Transcript Multiple Realities, Multiple Selves and Multiple Places Among Users

Multiple Realities, Multiple Selves
and Multiple Places
Among Users of the
Ubiquitous Internet
A Progress Report…
Jeremy J. Shapiro
Linda F. Crafts
Richard L. Daniels
Fielding Graduate Institute
“How different human life would be if people
remained constantly in only one realm!”
Murray S. Davis, 1983
“In modern everyday life, it is difficult (and
becoming impossible) to definitively classify
experience as ‘real’ or ‘not real’; it is more helpful to
determine the degree or ‘accent’ of reality in an
event....We must now reinterpret these works [of
Schutz and Goffman] in light of technologies that
create new social worlds which must be examined,
yet can not be located among the coordinates of
our physical universe.”
Mary Chayko, 1993
Multiple: Realities, Selves, Places
Multiple Realities
as
Multiple
Dimensions of
Experience
Schutz, Goffman
Chayko
Multiple Selves/
Identities
Self-TechnologyWorld Mediation
Self-Place
Mediation
Turkle
Ihde, Mumford
Seamon, Alexander
Phenomenological Research
Frameworks
Schutz
Specific Cognitive Style of a "Reality"
or "Finite Province of Meaning":
•Specific tension of consciousness
•Specific suspension of doubt
•Prevalent form of spontaneity
•Specific form of experiencing one's self
•Specific form of sociality
•Specific time-perspective
• Inner consistency and compatibility of experiences
•Specific accent of reality
•Untranslatability into other reality
•Specific shock of transition to other reality
Van
Manen
The Four
Existentials:
•Space
•Time
•Corporeality
•Relationality
Phenomenological Research Exemplars
Murray Davis,
Smut
The shift out of
everyday reality
The slide into
erotic reality
Iris Marion Young,
Throwing Like a Girl
Research based on
Merleau-Ponty's notion:
“The most primordial
intentional act is the
motion of the body
orienting itself with
respect to and moving
within its surroundings.”
-- Young, Throwing Like
a Girl
Multiple Realities
The
Reality
of
Dreams
Musical
Reality
The Reality
of Mystical
Experience
Etc.
The Multiple
Realities of
Jeremy
Workaday
Reality
The
Reality of
Marriage
The
Reality
of
Writing/
Erotic
Reality
“All of the other manifold social relationships are
derived from the originary experiencing of the totality
of the Other's self in the community of time and
space....In none of them does the self of the Other
become accessible to the partner as a unity. The
Other appears merely as a partial self, as originator of
these and those acts, which I do not share in a vivid
present. There is a particular quasi-present in which I
interpret the mere outcome of the Other's
communicating -- the written letter, the printed book -without having participated in the ongoing process of
communicating acts.”
Alfred Schutz, On Multiple Realities, 1945
Multiple Selves
Jeremy
the
Dreamer
Jeremy
the
German
Speaker
Jeremy
the
Traveler
Etc.
The Multiple
Selves of Jeremy
Jeremy
the
French
Speaker
Jeremy
the
Teacher
Jeremy
the
Lover
Jeremy
the
Student
Jeremy
the
Political
Activitist
Multiple Selves in Relation
Jeremy in
relation to
Joe
(doorman)
Jeremy in
relation to
Pamela (wife)
Jeremy in
relation to
Shelley
Etc.
colleague
friend
co-author
Jeremy in
relation to
Charles (dean)
Jeremy in
relation to
Linda (student)
The Multiple
Selves-inRelation of
Jeremy
Jeremy in
relation to Rick
(student)
Jeremy in
relation
to Daniel
(brother)
Jeremy in relation
to Mommy (mother)
Our research is not…
Postmodernist
theory of no self
or subject
Multiple
Personality
Disorder model
The Research so far…
Lived Other
Lived Time
Lived Space
Lived Body
Sample Size
In-Person
Telephone
Interviews
9
4
5
Tape Recorded
Transcripts into NVivo
Sample Questions
1. Have you ever communicated with the same person using multiple media at
the same time? How did you experience the person, the communication,
yourself in each of these media?
2. What has been your experience of engaging in or sustaining relationships with
people from different places?
3. Are you aware of any difference in the way you experience your physical self
when you are communicating in virtual space?
4. Would you think of an instance when you were doing two or more activities at
the same time. What was it like to do some of these things?
5. What was your sense of time in that experience?
Preliminary Themes and Issues
Features and issues of subjectivity in multiple
communication channels with multiple ICT's in/from
multiple places
 Focus and attention states, distraction
 Prioritization
 Context, ongoing evaluation and decision in context
 Boundaries and leakage
 Parallel processing vs. time-slicing models
 Sense of different rates of time flow among individual
channels or of total time flow
 Over-all sense of the self and its location
Preliminary Themes and Issues
Continua
 Comfort vs. stress with multiple communication
 Phone as normative model
 Being "good" at multi-tasking
Preliminary Themes and Issues
Self-related differences in/with different media or ICT
tools
 Preferences for different media
 Self-relations in different media
 Expectations about response and response time in
different media
 Communication styles in different media
 Sense of personal authenticity in different media
and the ability to detect it
Preliminary Themes and Issues
Other issues
 Intrusion of media/technology
 Communicating in one medium things not easily
communicable in another
 Multiple relationships in foreground and
background
Preliminary Themes and Issues
Features and issues of subjectivity in multiple
communication channels with multiple ICTs in/from
multiple places
 Focus and attention states, distraction
Robert:
 Prioritization
“As long as, I have access to an Internet café or even
through somebody else’s computer it doesn’t really
 Context,
ongoing
and
decision in context
matter where
I have access. evaluation
So more and more my
life
has kind of shifted over to that where my web presence
is everywhere onand
the planet
and all I have to do is find a
 Boundaries
leakage
way of getting at it you know...10 years ago when I went
somewhere else I was leaving the place I was. Now I
 Parallel processing vs. time-slicing models
don’t feel like I am leaving the place I was and I don’t
feel like I am going to a new place. The places are all
 Sense
oftodifferent
rates
ofdifficult
time
collapsed
each other you know.
