Marie Wocher - Review Draft

"If FB were deleted, I'd be deleted … All my memories would probably go along with it. And other people have posted pictures of me. All of that would be lost. If FB were undone, I might actually freak out … That is where I am. It's part of your life. It's a second you." (Audrey, sixteen, a Roosevelt junior in Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together" p. 192)

In the novel "The sense of an Ending" (2011) by Julian Barnes the narrator Tony Webster reflects on his life. Now he is old, he lived a typical middle-class life with a middle-class job, he had a pleasant marriage, he has a pleasant relationship to his daughter and a pleasant relationship to his grandson, he even had a pleasant divorce. With his ex-wife he still meets for lunch from time to time. Actually he could sit down to rest, let his life fade away pleasantly. But than, he receives a letter from the lawyer, saying that Adrian bequeathed his diary to him and that he receives a bequest from the estate of Veronica's mother – £500

Back in High school Adrian Finn was one of his best friends, he was the fourth in the league. He was a shy guy with a brilliant mind. Webster recalls how he responded to a question from a teacher about the meaning of life: "Eros and Thantos, sir … Sex and death" - the erotic principle "coming into conflict with the death principle. And what ensues from that conflict. Sir."

A few years later, after Adrian graduated from collage he was found dead, his wrists slashed. Ironically him, a promising student at Cambridge who had a fulfilling (that was at least Webster's interpretation) relationship with Veronica who was back in High School Webster's girlfriend. Webster remembers her as sexually rude and humiliating.

And now, forty years later Veronica doesn't want to hand out Adrian's diary. Tony becomes obsessed with getting the diary and understanding why Veronica's mother left him this odd bequest.. He hopes to get finally the answer to the question why Adrian has chosen to commit suicide. Why did Adrian refuse the gift of life? And why does he have the feeling that he has been a coward lurching through his own life?

Tony slowly figures out that the memories of his life are based on false assumptions. They were based on interpretations of letters, gestures and dialogues. And now he determines that things could have been different than he thought. How can he find out what really happened?

Tony Webster defiantly has a problem because he can not longer reconstruct his past. What was his life like, what did he do and how did he feel?

I ask myself if we will remember our past better in this Facebook era. Everything we've done is documented. Each site remembers the choices you've made there, what you have said about yourself, and the history of your relationships. In Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together" (2010) Corbin, a senior at Hadley, comments on the idea that nothing on the Net will ever go way. He says, that "all the things I've written on FB will always be around. So you can never escape what you did." (S. Turkle, Alone Together p. 260).At least for now we can comprehend our entire FB chronicle. On Twitter for example it is different, the number of tweets you can trace back is limited.

For the first time, people will stay your friends. It makes it harder to let go of your life and move on. But it used to be good that people could leave their high school friends behind and take on new identities.

A friend of mine moved from Berlin to Munich a half year ago. His name is Benjamin. Because he always has been really unhappy with his first name he took the opportunity to change his name with his move. Now, in Munich everybody calls him Benno, because he introduced himself as Benno. He changed his identity. Would that be possible if he was on Facebook? People now, don't even know, that his real name is Benjamin.

Christoph Schlingensief said once that to remember means to forget and gives following example: if I eat a marinated beef and the next day a saffron chicken, then my memory taste a little bit like beef and so does the chicken. This actually means that every time I remember, the story becomes a little bit different. The actual story is overwritten every time I remember because the memory mixes with the situation in which I find myself in this moment.

Isn't it helpful that our past is overwritten again and again. Because on the one hand it's the only way to see the same story from a different perspective and on the other hand it is probably the only way, we can deal with the past. Probably It would be to painful to be confronted by the reality the whole time. We create our own reality, our life from our point of view.

The first part of the novel, Webster is telling us his life how he wants it to be seen. In the second part of the book, he has to recognize, that everything he thought could have been different.

How often do we tell our own life story and how often do we adjust or decorate it? In retrospect, our life is not our life, but the story we tell about it. We present our life in a way, we want it to be "seen" in real life and in digital life.

This is what we do, we edit our life in real and in digital life. The need to make our life as interesting as possible is the same on and off-line, but (207) in text, messaging and e-mail, you hide as much as you show. You can present yourself as you wish to be seen. And you can "process" people as quickly as you went to. Listening can only slow you down.

There is a difference in how we edit. First of all, like I mentioned before, the Web doesn't forget as fast as humans do. So stories doesn't disappear naturally. And second, offline only few people can understand our life. online many more people can check my life. So, I can edit my life on Facebook but I can not really lie, you are monitored by your friends because there is this merge of on- and off-line. It would be an embarrassing moment if my friends would find out , that I don't tell the truth.

