The Psychology of Cyberspace

Second Life, Second Chance

2007-01-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

Since my days as a member of the Palace and as a cyberpsychologist studying that community, more than a decade ago, I haven’t paid much attention to the newer avatar/graphical worlds that have come, and in many cases, gone.

Recently some colleagues and journalists have been encouraging me to take a look at Second Life. My reaction, even after I visited the SL web site, was similar to how I responded in the past: been there, done that. However, noticing all the media publicity SL is receiving, and hearing how a million people have joined it, I thought I’d give the idea of visiting it a second chance.

So I downloaded the program and dragged myself through the registration process. Fortunately the install and registration posed no technical problems for me and my Mac. Thank you Linden Labs. Optimistic, I even provided my credit card info so I could collect my free $250 Linden dollars - the equivalent, I discovered later, of about one US dollar. I promised myself I wouldn’t spend it all in one place.

Spotting Newbies by How They Walk

Before logging on, I mentally prepared myself for the possibility that I would, at first, feel like a completely awkward newbie in this unfamiliar virtual world. It was a good idea I did. It took me several minutes just to figure out how to move my avatar, and then I was literally walking into walls and trees. I spent most of the first day learning how to move about without looking like a complete idiot, how to visually survey and interact with the environment, and, most fun of all, how to fly like superman. The controls for navigating one’s avatar are much more sophisticated than they used to be at the Palace, This posed a rather interesting challenge. Even after several hours, when I thought I was doing reasonably well, a more experienced user who I met in the SL version of Amsterdam commented on me being a newbie. When I asked how she knew, she replied, “By how you walk.”

At that point I took my own advice that I’ve written about in various articles: Don’t be afraid to be a newbie. Embrace it graciously and with humor. Ask for help. And don’t be surprised or dismayed if people ignore you or make fun of you because you’re a newbie, which happened often to me in SL.

Lookin’ Good, or Not: The Avatar

After getting a grip on how to move about, I tackled the task of customizing my avatar. Again, the features are more sophisticated than in the days of Palace, especially in designing the body type, hairstyle, clothing, and facial features of a human-like body. After my initial experimentations, I still looked like such a newbie nerd that my wife insisted I continue to work on modifying my clothing.

Eventually, as you can see in that picture, I created an avatar that looks something like me, although a bit more trim and wearing a hat that I never wear. It wasn’t until later on that I figured out how to take the hat off. Although in the past I’ve assumed imaginary identities in cyberspace, I now usually choose to be myself, using my real name - and, in SL, an avatar that is based on reality rather than fantasy. Not that highly imaginary avatars are a bad thing. It’s just that as a cyberpsychologist exploring this world, I prefer to be straightforward about who I am. Even my username reflects my real name, except that in the registration process I was required to choose a last name from a list, as if being forced to join a clan.

Quickly it became clear that people take their avatars very seriously. Users spend a great deal of time, effort, and money designing them. As was true of Palace, how you look is important not only in your ability to attract people, but in demonstrating your technical skill. Unlike Palace, almost all the avatars are human forms, although how people use, think, and feel about their avatars is very similar to what I discovered at Palace.

What Can I Do Here?

Once you create your avatar and get the hang of moving about, you ask yourself “Now what do I do?” Second Life contains a lot of features, much more so than in Palace, so I could easily have spent a great deal of time reading about and experimenting with them. But that got boring after a while. I wanted to go places. But where?

That wasn’t as simple as I thought it might be. I found the maps confusing and unhelpful. The search engine offers a list of popular spots, but almost all of them were rated “mature” and involved sexual content of one type or another. Or they were places to party. People were dancing at Sanctuary Rock, which was fascinating to watch, and I found a variety of shops where people can buy avatar supplies, including quite a few shops devoted to sexual items, services, and avatar bodies. Sex always sells, in real or virtual life.

I tried to find people like me – professors, psychologists, mental health professionals. Some were listed in the directory, but I couldn’t find them. When I teleported to their location, a few other people were there, looking around, appearing disoriented like me, asking questions like, “What can I do here?” I went to Reuters, hoping I might meet some journalists, but that building too was mostly deserted. In Amsterdam some people were roaming the streets, chatting with a friend, or just standing there, surveying the streets while trying to figure out what to do next, just like me. It’s possible the users may not even have been “in” those motionless avatars, but rather letting their virtual bodies stand idly while they were doing something else on their computer. You never can tell whether a still avatar is sentient or not.

