Nick's iLog #8: What Does a Technological Identity Look Like?"
I found this picture under the caption "abstract ecosystem", and think that it represents several aspects of my conceptualization of technological identity pretty well. I think that one very important aspect of the term is the game of give and take that it entails-a "technological identity" (I suppose like any identity) must be in relation to other technological identities in order to be made sense of and given meaning. The massive number of identities in cyberspace, as well as those in the "real world" that are heavily integrated with technology, are all involved in very complex interactions with one another, interactions shaped through the lens of not only "human" interaction but also technological interactions. These interactions are like an ecosystem, different identities rely on one another in order to be maintained just as the different components of an ecosystem must be balanced with one another. At the same time, however, technology has warped our already weak understanding of what identity is and does in the context of other identities. We do not know what the mediation of identity by cyberspace technologies, or even by technologies as simple as language (not that identity can necessarily exist without these identities) entails, and thus, the ecosystem of technological identities is abstract-it cannot be conceptualized in a "normal" manner.
