspace can “erase social boundaries [and] irrevocably alter the idea of what identity itself
is” (Hershman Leeson 71). “Identity becomes intangible on the Internet” (Hershman Leeson 83),
and “you can be anything you imagine” (Hershman Leeson 71) online, which has the potential to
be immensely freeing, but can also be dangerous, as someone’s “very skeleton [could be] based
on pure deception” (Hershman Leeson 72). Hershman Leeson expresses that, “identity is the first
thing you create when you log on to a computer service” (71), which speaks to the depths of how
malleable and impermeant identity is on the Internet. “You do not need a body” (Hershman
Leeson 71) to create an online persona, and through “a non-body … [one can] escape fixed
identity, becoming an ‘other’ in the process” (Hershman Leeson 74). The creation of these online
identities allows people “to transform what already [exists]” and “define the ‘identity’ … in
terms of the ‘other’ or what [is] not there” (Hershman Leeson 76), in this case, the physical body.
Through this process, the body becomes the ‘other’ and the virtual identity – “formed by what
[is] absent” (Hershman Leeson 75) – becomes the ‘non-body’ or ‘anti-body’ (Hershman Leeson
82). Through this process, we leave the co-present world behind and enter completely into
cyberspace, which “requires the creation of a personal mask” (Hershman Leeson 71). “Masks
camouflage the body and in doing so liberate and give voice to virtual selves” (Hershman Leeson
71), completing the transformation away from a physical entity through “the infection of
technology into the body” (Hershman Leeson 79). All masks (whether created for art, ceremony,
co-present or virtual life) are a form of creating a “non-body” (Hershman Leeson 74) identity, as
the mask “is a reality in its own right” (Diamond 61) since it is removable from the body and
therefore not a fixed identity. The movement away from a rigid, physical, co-present identity
may have been done out of self-preservation. The modern world is chaotic and unpredictable,
and it appears people may have formed these “anti-bodies … in reaction to an unhealthy natural
environment” (Hershman Leeson 82). Perhaps moving away from ourselves and taking on a
masked, virtual form is the first step towards finding a true identity in today’s world.

“The Internet contains an enormous variety of spaces” (Winokur 183), and with the rise
of IT, people are expected to fill those spaces – and the roles that come with them – at the same
time, which creates a culture of comparison and alienates people from one another. “Individuals
seek experiences that give them a sense of continuity regarding their person identities” (Craig
263), and this harmony is threatened by having to take on multiple identities and occupy multiple
virtual spaces within the confines of a singular physical body. The age of IT has created a shift in
community identity, as “people have internalized … expectations of perpetual contact” (Carter
932), which goes against our natural instincts and leaves us feeling lost and overwhelmed, caught
in a cycle of constant comparison with others. “Technological advances have … created new
expectations for how, when, and where people perform various roles” (Carter 932), and the
human mind has been unable to keep up as “speeds and spaces converge to the perpetual tempo
of transformation incited by technology and its human hive” (Burgos 123). “The physical
experience of surfing the Net is almost always ‘lonesome’; we inhabit a physical space
differentiated from all others” (Winokur 184), yet we soldier on, believing this is how we will
find connection. The ceaseless scrolling disrupts our sense of self, and “when an experience
contradicts identity” (Craig 265) people feel that their identity is threatened. “The pervasive
nature of information technology … makes it a potent source of experiences that may comprise
identity threats” (Craig 265). Individuals tend to resist these threats by rebuilding their sense of
identity another way. Being able to occupy multiple online spaces should help people find
experiences that reinforce their self-worth. However, this also provides more opportunity for
comparison, which leads people to feel that something is lacking in their lives. People then
“[develop] their identity and self-conception in contradistinction to the … ‘other’” (Frankel 175),
which causes cultural alienation. “Identity has two poles – one that is descriptive of the self, and
one that is not descriptive of the self” (Carter 938), in Hershman Leeson’s terms, the polarity that
does not describe the self is the ‘other’ (74). Much of Hershman Leeson’s work “witnessed and
documented … culture’s alienation” (77), which is what happens when people define their
identities by what is absent. People begin to lose sight of what is real, and then we see the truth
in Jacques Lacan’s description of “the Real”: a state of pure truth in which there is no absence,
that we are cut off from once we acquire language, as it is the introduction of otherness that
allows us to conceive of absence (Lacan 83). We become, as Lacan said: “a hole surrounded by
something” (Easthope and McGowan 245). Hershman Leeson refers to identity defined by
someone’s belongings (as opposed to their physical being) as “negative space” (75), which draws
an interesting parallel between the space we occupy in the co-present world and the spaces we
occupy in the virtual world. In recent years people are becoming more defined by their virtual
spaces than their co-present ones, leaving the real world or “the rational non-reality we have
learned to love and trust” (Hershman Leeson 74) to remain mostly absent, becoming the ‘other’
(Hershman Leeson 74). By forcing people to exist in multiple virtual spaces and roles at the
same time, the Internet has created a society alienated from one another, fixated on difference
and absence.
 As the Internet has overtaken the modern world, there have been many changes in human
identity, including: the formation of a paranoid, self-policing society; the creation of bodiless
virtual identities using masks; and cultural alienation caused by requiring people to occupy too
many spaces at once. Focusing on Lynn Hershman Leeson’s article, “Romancing the Anti-
body”, and comparing it to other articles on IT culture, the meaning of identity in the modern
world breaks down. Through this lens, it is clear that human beings have begun to define their
identities by “otherness [or] what it is not” (Hershman Leeson 74). “The culture of computer
mediated identity … can include simultaneous identities” (Hershman Leeson 71), even if this
may not be healthy for society. We are struggling to reclaim our identities in the IT age, and
trying to find truth “precisely based on the inauthentic” (Hershman Leeson 71) is a dangerous
game. Despite its many advantages, technology, “like any other double-edged force, can be
treacherous” (Burgos 124).
 Works Cited

