CMC (computer-mediated communication) technologies offer people opportunities to enter artificial environments, spaces in which people can interact with each other. Besides their task-oriented and information/data-processing capabilities, computers are socially situated. To enter cyberspace, people adopt personae and play with identities and multiple roles as the possibilities of meeting others are infinite along the Information Highway. The digital self in cyberspace challenges traditional notions of the self and calls for redefinition of the self when extended into cyberspace. People encounter paradoxical situations as they construct their selves in cyberspace. When interfacing with computers, they are persuaded of the illusion of space or place behind their computer monitors in which they imaginatively and consciously construct, represent or perceive their digital identities while interacting with other digital identities. There is a tendency to forget the body in cyberspace. The technological construction of the self in cyberspace can be thought of as adding a new dimension to one’s self-concept.

The social exploration of cyberspace has resulted in a proliferation of virtual communities. The "new frontier" of cyberspace provides people with means for new and different kinds of social interaction and to build new communities, cultures and societies. Cyberspace offers people a vision of personal freedom to the extent that its inhabitants remain unconstrained by restrictions, regulations or surveillance. CMC can provide people with positive social experience and support, but it can also be an experience of alienation. Contemporary criticism of electronic media is that it isolates people from society or turns them away from face-to-face interaction. Text-based CMC and VR (virtual reality) technologies do not allow the oral tradition of rhetoric, the oral delivery of speech in public discourse.

People control the CMC and VR technologies they use, and they control the digital identities they construct in cyberspace. The illegal activities of hackers, the antisocial or violent behavior of MUD (multi-user dungeons) users and the illusional qualities of the kinds of digital selves created by people may be sources of alienation for computer-users, particularly in how human behavior is altered in cyberspace and in how the digital self impacts upon people’s behavior in the real world. New VR technologies integrate the user’s body with virtual reality, creating the effect of virtual presence. These technologies attempt to immerse the user in the perceptual experience of the self in the virtual world. The notion of being an avatar or cyborg challenges people’s self-concepts and their behavior in the real world.

The Construction of the Digital Self in Cyberspace

In Virtual Reality and the Redefinition of Self, Jay Bolter favors cyberspace as graphic space (Bolter, 1996, p. 106). The two and three-dimensional graphics of VR technologies are gaining in cultural importance with the possibility that our culture may shift from written, discursive communication to the graphic environment of virtual reality which will play a role in changing cultural definitions of the self. The alphabetic text is challenged by new graphic techniques in the reemergence of iconic writing (i.e. the smiling face) and of the perceptual out of prose (Bolter, 1999, p. 111). Bolter sees the "breakout of the visual" in cyberspace as leading to new and different constructions of the self and therefore to redefinition of the self.

From the Renaissance to the twentieth century, definitions of the self privileged abstract reasoning. Traditional definitions regard the self as unique, individual, autonomous ego, a dichotomy of mind and body, and the authorial voice of texts. In virtual reality, the self becomes a "virtual eye" that encounters various perspectives through sense perception (Bolter, 1996, pp. 113-116). Visual perspectives become the means of exploring and learning about the virtual world and represent an epistemological shift in the redefinition of the self. Knowledge is defined through sense perception and empathy, the sharing of a point of view or visual perspective with other virtual selves. The virtual self denies its identity because the virtual self sees and experiences the virtual world as other virtual selves do and learns by identification and empathy.

Although there are many differences between the constructed virtual self and the written self, the basic difference is that the virtual self does not have rhetorical voice. Three-dimensional VR is a silent medium in which sight is substituted for sound and in which visual perception predominates over language. VR does not allow for a linguistic construction of the virtual self. The autonomous ego of the traditional self is destabilized in the construction of the virtual self which, as Bolter pointed out, is contextualized in the virtual world. The electronic written self is also unstable and polyvocal as in hypertext (Bolter, 1996, p.112). Although E-mail and newsgroups are the most popular and widely used CMC applications, Bolter favors technological improvement in transmitting graphics and audio over networks and finds it unlikely that E-mail and newsgroups will remain as pure text-based forms of CMC. Computers, CMC and VR technologies have destabilized linear text to the point that cultural definitions of the digital self in cyberspace become more attractive when visually perceived.

