The Digitized Self in the Age
of the Internet: What Would
Arnheim and McLuhan Have
to Say about This?
Gerald Cupchik
University of Toronto
www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik
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Teachers
Mr. Eisenstein
Daniel Berlyne
Bob Zajonc
Kurt Danziger
Guy Swanson
Paul Bouissac
Howard Leventhal
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What I Have Learned From
Research in General
- Primacy of the phenomenon (Goethe)
- Empirical discourse with myself
- Empirical narratives within scholarly
communities
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Fundamental Substantive Problems
1. Everyday versus Aesthetic Processing
a. Everyday  figure against ground.
b. Aesthetic  figure in relation to ground.
- e.g., untrained viewers of art & everyday
processing...
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2. Inside versus Outside Perspective
- Bullough (1912): aesthetic distance
- Finding the right distance
Subjective experience (engaged)
versus
Objective knowledge (detached)
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Engaged Self: Emergent Meaning
Soft-edge images invite us to resolve them.
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Multilayered images can resonate with our histories.
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Design objects can move us.
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Detached Self: Eternally Defined
Meanings
Hard-edge images which provide Gibsonian
“affordances”
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3. Fundamental Methodological Problem
Reconciling...
- phenomenology and behaviourism
- quantitative and qualitative data
Inside Experience of phenomenon
versus
Outside Reduction through measurement
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Narratives of the self
Poetry writing and performance
Dutch television advertisements
Method for qualitative analysis:
www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik
www.web.net/~michellehilscher
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How Can These Lessons Be Applied
to a New Domain?
The Idea of the Self:
Ego is a collection of skills
Self is the ego of which I am aware
Identity is the ego that my self approves of
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19th Century
- Emergence of self as a modern concept.
- Existential realities: isolation, alienation,
compartmentalization.
- Comte: “How can a person both shape and be
shaped by society?”
- Darwin and adaptation
- Veblen (1899): “conspicuous consumption” in
The Theory of the Leisure Class
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Early 20th Century
- Pragmatism and Symbolic Interactionism
- George H. Mead: the “Generalized Other”
- Charles Cooley: the “Looking Glass Self”
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Mid 20th Century (1960s)
- Miller & Swanson: Entrepreneurial Personality
becomes Bureaucratic Personality
- Reisman, Glazer & Denney: The Lonely Crowd;
The Other-Directed Personality
- Other-directed persons “want to be loved
rather than esteemed.”
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- Berger & Luckmann: “Reality maintenance”
through conversation which creates a
“collective order.”
- Erving Goffman: Theatrical aspects of
performance in face-to-face interaction.
- Public vs. private
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Turn of the 21st Century
- “Belief propagation theory”
- “I am responded to, therefore I am”
- Cogito ergo sum
- Smart et al. “Our social networks
constitute a particularly potent source of
bio-external scaffolding...”
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Realities of Mass Media
If:
“method is not ontologically neutral”
(Danziger)
Then:
“media are not ontologically neutral”
What are the hidden assumptions
behind different media?
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Rudolf Arnheim on the Problems of
“Cultural Transportation”
- 1953: A Forecast of Television
-TV is a “means of cultural transportation”
whereby the “wide world itself enters our
room.”
- yet, “a mere instrument of transmission”
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- “the more perfect our means of direct
experience, the more easily we are caught
by the dangerous illusion that perceiving is
tantamount to knowing and understanding.”
- TV “may also keep the individual citizen
from meeting his fellows” such that “the
more isolated will be the individual in his
retreat” as a “lonesome consumer of
spectacles.”
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McLuhan: “The Medium is the
Message”
- New media: “cool” media that promote
interaction helping us regain our tribal
consciousness.
- Less isolated as members of a “global
village.”
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- Nick Carr (2007): the user is “wrapped in a
cocoon of text.”
- Internet “encourages participation but it
also sucks up our attention and dominates
our senses.”
- Media transmit information to us but also
gather information about us.
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- Carr quoting McLuhan from Understanding
Media:
- “Once we have surrendered our senses
and nervous systems to the private
manipulation of those who would try to
benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and
nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.”
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The Internet and the Digitized Self
The real and the virtual...
And the virtually real.
If media are not ontologically neutral...
Then how do they affect the individual?
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1. Paradoxical realities:
- The “there and now” (Zhao, Temple U):
- Zero time lag; overcoming spatial distance
- Contrasted with sequential & telegraphic
speech in chat rooms...
- Problem in face-to-face context?
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2. The need for validation when we
“conspicuously display ourselves”...
- Modern version of Veblen’s “conspicuous
consumption”
- Disposition to conspicuous display an
extension of Reisman’s “other-directed”
personality.
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- Implications for presentation of illusory or
false self...
- Interaction and the false validation of the
Self or validation of a false Self.
- Parallel worlds that are self-focused.
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- Zosia Belski’s report on Facebook and a
culture of narcissism
- Sara Konrath (U of Michigan): loss of
empathy
Hypothesis:
If there is an ideal-self versus real-self
discrepancy, there is a greater need for
validation.
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3. What about the public versus private self?
- The Web and the end of forgetting.
- Jeffrey Rosen article in New York Times.
- Rosen affirms “the need for new ways of
defining ourselves without reference to
what others say about us and new ways of
forgiving one another for the digital trails
that will follow us forever.”
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4. Mass Media manipulation and Facebook
- e.g., targeted personal advertising based
on preferences and interests.
- Are we conscious of this?
Hypothesis:
The greater the need for validation, the
more these sites are treated as real; the less
aware people are of potential manipulation.
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5. The Virtual Reinforcer
- Matt Richtel in New York Times: Hooked on
Gadgets; Bursts of information; stimulation
and the dopamine squirt.
- Fragmented attention
- Appliance operator
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6. Are you relating to the internet as subject
matter or form (style)?
Hypotheses:
- Relate in terms of social networking
subject matter: need for personal validation.
- Relate in terms of style/form: affirmation
of personal agency.
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Thank You
Gerald Cupchik, Professor of Psychology
University of Toronto
www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik
cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca
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