Panel Statement

Panel: Can non-anthropocentric relationships lead to true intimacy with technology?

In the mid 1990s, when access to the internet was on the rise, there were many debates about on line interaction carried out in Internet Relay chats or chat rooms (and Multi User Domains). The second, and the one hand there were some who celebrating the fantasy and pretense of role-play partly because it was faceless and any identity could be chosen. Sherry Turkle’s 1995 view was celebratory, “As players participate, they become authors not only of the text but also of themselves constructing new selves through social interaction”. On the other hand, there were those who were unnerved by the very lack of an ethical dimension to faceless identity: distance could lead to deception, intimacy in private projected on public display, a dissolution between private and public boundaries of safety and surveillance.

• Janis Jefferies, Professor of Visual Arts and Research, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Full text (PDF)  p. 420-422