Frank Biocca’s on-line article, The Cyborg’s Dilemma: Progressive Embodiment in Virtual Environments, explores VR interfaces which embody the user in virtual reality. The article provides an example of the technological construction of the self in virtual reality. The goal or effect of progressive embodiment is the sensation of physical, social and self-presence in the virtual environment. Progressive embodiment is defined as "advancing toward immersion of the sensorimotor channels to computer interfaces through a tighter coupling of the body to interface sensors and displays" (Biocca, 1997). Biocca argues that the body is at the center of all communication; new communication mediums engage the body in new ways. Progressive embodiment involves the human body as an information channel, a display device for the mind, an expressive communication device and a simulator for the mind. The body represented by the interface design (the graphical image) is referred to as "the avatar of the user." Immersive VR interfaces define the shape and boundaries of the avatar in the virtual world. The avatar and the virtual world are perceptual illusions generated by a head-mounted display.

The psychological effect of progressive embodiment is presence which users describe as a "compelling sense of being in a mediated space" (Biocca, 1997). Biocca argues that presence in virtual reality exemplifies the desire to use media as a means of physical transcendence. Presence in the virtual environment is unstable and changing. Users mentally oscillate between the physical, virtual and imaginal environments. Social presence is the mediated experience of intelligence. A shape, behavior or sensory experience indicates the presence of another intelligence in the virtual world. The intelligence may be human or non-human, friend or alien. Self-presence is the user’s mental image or model of the self in the virtual world. Besides the graphic representation of the self, the user’s internal self is represented in virtual reality as models of the self’s body and identity. Biocca sees progressive embodiment in advanced VR technologies (head-set, data gloves and body suit systems) as a form of cyborg coupling. The user becomes a cyborg when the user’s body is coupled with its technological sensors and displays which he refers to as the cyborg’s dilemma. The more natural the VR interface, the more it adapts to the user and the user to it so that the user becomes unnatural or a cyborg.

Social Support: The Social Construction of the Self and Community in Cyberspace

Richard Cutler’s perspective in Technologies, Relations, and Selves, is that new cyberspace technologies change the way people communicate. CMC technologies provide a means by which people can meet others in new social situations to form virtual relationships or to join virtual organizations, groups and communities. Cyberspace technologies change the roles played by people in relating to others and change their sense of identity. Cutler examined three kinds of role changes in voluntary virtual communities and bulletin-board groups, changes in group identity, socialization roles and power hierarchy roles (Cutler, 1996, pp. 321-324). Changes is group identity are due to the rapid global expansion of bulletin board groups and virtual communities. People can easily expand their social contacts and affiliations beyond local bulletin boards and organizations on the Internet and the Web. The social roles of new members change in the socialization process in taking on the group identity and in learning the culture, values and beliefs of the group. Group members’ roles in the power hierarchy change over time and depend on the members’ communication competence, the ability to clearly express personal views and the amount of time spent in conversing within the group.

Cutler’s argument is that interaction is the distinguishing characteristic of cyberspace media technologies which offer "a level of conversational interaction" that is not available in any other medium (Cutler, 1996, pp. 325-327). The social situation facilitated by an interactive, text-based technology necessitates the disclosure of information which is controlled by the individual in order to establish presence. Through interactive text, group members change roles and construct or negotiate their on-line identity. The goal of many self-defining behaviors in cyberspace is to form interpersonal relationships in order to gain trust and social support from others. As intimacy develops, the group’s history of relationships (threads of conversations) becomes valued and contributes to the maintenance of the group and to the group’s sense of community. Community identities are formed in this way. Group members may also decide to meet face-to-face. Cutler’s view of cyberspace, virtual groups and communities is one of optimism. He does not foresee CMC as essentially addictive or as isolating people or fragmenting their lives because of the great potential that cyberspace communication has for social interaction.

Characteristics of WWW Text: Tracing Discursive Strategies by Anada Mitra is an on-line critical reading and analysis of the unique characteristics of WWW texts and discourse produced by Indian immigrants who sought to remain connected to each other and to their place of origin, India. In search of an alternate way to conceptualize the idea of cyber-community, Mitra provides an insightful understanding of how the Indian immigrants characteristically used Web texts and discursive strategies provided by the technologies they used to produce a presence and sense of identity and community. The analysis focused on the Web page of an Indian graduate student, India Related Links, which presented thirty-seven categories (and hyperlinks) as themes of interest which would coincide with the real experience of the readers.

The first characteristic is intertextuality which is produced by the strategy of hyperlinking Web pages and texts and which produces explicit connections to the "lived experience" of the readers. Intertextuality is a unique characteristic of hypertext and of Web discourse. The second characteristic is decentered discursive (text) domains which are also produced by hyperlinks. The student’s Web page provided hyperlinks to two text domains, an India domain and a host country domain. The domains were decentered because hyperlinks to the host country domain were not explicit or direct connections to Web pages and texts in that domain; they were hidden and required surfing to find them. It is more difficult to identify a central Web page or text in the process of surfing across texts. The student’s page was also decentered because it represented only one point of entry to the India domain. The discursive strategy of the Indian writers was to open a space for discourse contributed by community members who relinquished centralized control by any one member and authorship which produced a democratic image of community identity. The third characteristic is reciprocal intertextuality which is produced by hyperlinks. Web pages are not isolated from each other but gain "discursive richness" by providing reciprocal hyperlinks with other Web pages. Reciprocal intertextuality was evident between the student’s Web page and Web pages in the India domain.