Burgos, Nate. “The Age of Blur and Technology.” Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, edited by
Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker, University of Toronto Press, 2008, pp. 122-131.

Carter, Michelle. “Me, My Self, and I(T): Conceptualizing Information Technology Identity and
Its Implications.” MIS Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 4, Dec. 2015, pp. 931-957. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=110877521&site=eds-
live&scope=site.

Craig, Kevin, et al. “The IT Identity Threat: A Conceptual Definition and Operational Measure.”
Journal of Management Information Systems, vol. 36, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 269-288.
EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1080/07421222.2018.1550561.

Diamond, Sara. “Reframing the Cathedral: Opening the Sources of Technologies and Cultural
Assumptions.” Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, edited by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise
Kroker, University of Toronto Press, 2008, pp. 56-70.

Easthope, Anthony and Kate McGowan. A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, 2nd ed.,
University of Toronto Press. 2004, pp. 245.

Edgley, C.R. and K.M Holland. “‘Unknown Unknowns’ and the Tax Knowledge Gap: Power
and the Materiality of Discretionary Tax Disclosures.” Critical Perspectives on
Accounting, Jan. 2020. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1016/j.cpa.2020.102227.

Foucault, Michel. “‘Discipline and Punish’ (1977).” A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. 2nd
ed., edited by Anthony Easthope and Kate McGowan, University of Toronto Press, 2004,
pp. 94-101.

Frankel, Oz. “‘Your Part in the Phantom’: American Technology, National Identity, and the War
of Attrition.” Israel Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, 2019, pp. 174-199. EBSCOhost, doi:
10.2979/israelstudies.24.1.08.

Galloway, Alexander R. “Warcraft and Utopia.” Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, edited by
Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker, University of Toronto Press, 2008, pp. 112-121.

Harcourt, Bernard. Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age. Harvard University
Press, 2015.

Hershman Leeson, Lynn. “Romancing the Anti-body: Lust and Longing in (Cyber)space.”
Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, edited by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker,
University of Toronto Press, 2008, pp. 71-84.
Lacan, Jacques. “‘The Mirror Stage’ (1949).” A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. 2nd ed.,
edited by Anthony Easthope and Kate McGowan, University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp.
81-86.

Orwell, George. 1984. Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2016, pp. 10.

Winokur, Mark. “The Ambitious Panopticon: Foucault and the Codes of Cyberspace.” Critical
Digital Studies: A Reader, edited by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker, University of
Toronto Press, 2008, pp. 175-202.