Sherry Turkle claims that personal identity within a MUD is of a different sort than real life. According to Turkle, identity in MUDs is so flexible that its only basis is desire, and it is capable of changing as quickly as our desires changes. Combining the flexible basis for identity with windows based operating systems capable of running several parallel programs creates an entirely new archetypal identity that Turkle has labelled a "fluid" 1, "decentred self"2. Simply put, a MUD user is in complete control of his or her identity and can exist simultaneously in several MUDs with a different identity in each.
Turkle’s arguments for the decentred and fluid aspects of MUD identity are sound, but I take issue with her claim that they are a radically new phenomenon. The decentred and fluid aspects are not new, they are an exaggeration of pre-existing conditions. They appear to be new phenomena because prior to the development of MUDs the characteristics ascribed to the MUD identity went unnoticed.
In terms of the fluid malleability of identity, there are two characteristics of MUD identity to be considered in relation to real life identity: the process of change and the range of possible identities.
In a MUD, the range of possible identities is infinite -- we can choose to become anything we want. On the Golden Compass MOO alone, I have encountered player avatars in the form of dragons and telepathic wolves. MUDs allow people to exert total conscious control over all aspects of their identity. In a MUD, people do not have to subjugate themselves to the limitations of their physical appearance: the "obese can be slender, the beautiful plain, the ‘nerdy’ sophisticated"3.
The range of possible identities is no different than in the physical world. All the examples of personal transformation Turkle gives can be accomplished in the real world. The obese can be made slender through the use of liposuction. The beautiful can be made plain with unflattering makeup, a bad haircut and ugly clothes. The nerdy can be made sophisticated by learning how. Also: men can be women. Women can be men. We are now capable of transforming ourselves into almost anything we want within the bounds of our species. We have even started to push at some biological barriers. The rampant use of plastic surgery by celebrities is so extreme it has created an inhuman human ideal. Plastic surgery also allows us to recapture our youth. Bodybuilders have more muscular mass than is naturally possible thanks to anabolic steroids. Truly dramatic changes, like the inhuman avatars I observed in Golden Compass are not yet possible in the physical world. But in time the cosmetic applications of genetic engineering may result in our becoming that malleable.
The difference between enacting personal change in the real world and in a MUD is the ease with which transformations can be performed. To switch sexes in a MUD all someone has to do is spend a couple of minutes altering their personal description. To switch sexes in the real world requires thousands of dollars and several months of painful operations and hormone therapy. Although sex change operations are still being pioneered and are therefore not as efficient as they could be, they will never be as easy to perform as a sex change in a MUD.
The malleability of identity was not invented with the MUD, the simplicity of the transformation was. Identity has always been malleable but the massive effort required to transform it kept most people from attempting to. MUDs introduced the possibility of making the transformation with little effort, removing the obstacle keeping most people from making the attempt. The nerd who is continually discouraged by the difficulty of becoming sophisticated in the real world is offered an easier way to make the transformation in a MUD. Transformations became so simple that now the merely curious can undergo them for the sake of experimentation. The result is the fluidity of identity Turkle identifies in the MUD lifestyle.
In her analysis of the decentred aspect of MUD identity Turkle draws a clear distinction between a MUD user switching between personae in different MUDs and switching between roles in everyday life.
Turkle claims that MUD users exist in all active MUDs and as every MUD personae simultaneously. According to Turkle: "As a user, you are attentive to only one of the windows on your screen at any given moment, but in a sense you are present in all of them at all times" 4. The discipline needed to maintain the distinctiveness of each MUD personae leads users to split their minds:
I split my mind. I’m getting better at it. I can see myself as being two or three or more. And I just turn on one part of my mind and then another when I go from window to window. I’m in some kind of argument in one window and trying to come on to a girl in a MUD in another, and another window might be running a spreadsheet program or some other technical thing for school.5
In contrast, Turkle characterises everyday life as cycling between distinct roles:
The self is . . . simply playing different roles in different settings at different times, something that a person experiences when, for example, she wakes up as a lover, makes breakfast as a mother, and drives to work as a lawyer.6
The multiplicity of identity is also present in real life but the different roles are clearly differentiated by distance. In Turkle’s example real life roles have significant barriers between them. The lover is separated from the mother by the bedroom door; the mother from the lawyer by the road leading to work. The divisions between roles are self maintaining and require no special discipline.
The multiplicity of identity exists in real life just as it does in MUDs. Normally, the different roles are kept separate by distance, but if these roles were to overlap for example, if a son were to walk into the bedroom while the lover was involved with her husband the woman’s identities would be thrown into flux. The illusion provided by space is stripped away, revealing that the condition of the MUD and the real world identities is the same. The distance between roles allows for the illusion of the singular identity in the real world. In contrast, the intimate proximity of computer windows makes the conclusion that identity is singular impossible to reach for the MUD user.
Turkle’s observations concerning identity within MUDs are correct, but she is wrong as to the uniqueness of those characteristics. A MUD renders visible previously unnoticed characteristics of real life by exaggerating them. The exaggerated characteristics of MUD identities allow people to consciously adapt to them, instead of allowing the situations to unconsciously mould them like in real life. The only significant difference between real life and MUD identities is that conscious adaptation to these situations is more dominant in MUDs than in real life. But real life awareness is starting to change into the awareness a MUD user has. Two wildly different proofs of this are the popularity of sex change operations and the physical fitness trend: both are attempts to mould our bodies to into ideal identities.
Turkle, Sherry. Exerpt from Life on the Screen. in Composing Cyberspace. Richard Holeton, ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Inc; 1998. p 5-11.
Alan Reed wrote this paper for his Cyberphilosophy 365 course at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB in the Fall of 1998.
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