The discursive structure and strategies used by the Indian writers are significant in understanding their connection to the cyber-community. The India and host country domains demonstrated the dual allegiance of the Indian immigrants to both homeland and adopted country, but the reciprocal intertextuality of the India domain provided the Indian immigrants with a sense of interconnectedness and community which allowed them to preserve their ethnic identity and cultural heritage. The priority given to the India domain reflected their preference for India and provided them with a presence in cyberspace. The connections between discursive structure, strategies and cyber-community did not consistently match the Indian immigrants "lived experience." They could assert their preference for allegiance to their homeland in cyberspace, but in reality most of the Indian immigrants interacted everyday with non-Indians and negotiated different identities. The discursive strategies of decentering texts and of relinquishing authorship make possible a network of texts interconnected by a shared sense of reciprocity. Cyberspace becomes a place where the Indian immigrants can meet in community and share their common experience.

Alienation

In the on-line article, Technologies of the Self: Foucault and Internet Discourse, Alan Aycock applied Foucault’s self-fashioning idea to a qualitative content analysis of newsgroup discourse on chess. Foucault’s fashioning of personal identity is relevant to a current debate about computing, whether it provides a "vision of freedom" or whether it will become a means of "global surveillance and personal alienation" (Aycock, 1995). The interpretative analysis includes a model of four aspects of on-line fashioning of personal identity extended into cyberspace. The first aspect of on-line self-fashioning is the inner substance of the self which Aycock identified as romantic images of inner strength and creativity and modern images of skill and the scientific mastery of chess. The second aspect, commitment, involves a "cool" and rather impersonal manner in relating to others. The exchange of factual information and chess techniques, emoticons (i.e. the smiling face), flames and discussion of chess products represents the posters’ commitment to the game of chess. Personal routines, the third aspect, are of value because they are a means by which posters can improve their skill and strength in playing chess. The fourth aspect is personal transformation, the goal of which is the mastery of chess. Fascination with computers and with the mastery of chess becomes apparent in the posters’ fashioning of personal identity. The posters seem to be endlessly caught up in a debate about whether computers are or will be the "world champion" of chess and whether computers are equal to human chess players.

Foucault’s self-fashioning idea and the interpretive analysis are problematical. The analysis is limited to an examination of the newsgroup’s discourse and does not adequately explain the effects of the posters’ actual chess-playing behavior. Aycock pointed out that newsgroup postings are relatively uncontrolled, so the posters appear to be freely fashioning their identities in cyberspace. On the other hand, fashion can be freely chosen or it can be dictated. Aycock referred to the surveillance and monitoring of computer systems used by people to access the Internet. In circumstances such as on-line surveillance, one’s privacy and freedom to fashion one’s personal identity are compromised which may result in the experience of alienation. There is the possibility that computers as tools and that surveillance imposed upon computer-users may constrain the fashioning of personal identity in cyberspace. Examples of the posters’ discourse mention "sudden death" and "killer strategy" (Aycock, 1995). The possibility of illegal activity and destructive behavior raise the question whether cyperspace is social space or war space, alienating its inhabitants, isolating or estranging them from others in reality.

The interpretive analysis implicates several possible solutions for the fashioning of personal identity in circumstances of surveillance. One poster viewed computers as useful tools for improving skill in chess, but the poster played chess with others for fun and competition. Another poster used game theory, techniques and mathematical analogs to retain dominance over computers in the mastery of chess. Aycock, however, concluded that computers will become the "world champion" of chess.

Don Langham’s on-line essay, The Common Placc MOO: Orality and Literacy in Virtual Reality, presents a perspective of the MOO environment (MUD, object-oriented or VR environment) as an answer to Socrates’s criticism of writing and to modern criticism of electronic writing. Besides the democratizing and liberating effects CMC may have in the future, he believes that CMC may change the nature of human interaction and may produce a new literacy and a new sense of "being" in the world (Langham, 1994). Socrates’s criticism of writing in the Phaedrus is that it destroys human memory and deprives people of their traditional private and public social relationships. Writing disrupts the human memory of public discourse and the social interaction, routines and communal intimacy of oral society and culture. It alienates the individual from the oral community in which cultural tradition and identity are expressed and shared.