At one point I even tried flying on and on in one direction, through misty clouds and blue skies, feeling a tiny bit anxious about getting lost, but expecting I might run into something interesting… I didn’t. Just more sky and mist. After I while, I wasn’t even sure I was moving anymore. Dropping to the ground, I tried to place a “landmark,” not really knowing what that is, but figuring I might as well leave a marker indicating JohnSuler Yue had been here, as if I were exploring the moon…. It didn’t’ work… This was not a good way to explore SL.

In the half a dozen or so areas I visited, I chatted with people, those who were nice enough to talk for a bit with an obvious newbie. There was a vendor and jewelry designer who longed to buy his own shop. A smartly attired female who empathized with my newbie status and said that “friends” were the reason why she liked SL. A young, busty, and scantily dressed avatar who emphasized that “Everybody in SL wants more Lindens.” There were quite a few people speaking languages other than English. In French I told one person that I only speak French a little.

I also met people who design, construct, and manage their own environment. I mentioned that I am a cyberpsychologist who studies virtual worlds. At the Palace, the technical and company people who ran things rarely seemed interested in my work. These SL folks also seemed only mildly interested, but they are busy people. As one of them quickly excused himself from our conversation because he had “back code” to write, he told me that I should get permission from Linden Labs if I intended to do any professional research here. “There’s information about it in the support section of the web site,” he added before he walked into a wall, which made me smile, and then disappeared down a staircase.

As one of the old-timer cyberpsychologists who often has discussed and debated issues about online social science research, I was curious about what Linden Labs would have to say about people studying their world. As my avatar stood still, I called up my browser window and went to their website. The only information I found was a statement about the importance of adhering to ethical standards of online research, and a link to a Linden Lab document about doing research. The document wasn’t there, but I did eventually find a link they offered to the ethical standards of an outside professional organization.

What’s New Here?

Second Life is a fascinating, cutting edge virtual world with lots of features, places, activities, people, and subcultures to explore. Many people love it. As one emo-looking avatar said to me, “It’s addicting.”

During my explorations, I kept that comment in mind, while thinking back to how people at the Palace often said the same thing, which led to my very first cyberpsychology article that outlined the various reasons why people get addicted to these avatar worlds. In fact, while wandering around Second Life, I often had that feeling of déjà vu. Memories of people, events, and experiences from my days of the Palace starting coming back to me. As sophisticated and complex as Second Life is, as far forward as Linden Labs has pushed the envelop of visual virtual environments, the basic and essential elements of avatar worlds have not changed all that much.

With one very important exception. The economy and it’s linkage to real world money. That’s a big difference with very significant ramifications. The power of money, buying, and selling is another highly motivating factor that I could add to my list of reasons why people get “addicted” to online worlds. But as for me, economic issues are the reality of real world living that I would prefer to escape when joining a virtual community.

And so, as a cyberpsychologist, will I seriously study Second Life? Perhaps, although that would mean spending a lot of time exploring the various features and immersing myself deeper into the culture and subcultures. So many interesting things to do in cyberspace, so little time.

Setting aside my interests as a researcher, will I continue as a member of Second Life and give it a second chance just for the fun of it? Maybe. Despite all the fascinating features of this world, I have to agree with that one avatar about it being friends that really make the difference, and it takes time and effort to make new friends in a virtual community. Perhaps I might invite one of my own friends or colleagues to join me in SL. Or maybe I’ll happen to be logged on at the same time and so will have a chance to meet that dream expert who responded to the IM message I left him.

I also still have those free Linden dollars to spend.

The First Decade of CyberPsychology

2006-08-07T16:11:00.000-07:00

It’s been a little over 10 years since I uploaded the first version of my online book The Psychology of Cyberspace. As many of us are probably thinking, a lot about cyberspace has changed over the past decade…. or has it?

