Identity in the online world

There are two aspects of identity in cyberspace, both of which are intriguing but problematic: Outer identity is the name or other descriptors that are identified by other peo-ple as belonging to a particular person, and inner identity is a person’s sense of who or what he or she “really is.”

Users of online systems such as chat rooms or games have the ability to use a variety of names (pseudonyms) or to be effectively anonymous (see anonymity and the Internet). In games, the identity used by a player is rep-resented by a virtual representation called an avatar. Other players (through their own avatars) will encounter the ava-tar and identify it by physical appearance, behavior, and what it tells about itself (the “back story”).

While opportunities to do this emerged in the 1970s with paper-and-dice role-playing games such as the very popu-lar Dungeons and Dragons, there are significant differences between online identity and these earlier games. People played “D&D” in person, so it was relatively easy to maintain a distinction between a character a person was “running” and the person himself or herself. Also, these role-playing ses-sions were fixed in time and place: After slaying the dragon, the players went home. Indeed even the term “role-playing” made the comfortable assumption that the activity was a pre-tend, make-believe identity assumed by the player.

Virtual game worlds began in the 1980s with text-based MUDS (multi-user dungeons) and similar online environments. Today game worlds are graphically immersive and persistent. Although there are games focused on the tradi-tional battles and quests, others such as Second Life are best described not as games at all but literal second or alterna-tive lives that persons can participate in for hours a day. In these worlds an avatar can own property and make commit-ments, even a virtual form of marriage. In many cases in-game goods and money can actually be exchanged for “real world” money. And crucially, unlike the D&D encounter, in these virtual worlds the “real person” behind an avatar need never be revealed.

Constructing Identities

The online world invites people to construct and try out identities. Because of the vital role they play in people’s sense of self and their social interactions, sexual or gen-der identity is a particularly important issue. The online world has some clear advantages for persons who are exper-imenting with different identities (such as transgender). A man, for example, can create a female avatar that really looks female. Further, people can act out sexual encounters without the possible physical consequences of violence or disease. On the other hand, people can still be hurt psycho-logically, and online relationships can take on added risks and challenges by eventually becoming physical ones.

There are also venues where there can be “hybrid” iden-tities. In a site such as MySpace, a person can construct the kind of “face” he or she wants to present to the world and interact with the pages of other people. Here the online identity is often tied with a physical one (potentially creat-ing vulnerability) but need not be (creating the potential for deception).

Young people in particular will have to deal with the opportunities and challenges of multiple virtual identities. On the one hand, young people are very adaptable, espe-cially to new technologies. On the other hand, youth and particularly adolescence has always been a time of inner conflicts and a search for lasting identity (see young peo-ple and computing).

The deeper philosophical and psychological implications of cyberspace are intriguing. According to some modern psychological theories (such as Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind”), the mind does not consist of a single ego perhaps in conflict with unconscious forces, but rather, many separate “agents” that interact as they seek various goals. From that point of view the online world expands that model into social space and may lead to a world in which each physical person may have many virtual persons associated with it.

Online identities are becoming a fertile area of research in psychology and sociology. Pioneering work has been done by psychologist Sherry Turkle, who has explored dif-fering male and female styles of relationship to technology, how technology affects children, and other issues.

The social and legal implications of online identity are equally challenging. Can an avatar be sued? Can one avatar commit a criminal act (perhaps even rape) against another? Might an avatar have privacy rights and the right of public-ity? The legal system has hardly begun to consider such questions, and they are becoming more urgent as everything from meetings to concerts takes place in virtual worlds. It is possible that eventually online worlds will be allowed to create their own internal legal systems, perhaps subject to “metarules” about how they are to be enforced within the context of physical jurisdictions (see cyberlaw).