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12/04/2004 Archived Entry: "My Name Is"
My Name Is
Collin writes:
I'm tempted here to suggest that knowing the results of an egosurf (Googling your name) is to new media/electracy what being able to sign your name is to literacy.
Very interesting post (as usual). To expand, I'm fascinated by the equation of the name with some kind of new media
literate (for want of a better term) act. For next semester, I had wanted to include Derrida's Signeponge as part of my Digital Literacy course, so that we could think about the name in relationship to new media (alter egos/naming/etc.). The alter ego seems an unrecognized aspect of new media which, at best, has been trivialized in the likes of Turkle’s (and followers) work which tends to settle on the so-called MOO instance of identity theft. Signeponge seemed ideal for how it plays with the signature in ways digital culture encourages. But – Derrida’s book is out of print. So - I've shifted focus for that part of the course to the celebrity - Dead Elvis indicating the role celebrity culture plays in shaping digital literate practices (for this text, the issue of referential collage). Elvis as signature is not Elvis as person. Instead, we witness the Baudrillard “cool” discourse of commutation enacted within popular culture (via the celebrity name).
But the egosurf, as Collin notes, is just as interesting. I'm reminded of the wonderful film The Sweetest Sound, Alan Berliner's documentary of how his own egosurf becomes a dinner for those who share his name. What would it be to engage those who share your name?
My Name Is as the Warhol moment of digital culture? The collagist experience of naming? Yo. Eminem as grammatologist of new media?
The signature – borrowed from Derrida – is the new media egosurf. Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man exemplifies the move from popular culture to celebritacy. We are no longer literate, but celibratate: signatures of popular culture and technology. Googlesurfs. “What happens when you google your name?” You are engaging with the technological other, the digital you, the link, the Shaviro world which is Connected, the new media apparatus. The question of celebritacy. Everyone is no longer famous for 15 minutes, but instead, we are famous as long as we are googled.
Replies: 1 Comment
"Egosurfing" and finding thousands of citations of your name belonging to other people really puts the word "ego" in its place. You learn very quickly that you're not the only X in the world. It's like seeing alternate universes all at once, or some perverse repeating mirror with altered images.
BTW--I enjoyed your musings on the link the other day. I think that we who use computers in teaching need to be reading more and more about these ideas instead of only using the machine to create more traditional text.
Posted by joanna @ 12/05/2004 01:50 PM EST