Cyberspace in the Media

On optimistic days, I like to think that portrayals of cyberspace in the media are becoming more balanced and realistic. Years ago hardly a week went by without a journalist requesting an interview with me about Internet addiction. Those requests are more rare now. They’ve been replaced by journalists looking for information about online bullying, stalking, pedophilia, and identity deception and theft. Controversy sells, which, unfortunately, will probably always be the case with the news.

However, I have seen more interest among media people about the positives of cyberspace. It seems odd to me that it would take a decade to reach this realization: cyberspace is much more than a place for teens and unpleasant people to act out, and much more than one gigantic library for gathering information. It is replete with social opportunities: relationships, groups, communities of all shapes and sizes. I’m glad when journalists want to interview me about those topics. Despite the skeptics who persist with criticisms of how the Internet is destroying the sanctity of face-to-face relationships, I’m happy to see upbeat TV commercials about online dating services. Why not use the Internet to find a companion?

The New Generation Gap

Although the media has tended to exaggerate the dangers of cyberspace for children, it has been correct in noting the impact of the Internet on the next generation: the generation that has grown up in cyberspace. Settting aside the important issue of the socioeconomic Digital Divide, we now live in a unique era: there are young people for whom cyberspace is the air they breathe, and some older people who, for one reason or another, fell behind the curve of Internet use, even though it was available. This new version of the “generation gap” is a topic worthy of study. In a few decades, the opportunity to do so will be gone.

The Academic Study of Cyberspace

What has changed dramatically since the first publication of this online book is the academic study of cyberspace. A decade ago there were only a handful of us doing what we called “cyberpsychology.” Now there are hundreds, with researchers specializing in particular aspects of online behavior. New journals devoted to Internet research have been created, while mainstream psychology journals are accepting more articles about online behavior. Azy Barak’s reference list is an excellent portal into this world of cyberpsychology.

With this boom in research comes a variety of important questions. When can our traditional psychological theories explain online behavior? Under what circumstances do we need new theories? As is always the case in the history of any topic area within psychology, new theories will compete with each other. Only time and research will reveal which ones apply best to which phenomena. We must be on the lookout for concepts that are new and good, while remembering that what’s new isn’t necessarily good, and what’s good isn’t necessarily new.

Unfortunately, the seriousness psychology now pays to Internet research isn’t always matched by the seriousness it pays to online scholarly publications. Such publications too often are considered second class citizens, or they are not considered “publications” at all. An odd kind of double-standard seems to have evolved. Whereas cyberspace is considered a rich social/informational environment for gathering scholarly social science data, it often is not regarded as a rich environment for publishing scholarly research.

Of course, the skeptics are correct in noting the widely varying quality of what is published online. The necessity of evaluating quality is a challenge for everyone in cyberspace. But it is not a reason to abandon online publications. Online peer-reviewed journals have appeared as valuable resources that are gaining respect, but we need to do more. In addition to these Internet versions of hardcopy journal formats, academics also need to consider alternative methods of publishing online and evaluating the quality of such publications. Doing so will not only free scholars from the sometimes routinized and stifling aspects of the traditional peer review process, it will also open our eyes to new perspectives on understanding the meaning of “quality” in scholarship. The current debates about the validity of Wikipedia is a good example of how we need to think in more broad terms about the process of organizing and disseminating knowledge.

The More Things Change…

It seems to me that the basic psychological features of cyberspace have not changed all that much over the past decade, which is why I believe that a comprehensive theory of online behavior must revolve around a psychological understanding of the basic communication dimensions of cyberspace and the effect of combining them in various ways, as in the theoretical model of online psychotherapy that I have proposed. What this past decade has taught us is that the power of cyberspace is its potential to isolate, manipulate, and synergistically combine these various dimensions, sometimes in surprisingly unique and useful ways.

The online communities that are now succeeding seem to be the ones that integrate as many of these communication features as possible. They offer both synchronous and asynchronous communication, discussion boards, email, text, images, the ability for varying degrees of real or imaginary identity presentation, varying degrees of invisibility and presence, and a variety of opportunities for group as well as one-on-one interactions. Facebook, Myspace, and Flickr are good examples.

What is “Cyberspace”?

