My Head Hurts

Terribly sorry all... I know I was supposed to separate the last post into three, but as of Tuesday (and the last revision of my draft post), I have come down with some sort of flu.  The meds + fever are preventing me from any form of coherent thought (my head actually hurts from entirely non-academic reasons tonight).   I figured it would be best to post the draft "as is" in order to give people a chance to read over it.  Again, my apologies.

Community, Identity, Design.  I can’t seem to separate one from the others, so I wish you luck trying to follow the thoughts of my very scrambled brain.  Our class has shifted from reading a wide variety of authors to Wenger; so needless to say, many of my thoughts (ok, our thoughts) are centered on the ides of Wenger.  From my very first post containing substantial content “Thinner” I have been concerned with the concept of identity.  From the comments received, it seems like others have their concerns too.  I believe that identity is a lens as stated in my post “to be or not to be,” and I agree that is not a dichotomy but a gradient between the individual and the rest of the community.  If the community were to disappear, you would no longer have a lens, but a mirror.  What you see in a mirror is quite different from what is viewed through a lens.  I am finding comfort in this definition because you can control your own identity (to some extent).  You can control what is put out there for the rest of the community to view through the lens.  You cannot control, however, the lens through which people are looking back at you, and that makes part of your identity not your own.  In this way, your identity means something different to everyone whom with which you engage.  I am still uncomfortable with the thought of multitudes of identities looking back at me.  As Wenger writes, maintaining an identity takes energy and energy is a finite resource.  I like to be able to pick and choose (to the greatest extent possible) what parts of me I will show to other identities to be viewed through their own lenses.  This discretion takes some energy, and I am sure this energy expended will increase greatly as I have more contact with younger students.  Some designs allow more of your identity to be seen than others; writing in blog, sharing an evening (in the same room!) with friends, or posting on facebook, all change the identity lens.  In the case of facebook, I am very glad that the design is so restrictive (to the point that I feel it is not even a community). 

A person’s information is shared, but as Wenger says … sharing information is not the same as engagement.  To have engagement a person has to be a part of a community and he or she has to have an identity in that community that is shaped (though the lens) by the other community members and the other community members have their identity shaped by that person.  In the blog post “it takes a virtual village,” Lis beautifully states how she engaged with her virtual community.  Her identity was changed by her community and the other members’ identities were changed by Lis being a member of the community.  If Lis were never to have joined that community, neither she nor the other members would have had the same type of engagement.   With facebook, if a user were to stop using (yes… like an addict), the other “pseudo identities” of the other facebookers would not be affected.  Again, I’m trying not to be a hater… I do think that there can be wonderful, rich, virtual communities; I just think that engagement may come a bit more naturally when people are in more “personal contact.”  (Humans have evolved within the context of voice inflection, body language, and physical contact.) 

Back to design… design can be a facilitator of engagement.  It can help create a community or help prevent one from forming.  I think sometimes design is unintentional by it is always evolutionary.  As the community changes, identities change, and design changes as well.  Something with a static design may start out as a community but cannot be maintained as a community. 

 

  I want to postscript this blog with the fact that I am young: I’ve just had my 23^rd birthday.  I’ve got sooo much living and reflection to do.  I feel that my age may give me an advantage in the technology part of the course (ok, maybe not), but I feel at a disadvantage when I hear (and read) the wonderful, insightful discussions created by the rest of the community.  I want to say, while some improvements could be made in the design of the disruptive technology course community (possibly more structure… just a thought), the ability to see though others’ lenses has made a great impact on my identity... and Minh... all the ellipses are for you :-)