Modern critics of electronic media recognize Socrates’s criticism of the isolating and dehumanizing effects of writing but place value in writing as a characteristic medium of Western culture. Writing and print produced a rich sense of self and analytical, critical and intellectual thought in art and philosophy that is characteristic of Western culture. The isolating effects of writing and print are attributed to Industrial capitalism which facilitated the spread of mass education and literacy through the invention of the steam-driven printing press. The increased need for workers with managerial and specialized technical skills moved reading from the setting of the oral classroom to private activity, thus alienating the individual from society. Langham argues that in the case of CMC, mediated print facilitates distant communication by allowing people to meet each other within texts in virtual communities, but it also helps to isolate people. The lack of conversational and visual cues in print communication makes discussion more difficult.

Despite the isolating qualities of mediated print communication, Langham sees network-based CMC and the MOO environment as a partial answer to Socrates’s criticism of writing. CMC facilitates the perception of a shared space, and synchronous CMC facilitates interaction at the same time and in the same place. The MOO environment is an example of a structured virtual environment and is a variation of the graphic image-based MUD (multiple user dimension) environment. The MOO environment is text-based and contains structures such as buildings and structure for human behavior. The MOO environment is object-oriented, enabling users to expand the virtual world by adding a new structure such as a park or library to their virtual space. The structures or locales help users to contextualize their interaction. Written (text) descriptions create the virtual world in the MOO environment and the characters or virtual identities of its inhabitants. The virtual experience of the MOO environment is controlled by the users as they interact with each other and with the textual environment in real time. MOO environments allow users to create a social structure and provide users with a sense of place and with a sense of a routine, everyday world.

An interactive feature of the MOO environment described by Langham is that MOO characters, the virtual identities created and controlled by users, can access GOPHER (an Internet information resource) and collaborate with each other for information searches and in the use of information. His vision of the interactive future in cyberspace includes more sophisticated, collaborative interactivity in the MOO environments of the future through the addition of audio and video channels. New collaborative, mediated environments may produce the new literate of the future, which will be constituted by people who are committed to working on-line with others through networks of CMC.

• The articles by Alan Aycock, Frank Biocca, Don Langham and Anada Mitra are required reading (see REFERENCES).

• McAdams, M. (1996). Gender without bodies. CMC Magazine [On-line], 3(3).
  Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/mar/mcadams.html

• Clark, I. (1997). A view from the Buddhist middle way. CMC Magazine [On-line]. 4(4).
  Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/apr/clark.html

• Hand, C. (1994). Meet me in cyberspace. CMC Magazine [On-line], 1(5).
  Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/sep/meetme.html

• Strangelove, M. (1994). The Internet, electric gaia, and the rise of the uncensored self. CMC Magazine [On-line], 1(5). Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/sep/self.html

1. What are your views and opinions of the cyborg as to whether the cyborg is acceptable as human?

2. Do you consider cyberspace to be socially situated and supportive of communities?

3. What are your beliefs, if any, of the interactive future of cyberspace?

• Dalziel, J. (1995). The apparent convergence of humans and computers. CMC Magazine [On-line], 2(12). Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1995/dec/dalziel.html

• Doheny-Farina, S. (1995). Representation(s) and sense of self: The subtle abstractions of MOO talk. CMC Magazine [On-line], 2(5).
  Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1995/may/last.html

• Moore, G. (1995). The real questions are social, not technical. CMC Magazine [On-line], 2(11).
  Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1995/nov/moore.html

• Weinreich, F. (1997). Establishing a point of view toward virtual communities. CMC Magazine [On-line], 4(2). Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/feb/wein.html

• Woolley, D. (1994). Plato: The emergence of on-line community. CMC Magazine [On-line], 1(3). Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/jul/plato.html

Biocca, F. (1997). The cyborg’s dilemma: Progressive embodiment in virtual environments. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication [On-line], 3(2).
Available: http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue2/biocca2.html

Bolter, J. (1996). Virtual reality and the redefinition of self. In L. Strate, R. Jacobson, & S. Gibson (Eds.), Communication and cyberspace: Social interaction in an electronic environment (pp. 105-120). Crosskill, NJ: Hampton.

Cutler, R. (1996). Technologies, relations, and selves. In L. Strate, R. Jacobson, & S. Gibson (Eds.), Communication and cyberspace: Social interaction in an electronic environment (pp. 317-333). Crosskill, NJ: Hampton.

Langham, D. (1994). The common place MOO: Orality and literacy in virtual reality. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication [On-line], 1(3).
Available: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/jul/moo.html

Mitra, A. (1999). Characteristics of WWW text: Tracing discursive strategies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication [On-line], 5(1).
Available: http://www/ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/mitra.html