The webcam has become an evocative object shaping how people think about identity

Evidence

Internet ethnographer Sherry Turkle has long maintained that we use our computers as “objects to think with.” In her 1995 book Life on the Screen, she observed that people conceptualize not just their computers, but themselves in terms of windows overlaid on a single screen. She argues that these conceptions represent a rejection of the modernist notion of a holistic self in favor of a postmodern view of identity as multiple, fractured, and segmented. Examining testimony of many LiveJournal members has led me to believe that the webcam has likewise morphed into an evocative object for our age. As LiveJournal user Alby put it, “Posting to my journal is like taking a picture of inside, a record of how I feel at the moment that I am writing. If I don’t write it, it is gone.” — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls, 168

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in technology as ‘objects to think with’ — Turkle’s framework of computational objects shaping identity. — connects to: Webcam identities split between staged characters and unedited everyday self — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 309