This is something that has changed over the time. in her 98 publishes book "Identity in the age of the internet", Sherry Turkle says, that the computer has become the test object of postmodernism. The computer takes us beyond a world of dreams and beasts because it enables us to contemplate mental life that exist apart from bodies. It enables us to contemplate dreams that do not need beasts (S. Turkle, Identity in the age of the internet p.22). In the computer-mediated world, the self is multiple. We reconstruct different identities of the other side of the looking glass. She gives a lot of examples of teenagers who created multiple avatars on MUDs. She gives the impression that the MUD world is a possibility to become someone you are not in real life. Now on FB it is different Sherry Turkle interviewed Audrey, a sixteen year old junior at Roosevelt who talked about her Facebook profile as "the Avatar of me" she says that she would like to be more than she is online. The point is to do "a performance of you" So, that's what we do on Facebook, we are creating our own little ideal person and sending it out. It is still us (because that is what we decided) but a little bit edited.

The urge to disguise keeps within limits now a days. Now, everything is joined together and there is no need for a separation between your private and your professional life anymore, everything will be merged together in Facebook. That Social Network Media user don't make use of seven different avatars anymore is not because we are longing for more authenticity, but because the network enters our lives to such an extent that we don't distinguish between on- and offline and because of that we are longing for our "old" person within the network.

With all the editing, the question of course would be if we remember then our real life or the edited version of it. Will we be able after 10 years to find out what was real and what were the edited parts or will we start taking the edited part for granted.

I think that we will take our FB chronicle for granted because our entries proof spontaneity and therefor reliable. But actually the number of entries and massages that have been written spontaneously is very little. "A text message might give the impression of spontaneity to it's recipient, but teenagers admit they might spend ten minutes to editing its opening line to get it just right. […] I ask him if he ever has sent a hastily composed text, and he assures me that this sometimes happens. But not the ones that really count…(S. Turkle, Alone Together p.22)

As I said before, on FB we show as much as we hide. So what about the hidden part? Do we forget completely about it? Interesting to me is, that we don't hide that much because the Web gives us a feeling of intimacy, even if it is not. "Internet conversations feel tentative; you get into the habit of thinking as you write. Although everything is "composed", he somehow gets into "an experience of being in a free zone". Audrey, sixteen, described a similar disconnect. She feels that online life is a space for experimentation. But she knows that electronic massages are forever and that colleges and potential employees have ways of getting onto FB pages. What she feels and what she knows do not sync." (S. Turkle, Alone Together p.258) It is like waking up after a drunk night and having the feeling that we reveal about ourself to much. The difference is, that in real life most of the time it only affects one person, in digital life it is sort of public.

"In the cocoon of electronic messaging, we imagine the people we write to as we wish them to be; we write to that part of them that makes us feel safe. You feel in a place that is private and ephemeral. But your communications are public and forever. This disconnect between the feeling of digital communication and its reality explains why people continue to send damaging emails and texts, messages that document them breaking the law and cheating on their spouses. People try to force themselves to mesh their behavior with what they know rather than how they feel. "(S. Turkle, Alone Together p.258)

Conclusion …

===============================

Synopsis

This Review deals with the desire for one comprehensive identity after discovering multiple identities in second lifes in the computer-determined life. The review considers two books of Sherry Turkle. The first Book "Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet" (1995) and the second "Alone Together" (2011).

"The computer has become the testobject of postmodernism. The computer takes us beyond a world of dreams and beasts because it enables us to contemplate mental life that exist apart from bodies. It enables us to contemplate dreams that do not need beasts (Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet, S.Turkle p 22)

In her first book, Sherry Turkle describes how we reconstruct our identities of the other side of the looking glass. Each of us is a multiplicity of parts, fragments and desiring connections.

MUDs enabled people to create multiple avatars, to become somebody they want to be. It became quite popular to use different Avatars and Nicknames and therefor to assume different identities. To be one person in analog life and to have different avatars in digital life. But the urge to disguise keeps within limits now a days. Through the connecting of different cyber identities, all part identities become a complete identity again. This is what Google and Facebook are trying by connecting all their services. Before for every need we had a different Social Media. Now, everything is joined together and there is no need for a separation between your private and your professional life anymore, everything will be merged together in Facebook

Is that because we are longing for more authenticity? Or because the network enters our lives to such an extent that we don't distinguish between on- and offline and because of that we are longing for our "old" person within the network?