The past decade has shown us that cyberspace is expanding so rapidly and in so many different directions that it is now hard to define. As it becomes linked to the worlds of television, radio, and telephones, it is unclear where the boundaries of cyberspace end and where those other territories begin. Perhaps “Internet” is easier to define in terms of its hardware infrastructure. But I place emphasis on the word “perhaps.” The computer-mediated universe – call it “cyberspace” if you wish – has evolved to the point where it is more than the sum of its wires and microchips. It is a social-psychological entity with a magnitude of complexity, subtlety, and adaptability no less sophisticated than the “real” world with which it interweaves.

As is always true of human nature, some people attempt to control that entity. The old-timers will tell you, sadly, that commercialization have changed the face of the Internet forever. For good reasons or not, governments and business attempt to regulate what people can and cannot access. The next decade will tell us if cyberspace is too big for any one group to control, and if it will be carved up into more tightly regulated nets.

Suler in Cyberspace

As for me and my explorations of cyberspace over the past decade, I see myself as having come full circle. I began my adventures, as well as my research, in the community known as the Palace. What captivated me was the visual/graphical dimension of online identity management and social relationships. I was fascinated by how people use images to present themselves and interact with others. From there, as you can see in the outline for this book, my work progressed into studies of Internet “addiction,” text communication, online deviant behavior, and psychotherapy in cyberspace.

Now I’m back to where I started, again intrigued by how people use images to communicate. For me the visual qualities of cyberspace is what makes it so fascinating. In fact, it is the one of the major reasons why the Internet and computers in general became so popular. It is the psychological power of the image that has led to the booming success of online photo sharing communities, such as Flickr, which is my current preoccupation and an inspiration in my recent development of what I call Photographic Psychology. Imagery has been a long-standing interest in my career, dating back to my pre-dissertation days.

At the moment, I wouldn’t say that I am “studying” the Flickr community, but rather using Flickr as a resource in understanding the psychological dimensions of imagery. But if I were to classify my research there, I would describe it as I always have over the past decade: participant-observation. The use of statistical methods in the social science research of cyberspace is on the rise, and it is valuable. But for me, it is not a substitute for the intricate, comprehensive, holistic knowledge that we obtain by immersing ourselves subjectively and objectively into an environment.

In the days ahead I may add to The Psychology of Cyberspace articles about online photo sharing communities, imagistic communication, and photographic psychology. If you’re interested right now in learning what I’m up to concerning these topics, you are more than welcome to visit my Flickr photostream and see me in action.

Where did all the aggression go?

2006-01-12T08:14:00.000-08:00

In many online groups, it's not at all uncommon for people to get a little nasty with each other. Thanks to the online disinhibition effect, some people will argue, criticize, berate, and insult others without much provocation. If the conversation lasts long enough, including discussions where people initially try to be supportive and respectful, tempers get tested and flames begin. Even purely "intellectual" discussions often are peppered with oppostional comments and unwarranted disagreeableness.

That doesn't seem to be the case in flickr, the online photo-sharing community. At least from what I have observed so far. When people comment on each other's pictures, the feedback is almost always positive and supportive. Pithy and generic - like "Wow"... "Great shot!"... "Nice colors" - but always positive.

Why? There might be several reasons. Displaying photos can be quite revealing of oneself. People, especially those with artistic aspirations, are taking a chance by presenting their work. A "do unto others" philosophy may have developed in flickr as an expression of that vulnerability and need to protect oneself.

Flickrites also might be less interested in verbal communication compared to other online groups. It's all about the images. People may find it easier to offer a pithy positive comment, than to be critical and then perhaps drawn into a verbal debate. To get people to look at and respond to your images, you have to comment on other's photos and generate contacts. Many comments, many contacts. The most efficient way to do that is to visit as many photostreams as possible and be as friendly as possible.

Some of the more serious photographers are not exactly happy with this uniformly positive and seemingly superficial atmosphere. They want analysis, critique, and debate. They want honesty. Because I tend to offer more feedback on photos than the typical terse comments, I was invited to join the newly formed "Pessimists" group. Their members are asked to be supportive when responding to images, but to always offer constructive criticism. The underlying mission is to make Flickr a slightly less sugar-coated environment.

