The Real?

The university college is a real network, in which the young adults residing there may often find it difficult to be their authentic selves. In this network there are many factors at play, which all combine to create a self. Katherine Hayles’ said moving the “technologies of inscription” from the real of the real world to the electronic “fundamentally alter[s] the relation of signified to signifier”(1999).

Aside from the real social network of the on campus college, there are private groups on Facebook which are created for the numerous hubs which make up the larger network. For example – each building on the college has a group, so does each individual floor and then the biggest group in which all the college residents are a part of.

In the real life network that has now become virtual- concepts such as self-awareness come into play; members of the groups can post announcements, queries and even memes. Though the main aim of these posts is to be informative- the way in which each individual responds to a post is somewhat similar to their real-life persona. In other words, most of the members’ responses in this groups are authentic to their real life selves.  Sheryl Sandberg the COO of Facebook, supported this notion of authenticity when she said “You can’t be on Facebook without being your authentic self” (Kirkpatrick, 2010).

However in the readings this week, McNeill questioned if a person does know their authentic self and who determines authenticity on Facebook (2012). The college Facebook groups have intertwined reality with virtual reality together, with the members communicating through the virtual network and altering their real life personas to suit their online wants. This claim can be supported by McNeill's statement “The digital era complicates definitions of the self and its boundaries, both dismantling and sustaining the humanist subject in practices of personal narrative” (McNeill, 2012).

References:

Hayles, N.K (1999). How we became posthuman. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Kirkpatrick, D. (2010).The Facebook effect. New York, NY: Simon Schuster.

McNeill, L. (2012). There is no “I” in network: Social networking sites and posthuman auto/biography. Biography, 35 (1), 63-82. doi: 10.1353/bio.2012.009

Stanford eCorner. (2011, May 24). Sheryl Sandberg: The importance of authentic communication. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nRENaRCvLI