It’s very
to flow among individual
put into words.“
channels or of total time flow
 Over-all sense of the self and its location
Preliminary Themes and Issues
Jonathan:
Features and issues of subjectivity in multiple
communication channels with multiple ICT's in/from
multiple places
Alicia:
 Focus and attention states, distraction
“It’s actually not at the same time you see you are actually not doing it at
the same,youPrioritization
are doing it like at different times because...when I talk to my
friends I focus on that person if I go into some kind of Internet site after I
will focus on the Internet site and then I see oh my friend is talking to me
 Context, ongoing evaluation and decision in context
again so I go back to the friend and focus on that again. So it’s not like I
focus on the same like all the things at the same time.”
 Boundaries and leakage
 Parallel processing vs. time-slicing models
 Sense of different rates of time flow among individual
channels or of total time flow
 Over-all sense of the self and its location
“It’s sort of like you know playing a piano just like doing three against two,
now it is just sort of keeping some relation between the two things that you
are doing. Because you are the same person and also keeping each
individual thing going at the rate or with the flow that is appropriate to it.”
Preliminary Themes and Issues
Features and issues of subjectivity in multiple
Alicia: communication channels with multiple ICTs in/from
“It wasmultiple
kind of embarrassing
and like when
places
you know talking to 5 people at the same time
you mean to say something to one of them
states, distraction
and thenyouFocus
perhaps thenand
say it toattention
another
person you are like in the wrong window and
like it gets
confusing after some time.”
 really
Prioritization
 Context, ongoing evaluation and decision in context
 Boundaries and leakage
 Parallel processing vs. time-slicing models
 Sense of different rates of time flow among individual
channels or of total time flow
 Over-all sense of the self and its location
Preliminary Observations…
Multiple identities and realities
emerge in idiosyncratic
configurations within complex
interpersonal and technological
structures and situations. They are
generated ongoingly and unstably
through a combination of personal
choice, making do, and bricolage
based on context, personal and
interpersonal history, and self/social
construction.
Two Selves in Interaction
Jeremy:
the
received,
mediated
self
Jeremy: the
selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Linda: the
interpreted,
projected
representation
Jeremy: the
interpreted,
projected
representation
Linda: the selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Linda: the
received,
mediated
self
Communication
Jeremy: the
singular person
Linda : the
singular person
Three Selves in Interaction
Linda 1: the
selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Jeremy 1: the
selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Jeremy: the
singular
person
Jeremy 2: the
selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Rick 1: the selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Linda 2: the
selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Rick: the
singular
person
Rick 2: the selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Linda:
the
singular
person
Multiple Mediated Selves
in Interaction
Jeremy A : the selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Linda A : the selfA mediated
communication
channel :
presentation
constructed in
communication
phone
Jeremy B :
the selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
A mediated
communication
channel:
e-mail
Linda B : the
self-presentation
constructed in
communication
Communication
Jeremy: the
singular person
Linda : the
singular person
Multiple Mediated Selves in Parallel
The channel/
medium for the
individual
Jeremy A : the
Structural,
inherent
properties
The impact of
technology
on the self
received,
mediated self
A mediated
communication
channel :
phone
Jeremy A : the selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
The specific
context
Linda A : the
interpreted,
projected
representation
presentation
constructed in
communication
The impact of
technology
on the self
Structural,
inherent
properties
Linda A : the
received,
mediated self
Jeremy B :
the selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
Linda A: the self-
Jeremy A : the
interpreted, projected
representation
The channel/
medium for the
individual
A mediated
communication
channel:
phone
The specific
context
Linda B: the
A mediated
communication
channel:
selfpresentation
constructed in
communication
e-mail
Communication
Jeremy: the
singular person
Linda : the
singular person
Present Moment
Potential
Communication
Background
Communication
Present
Communication
Present Consciousness
•Mutual Influence
•Integration
•Content
•Technology Context
•Other
•Social Relationship
•Style in Using Technology
•Manifestation of Multiple Other
•Managing Prioritization
Lessons Learned
Introducing our
conceptual ideas into
the interview
introduction sometimes
limited interviewee’s
deeper exploration
Conversation is only
one of several methods
to gain entry into the
human experience of
multiple realities and
multiple selves
Little phenomenological
literature connecting
multiple realities to ICTs
Going Forward
Include other types of
data, e.g.
phenomenological
journals, self description,
etc.
Continue to shape our
questions from the data
we are capturing including
reframing our conceptual,
theoretical framework
Jeremy J. Shapiro
[email protected]
Linda F. Crafts
[email protected]
Richard L. Daniels
[email protected]
Fielding Graduate Institute