Identity Crisis

First of all I want to say that I wrote a great response to Turkle's article, saved it, came back to retrieve it and it was gone. So here's my second shot. I found the article, Identity Crisis, difficult to read at first. After the third or fourth time going through it, I finally got what the author is saying. I split the article up into different sections to analyze. The first section does not concern me much, discussing MUDS etc. What I am interested in are the parts where Turkle discusses issues such as personal identity and physical vs. virtual reality. She discusses that people are identifying themselves so much more now in virtual settings. This may, some scholars say, help them to experiment with different personality traits to see what works for them and how it feels. However then we play with ideas such as this, it results in less socialized human beings.
I had lots of comments in response to the middle of this essay. Turkle says that "I have argued that Internet experiences help us to develop models of psychological well-being that are in a meaningful sense postmodern: They admit multiplicity and flexibility. They acknowledge the constructed nature of reality, self and other" (66-67). My response to this is are these real and meaningful in a realistic sense or are they artificial? These technologies might stimulate the imagination, but to what extent is this beneficial if it simply cycles back to technology instead of into human interaction. Also, reality and self are NOT constructed concepts, they are real. Labeling them as constructed draws a line where there should not be one.
Later on in the essay Turkle discusses different scholars' views on technology. The point is made "Over the past decade, such mythologies have been recasting our sense of collective identity" (68). The problem that jumps out at me here is that there is no physical collective, its all anonymous and almost fictitious in a way. It is real, but it is not tangible and not social, as a collective should be. It is shocking to me that technology could at some point strip qualities such as race, age, gender etc from us, things that are imperative to our sense of identity. The bigger problem I have with this, is that most people are unthreatened by this, and don't really care.
I have to say though, I did find a part of this essay that struck me in a positive way. I have always learned of and thought of post-modernism as being an abstract and intangible concept. After Turkle's essay, post-modernism has been solidified and given shape and more meaning to me. She says, "computers are increasingly expressing a constellation of ideas associated with postmodernism, which has been called our new cultural dominant" (70). The thoughts and ideas which were so abstract some years ago, are commonplace now. My overall response to this article is one of confusion. There is so much happening in the world presently, and life is changing so quickly. It seems that society relies more on technology than on their own abilities to interpret and process life.