The Identity Crisis in Cyberspace

2004-04-20

When the marvellous Internet was introduced to us human beings more than ten years ago, it was a new born, and extremely big, problem that we had to handle. The number of users has increased rapidly ever since and so have the problems connected with “the net” we all (?) hold so dear.

I can see some interesting connections with this cultural phenomenon that the Internet in fact is, and the issues in Ollivier Dyens’ text Cyberpunk, Technoculture and the Post-Biological Self, which I here aim to discuss.

The first Terminator-movie, witch was released 1984, was in many ways ground breaking. A couple of Alien-movies had seen the morning light, but The Terminator was something extraordinary. The arrival of Terminator 2 (T2) was a clear development of its “older brother” in matter of what all the special effects are called. And it is in all these special effects we can draw parallels between T2 and the Internet and cyberspace.

Ollivier Dyens’ writes: “For all of us, watching in awe, Robert Patrick was truly the T-1000 and he was truly mutating. We could not believe the screen's bright and shiny images, yet it was impossible to deny; the special effects were perfect, deception became a reality. How real are images? How faithful are they to a world we believe in?”.

The rhetorical questions at the end of the quotation have a certain attraction to me. How real are a computer-screen and the images it shows? How faithful is a world which is built on 1’s and 0’s? It is quite obvious that the only ones we can trust and believe in are the creators of this so called non existing world. But the problem is that their intentions are not always as good as we (want to) think. To illustrate my point I will use famous terms of the Internet and cyberspace.

Chatting: People meet at certain websites or platforms, to talk to each other throughout their keyboards. At these kinds of places many people change or redefine their personality and identity for a given purpose, which many times can cause the other part harm. That can involve sex, money…well, only our own imagination restricts the topics!

Spamming: In this context “spam” stands for all the non wanted messages we get via our email addresses. The people/companies who are spamming us do it to get a hand of our money. Now when we are aware of all this rubbish-messages their methods get more and more sophisticated. Or maybe not, they only lie more frequently. They say they are advertising for flowers, but behind “the curtains” it is just another pornographic website…

Banking: With the growth of Internet-banking we have a big issue. It is very handy to make our banking-affairs via the computer, don’t you agree? But be aware, a part of your Internet-identity is your password. If the Internet pocket-thief gets a hold of your password you are in deep trouble.

So, who in the whole wide world can we trust? No one of course! When it comes down to trust Internet and cyberspace are not different than the world of T2 and the characters in it. People on the Internet are fooling each other to take all the benefits they possibly can. Good so called “hackers” can pass through the most restricted firewalls just as smoothly as the T-1000 goes through the locked doors in the T2-movie.

All this are forcing us, the human beings, to be very alert. Only you, individually, can decide if you believe in and trust the world of Internet and cyberspace and the people in it, or not. Exactly as you decide how much you believe and trust the world of Terminator 2…


Dan W Boter
danbor02@student.umu.se