Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

As demonstrated by the AAAS exercise, the idea that the ‘rights’ of

avatars need to be protected is again a function of their low visibility, and

the fact that no kind of ‘other’, be it a person or an authority, has a com-

mitment to an avatar. Very weak identification with others is experienced

between Internet avatars. There is a very low level of recognition between

them as they lack ‘off-line’ contexts of recognition which can provide

wider bases of identification. Often recognition is limited to text-based

interaction, in which the identity of an other is confined to what he or she

can construct with text.

However, it need not be the case that Internet avatars are deprived of

reciprocity. They could associate at another level of interaction, by being

members of the same institution, or by revealing a social world in which

they could relocate their identities, their character, and their reputation;

or, finally, they could meet each other. Any of these other contexts would

enable a triangulation of each interactant’s identity. Nonetheless, the

sheer volume of traffic within sub-media of the Internet ensures that most

interaction is between avatars.

In cases where, from the point of view of a given interactant, inter-

action is entirely internal to CMC, the kind of identity which is formed

may be described as constituted at a merely ‘intellectual’ level of abstrac-

tion which promotes a certain kind of solipsistic ego formation. Insofar

as an interactant can discontinue a relationship at any time without

its having repercussions in any kind of socially constituted field of recog-

nition, CMC is well suited to the generalization of an autonomous

individualism which has long been characteristic of intellectual culture.

Instrumental control and liberation from the flesh is at the core of such

individualism (see Sharp, 1985). Interactants who do not like the

responses they get from interlocutors do not have to confront them at all.

They can control the kinds of interaction they have by minimizing ran-

dom contact and only continue those relationships in which their

ideational reflection shines the brightest. Ultimately, such means of con-

trol result in avatars having conversations with no one but themselves,

particularly given that their identity is a self-contructed-for-others which

engages with a myriad of other ‘selves-constructed-for-others’. This is

not to say that such selves are not ‘real’; on the contrary, they are consti-

tuted ‘cybernetically’, as it were, and willingly participate in a system

which mutually reinforces the maximization of each interlocutor’s own

reflection.

The levels of integration argument

Thompson (1995) points out that for most of human history commu-

nication has been face-to-face. Most human institutions have evolved

within the scope of face-to-face relations. The emergence of new types of

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