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For more information,
contact: Gary Schouborg, PhD (925) 932-1982 |
Schouborg, Gary
(1999). "The Internet
as Cyber-Rorschach". Clio's Psyche, 6 (2), 48-50. The Internet as Cyber-Rorschach Gary
Schouborg For me, the Internet is the ultimate Rorschach, placing even
fewer constraints on my imagination than do the shapes of ink blots. I am
referring specifically to the listserv function of the Net. Most obviously,
my audience (composed of mostly unknown members of the listservs
on which I post email) provides me with no body language to read. It also
provides me, at least initially, with almost no information as to its
assumptions, abilities, and aims. Out of this empty abyss comes
correspondence that my mind readily shapes to its own hopes and fears. As a philosopher I have spent a lifetime poring over writings of
those whom I have never met. But they have at least come out of a
recognizable tradition mediated by professors who eyed me face to face,
giving me an embodied sense of the kinds of folk who take philosophy
seriously. My professors also supplied me with heuristic methods that
constrained my imagination, limiting it to a relatively small set of
perceptions of the authors under consideration. These same heuristic methods are available to me in cyberspace,
but with this difference. The greats I study never find it germane to address
me personally, but my cyber-correspondents do, confronting me not just with
issue-oriented meaning but with personal meanings as well. It is the rare
email that is so formal as to be devoid of any tone of politeness or
rudeness, respect or disdain, admiration or denigration, friendliness or
hostility. Moreover, the responses I receive are a miniscule part of my
invisible audience, leaving me vulnerable to imagining that they are
confirmed by who knows how many silent members of the listserv. The personal meanings
they convey are thus magnified for me like sound emanating from an empty
cave. It is a revelation to me how thrilled I can be by unanticipated
compliments emerging from the abyss of the Net, how upset by sleights and
criticisms. No low-tech techniques of psychotherapy or spiritual practice
ever opened me up like this cyber-koan to which
humankind is being progressively introduced. Of course, before the Internet I
knew what it was to take remarks personally, but my reaction is dramatically
intensified in the naked context of cyberspace. My email with longtime friends stands in sharp contrast. My enfleshed memories of them provide context for our
correspondence, enabling me to be confident of when their compliments are
sincere, their disagreements not attempts to get the upper hand, their
criticisms not condemnatory. In between is my experience of meeting a few of my unknown
correspondents face to face. You readers who are old enough may recall how
you once imagined what famous radio personalities looked like only to find
yourselves surprised when seeing them in photos, on TV, or (gasp!) in the
flesh. My listserv correspondents also surprise me. Certainly their physical
appearance is always different from what I imagined. More significant is
their bearing. Among those whose email is critical, some reveal themselves in
the flesh to be supercilious, some competitive, still others simply
interested in the issues. Among those whose email is "humorous",
some reveal themselves in the flesh to be personally hostile, some defensive,
and still others simply playful. Among those whose email is friendly, some
reveal themselves in the flesh to be genuine and others to be insincere. Interestingly, on resuming our correspondence after our visit, I
find the memory of such meetings soon fading and my prior cyber-perceptions
returning. For example, an individual whom I had found irritatingly smug on
the Net, I found in person to be irrepressibly playful. Yet now that we have
resumed our postings to the listserv, the perception of irritating smugness
returns and I find it increasingly difficult to recall the playfulness I
experienced when conversing with him face to face. One explanation for this change in perception is that the senses
provide us with information that escapes even the most articulate email.
Verbal facility is no substitute for body language. Lifelong friends have
given us a large archive of remembered body language, which provides a
reliable context within which to understand current communications. Those we
meet briefly provide similar information, often enough sufficient to resolve
many verbal ambiguities, yet the briefness of those meetings fails to sustain
memory. Another factor is that people change their behavior from cyber-
to physical space. The change is itself rooted in sense perception. For
example, in posting to a listserv, I find myself addressing ideas much more
than persons. This is understandable, since the bulk of my correspondence
concerns ideas rather than personalities. Nevertheless, the lack of
non-verbal cues accentuates my emphasis, making it is very easy for me to
dismiss an idea with which I disagree. In the flesh, however, both the human
vulnerability and the intelligence of the person's face present me with a
much richer reality to respond to. The vulnerability prompts me to be more
compassionate, while the intelligence directs me to seek out the context from
which the offending idea arises. Mercifully, I have not had a favorable cyber-experience turn
unfavorable in the flesh, though I see no reason why this could not occur.
With those to whom I was favorably disposed, meeting face to face only
enriched the rapport and understanding. With those to whom I felt less
favorably disposed, meeting face to face at least temporarily alleviated
feelings of conflict. For me, there is rich learning in all this. My projections onto
emails from unknown authors provide lively insight into my hopes and fears.
The contrast between perceptions in cyberspace and those in the flesh alert
me to the richness of sensory information and the role of memory. As some of
my cyber-relationships develop over time, I look forward to seeing how
closely they approximate my face to face
relationships and how they may continue to differ. |
