AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Churches, Identities, Learning, and the Virtual

A few weeks ago, I succumbed to importunity from friends, and agreed to write an article on short deadline. This I should have known not to do; all I can say in my defense is that I held out for a long time, and was won over finally by charm of my editor, Joel Weiss, and by the list of other contributors.

The volume compiles a variety of essays relative to the ways that computers mediate our participation in “learning environments,” “sometimes supplanting them and transforming them, and often causing us to see our world from new and diverse perspectives.” In the collection, my contribution should “take up such issues as the cultivation of identity, the perceived dangers, by some, of digital interactivity taking over role of substantial reality, and what is community; to summarize some of the discourse that you're familiar with regarding these issues, and to feel free to express your own interpretations of these concepts related to religion and spirituality, including online examples and ideas on fantasy and literature. What I see emerging in your contribution is a distillation of so many of the issues that others are taking up, but in your case, in the context of a field that traditionally has discussed concepts of soul, out of body experiences, and the like” (in this summary, I’m part quoting and part-paraphrasing a general description that Joel Weiss sent via email; to the extent that this summary is infelicitous or misleading, the responsibility is entirely my own, of course).

Joel was responding to the notes for my presentation to last year’s Digital Genres conference (ah, those were the days!). At the conference I proposed (here I’m working from David Weinberger’s summary) that “we can learn from millennia of thought about what constitutes identity. He asks: What does a digital blessing stick to? What is the who of the Web? And how does that affect the proposal for digital identities, e.g., Passport, Liberty Alliance,...

Biometric makers push the idea that physical characteristics mark you as a particular human. But that doesn't account for pod people. Blessings adhere not to the physical marks but to ‘something more’ that AKMA’s tradition calls ‘soul.’

Now AKMA brings it back to the digital world. Our digital identity is created by our digits — our fingers typing digits. (He later connects ‘fictive identities’ with the Latin root for fiction: fingere. Cool.) Our fingers enact identity through the words we type. Our acts further substantiates our digital identity. Someone whose physicality is limited may find his/her online identity to be more real. We make ourselves online. But what are the characteristics and limitations of our online identities?

The key point: Our identities are already constituted nonsubstantially. Our online identies don't represent a new space and type of identity but is instead a recognition and embracing of what has always been at the heart of identity. It thrusts role-playing and authorial voice to the fore in the question of ‘true’ identity.

So, ‘perhaps blessings stick precisely to our identity as we play them, blog them, confect them, mold, share and make these fictive selves physically and online...’ ”

(I’m quoting from David’s notes here as an even less “final” version of what I actually said, than my own notes would be. At this stage, the whole essay for Joel remains deeply undetermined.)

So, looking back to what I said, some of which interested Joel, and looking forward to what Joel would like the essay for his volume to address, what shall I say?

First, I suppose that I’ll stipulate a resistance to the idea of distinguishing virtual learning environments from “real world” environments. I can’t develop that resistance in this essay, since I expect others will take up that dissent and I’m not claiming to have invented it. Having noted my doubts about stronger than rough-and-ready distinctions between “real” and “virtual,” I’ll note that my doubts concern not only the external mediated environment (mediated whether physically or non-substantially), but also the personal environment we call our “identity.” We have (theologically speaking) always already been non-substantial — and to that extent digital — so that reflections on “the church as VLE” begin not with “can you take communion online?” but with “What’s the point of ‘church’ anyway?” I’ll check-in at Ship of Fools’ e-parish, “Church of Fools.”

From a discussion of Church of Fools, I’d modulate to the conjunction of my earlier point about what the church is good for, to a point about the extent to which various church-y things flourish or atrophy in predominantly digitally-mediated interactions. That entails addressing the vivid fear that many people feel about whether “the virtual” will replace “the real.” This is where I can discuss “replacement panic,” and my sense that the impulse to panic obscures the much finer-grained changes that will eventually (have already) overtake(n) us.

That’what I expect to write — but since working out ideas in public always helps me refine what I think, the essay will probably work better if you prod me about various aspects of my argument.

Posted by AKMA at June 8, 2004 04:16 PM | TrackBack