The computer provides us a wonderful opportunity to explore matters both in terms of the metaphysical and the psychological. The computer is not human and yet it is not completely inanimate. It stands somewhere between the physical and the psychological, between the animate and inanimate, creating order and disorder, provoking users to new levels of awareness.
Turkle’s work with children and computers provides many daring insights that explore the affects of computing. Because computers and computer programs beep and buzz, talk and squawk, younger children associate these expressions with emotions giving them reason to proclaim them to be alive.
Perhaps it is relatively easy to argue that computers have a life. Computers can have a programmed psychology but they lack an emotional life. Enter the blogosphere.
Blogging can be seen as a constructive and projective medium.
Blogging allows us to shape our feelings as to what kind of people we are. It becomes a mirror for us to look into (What am I thinking? How do I feel about teaching, learning and computing? Can I create or offer something meaningful?) Blogging allows me to look at myself in the reflection of the medium.
Turkle notes that computing can threaten our independence. In essence we can become hooked on it. Blogging as well as other online social network applications offer a certain kind of holding power. If we are feeling lonely or isolated, having a computer around gives us the feeling that somebody is always out there sharing their thoughts and feelings. We can simultaneously be alone and not feel alone.
Yet, blogging allows us to build a safe environment for ourselves where we can experiment with our identity; we can try on new thoughts and feelings, we can share this identity with others without the responsibility of having to actually deal with other people. (Really?)
When I talk with people about blogging who do not blog or consider themselves technically all thumbs, they want to know what it means in general, what it’s all about. They want to know who I am blogging to, what I’m blogging about, why do I do it, what is the value or practicality of it. Do I tell them I’m world-building?
Blogging serves many of us as both action and reflection. It becomes a process for sorting out thoughts and creating identity. It reflects back an image of who I am and who I want to be. It is a thinking, feeling, and organizing experience. When I blog I create my own rules. And yet these rules require that I take responsibility for them. If I am feeling spontaneous and share something shallow and baseless, then I must accept the consequences of my remarks. In this sense, blogging is an externalization, of my inner life.
Mirrors play an important part in our development. I believe blogs and blogging serve a similar role. When we look into a mirror we see a reflection of what others see. In this sense, blogging affords us the opportunity to reflect, support, and develop who we are and allows us to make changes based on internal feedback and from the feedback of others. Blogging does not have to be a means of constraint; it can serve as a catalyst for change, for thinking differently, for trying on something new.
Can blogs serve to soften the notion of computers as machines? When I turn on my computer and log into my Bloglines account, I feel I am doing more than reading news. I am checking on how my virtual colleagues and friends are doing. When I read another blog post I get a sense of the author’s voice, how they are feeling, what’s going on in their lives. My ideas are sparked by interaction with people and their ideas, not necessarily the machine. Perhaps since my blog is a lot like my mind, this makes analogies between my self and my blog possible and plausible. In this sense, blogging provides a means to changing the way I think, especially about myself.
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Offline Reference:
Turkle, S. (2005). The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Online References:
Anne Davis here and here
Clarence Fisher here and here
Barbara Ganley here and here
Ulises Mejias here
Will Richardson here and here
Joan Vinall-Cox here
Keywords: blog, blogging, bloggingbestpractices, exploration, externalization, identity, introspection, metaphysics, psychology, reflection, Sherry Turkle
Comments
Well done Christopher,
I appreciate your language, examples, logic and points of view on what is going on when you are blogging. You give me useful tips on explaining what I'm doing on the blogsphere when I talk with teachers from my community educator perspective.