Are You the Dreamer...?

"I am real!" said Alice, and began to cry.

"You won't make yourself a bit realer by crying," Tweedledee remarked: "there's nothing to cry about."
"If I wasn't real," Alice said--half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous--"I shouldn't be able to cry."
"I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
--Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

I find myself struggling with the ideas surrounding on-line identity. More specifically, how what we do/say on-line, pages we visit, and how the things we "like" inform the perceptions of our respective identities. Even more important, to me, is how all of this on-line activity informs and/or transforms an individual's identity in "real" life. which has brought me to a place of questioning and attempting to understand the supposed "reality" of each realm. Is on-line any less "real" than off-line? The idea of what is real is not a new philosophical debate. From Plato's Allegory of the Cave to Descartes' Meditations, humans have questioned the validity of their respective realities throughout the ages.

In Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll presents the Tweedles in a manner which shows how they are resigned to understanding that the idea of "real" is not a big deal, and getting upset about being real or not-real is not necessarily a productive line of thought. Alice believes she is real - after all, her tears stem from emotions which make her feel real. But as the Tweedles point out, are the tears real? Does the act of crying make Alice "realer"? Alice represents a particular, fixed logic as she attempts to understand the chaos of Wonderland, and one of the results of her adventures is the validity of her own existence being called into question when her real-ness is challenged.

Illustration by Sir John Tenniel (1820- 1914)

For me, all of this stems from the statement put forth in Sherry Turkle's Alone Together when, in Chapter 8, she states, "When part of your life is lived in virtual places...a vexed relationship develops between what is true and what is 'true here,' true in simulation." However, Turkle represents an opinion that seems to graze over the fact that experiences in virtual/simulated forums still produce emotions and reactions which carry over and affect our corporeal existence. If these experiences make us happy (or sad), if there is physiological dopamine release (or withhold) that comes from our on-line interactions which affects our physical bodies, how "simulated" and/or "virtual" are the experiences themselves?

How real are we or how real can we be when we are on-line? How does a status update, a new blog post or a Tweet shift the perceptions of our on-line identity? For that matter, how does a comment made to a friend in a face-to-face interaction or a statement made in class shift how we are perceived by others, and does this affect the way we see ourselves?

"There's a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
And it's all right, baby, it's all right.

And it's very far away
But it's growing day by day
And it's all right, baby, it's all right.

Would you like to come along?
You could help me sing this song.
And it's all right, baby, it's all right.

They can tell you what to do
But they'll make a fool of you.
And it's all right, baby, it's all right."
--Talking Heads, Road to Nowhere

Growing up, technological advancements in entertainment became increasingly accessible to me and in my social interactions (ATARI gave way to Nintendo followed by SEGA, Super Nintendo and so on). We got our first computer (a pre-color screen Macintosh) when I was eleven and we had internet (dial-up) by the time I was in high-school. Although these innovations were fun to play with, and I can still remember the code to get extra lives for NES's Contra, computers and tech-gaming were not all-that attractive to me. As a child, I was much more interested in playing with action figures, reading comic-books, and pretty much living in my own fantastic world of make-believe. But how was/is taking an action figure, constructing a situation, and playing it out any different than creating avatars and exploring a world connected through the internet? How were my explorations better or worse than Second Life or World of Warcraft? Better because my version of play happened in the "real" world? Worse because my play-land did not typically engage/involve others?

example of the first computer to enter our house

Many have already called attention to the problems with Turkle's Alone Together, and I have the same issues with some of her methods, the presentation of her arguments, and the general "Aw hell, whaterwegonnado!!!" mentality she tends to generate. That being said, I do agree with her call for evaluation and reflection. I see no harm in pausing to examine our on/off-line relationship, especially as we move forward into an increasing synthesized relationship with technology. We grow through learning, trying, failing, and trying again, however, sometimes understanding comes from not just examining what we are doing, but also why we are doing it.

We are moving to more of a symbiotic relationship with technology as opposed to isolated entities orbiting each other. On/off-line experiences are not isolated experiences, and the relationship an individual experiences with technology is not independent of thought or feeling. I see this on/off-line relationship sharing the same traits as any other relationship: balancing, understanding, navigating, negotiating, desiring, sharing, etc. So it seems problematic to place on-line interactions, experiences, and identities into a second-class status by labeling them as "virtual" and/or not "real." The oft-heard concern that the "virtual"world is a place to escape the "real" world, impairing an individual's inability to connect (emotionally, mentally, spiritually) simply does not ring true for me.

I drew this, scanned it, and uploaded it here - so is this digital version a less "real" copy?

My problem, and my disconnect, is that this line of thinking represents the idea that "real" is specific to a corporeal experience and does not take into account that an experience exists in spite of where it takes place. Even an unexpressed, individual thought still exists - the thought itself is a thing. We do not completely disconnect from our emotions based on the environment we inhabit - we can compartmentalize our emotions, momentarily push-through and ignore our feelings, but the feelings are still present.

The "real" does not come from the space where the experience occurs, but rather in our comprehension and understanding that an experience has occurred. Instead of diminishing the value of a particular environment, we should stay aware that what happens in one place is going to affect emotions and perceptions in another place.

"Life is a journey, not a destination." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(although when I hear this quote in my head, it is actually being sung by Steven Tyler - click here and cue to 1:59 to share this phenomenon with me)

Sources:
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004. Print.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Print.