

Facebook threatens to 'Zuck up' the human race - olivercameron
http://cnn.com/2012/05/30/tech/keen-technology-facebook-privacy/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

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friggeri

        Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the 
        Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells us there's a "shift" from an analog 
        world in which our identities are generated from within, to a digital world in 
        which our sense of self is intimately tied to our social media presence.
    

The way I understand this quote, it's opposed to centuries of
sociology/psychology, cf. Aristotle's zoon politikon and Lev Vygotsky's
“Through others, we become ourselves.”

My point is, the nature of the influence of others on ourselves has not
changed, only the medium this influence goes through is different. And
needless to say that this new medium is nothing more than a complement to all
others through which we already achieve social presence.

~~~
laglad
I don't buy that identities were previously generated from within. I think
that pre-internet, the average person assumed a stronger piece of their
identity from family, job, nationality, gang etc. than from their inner
convictions. The internet boosts the number of identity groups you can join to
a size so great that you need a different outlook to grapple with the madness.
Maybe it's a good thing because it's kicked us out of a local maximum where we
could arbitrarily settle on who we are. Now, the clouds have cleared and there
are vast mountains everywhere.