No doubt I 'm overlooking other such groups within flickr. For example, there is the deleteme group, which claims to be "cruel... not cool." Such groups might be the collecting ground for the community's negativity.

Freud claimed that humans are intrinsically aggressive. It's one of the two basic drives that make us tick. We can control or over-ride it, but it's got to go somewhere.

Taking Root in Flickr

2005-12-19T14:32:00.000-08:00

Now that the busy fall semester had ended, I have some time to get back to this blog and other adventures in cyberspace. Over the weeks to come, I'll probably be writing some posts about Flickr, the very popular photography-sharing community that I've been exploring - and, more generally, about what it's like to join a new online community.

My initial reactions to joining Flickr were similar, in some respects, to those I've experienced when entering other groups. Of course there are those "how does this work?/what do I click on?" questions that come up whenever we try out new a new environment. Fortunately, Flickr is well designed with easy to understand and useful features. So that part was no sweat. It's also quite a comprehensive environment, including the ability to set up your own space along with message board, email, social network, and notification features that enable you to connect to others. The online communities that thrive nowadays seem to be the ones that offer this "all-in-one" package.

But then comes the more challenging task of trying to figure out where to go and what to do in an extremely large community with many thousands of members and millions of photographs. Will anyone be interested in communicating with me? Will anyone even notice that I'm here?

As is often the case, it's a good idea to create a home base that does a good job of presenting your identity, so you have some kind of stability in the community, a place where people can visit you. So I created my profile, started uploading pics to my photostream created some sets of photos... and waited to see what would happen.

I was actually surprised when quite quickly the "views" count on some of my images indicated that a few people were looking at them. No doubt some of my pics appeared briefly in the ever-changing stream of newly uploaded images that Flickr displays on everyone's home page. A few of my images must have caught the eye of a few people, they clicked on the thumbnail, and Suler had some visitors.

Within a week, someone actually posted a comment on one photo... then someone else selected a pic as one of their "favorites."

In learning theory, a "reinforcement" is anything that increases the frequency of a behavior that it follows. Clearly, for me, those rising view counts, comments, and favorites were a powerful reinforcement. I spent more time uploading photos, creating sets, and visiting the photostreams of those people who were visiting mine.

This is how people get hooked on Flickr. In fact, this is one important factor that determines how people get hooked on any online environment. Does it give us those little reinforcements that keep us coming back for more?

Just in case your wondering, my photo that so far has received the most number of views is "Bagatelle for the G5." I guess there are more than just a few computer geeks in Flickr.

Flickr

2005-11-24T20:39:00.000-08:00

Sacred Twig
Originally uploaded by John Suler.

In my previous post I mentioned Flickr - an online photo sharing community where people communicate more with images than they do with words. One Flickr feature enables you to post images directly to your blog. So here goes.

Up for Air

2005-11-17T06:13:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a month since my last post to this blog. Those of you who teach will understand when I say that a semester is like a hundred yard dash. Once the gun goes off, the sprint begins and there is no looking back until we reach the finish line.

Work in cyberspace has been part of that run - mostly email with colleagues and students, Blackboard communication with students, eQuest projects, and quick browsings of my professional listservs. Several interesting issues popped up that I wanted to write about here in this blog: the psychology of online slander and character assassination; the kinds of psychotherapy that can and cannot be done online; how students react to online environments for identity experimentation; the social dynamics of online photo sharing, as in Flickr.

So many interesting things to discuss. So little time. When you're schedule maxs out, what falls off your cyberspace radar?

I'll be back.

Blogs as therapy

2005-10-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

A recent article at washingtonpost.com described how people use their blogs as a kind of cathartic therapy. It gave the example of people writing about medical problems, and forming a community with other bloggers who shared that problem.

When discussing with colleagues this idea of "blogging as therapy," a common reply was that this really is nothing new. For as long as people have been writing, they have used it as a form of cathartic self-expression. Personal diaries and journals are a good example. Psychologists and other mental health professionals also have long noted the value of "bibliotherapy" in which people specifically use writing exercises to address and resolve problems in their lives, or simply to enhance their personal growth.

But there's an important difference between blogs and bibliotherapeutic writing. Blog communities actually combine features of personal journaling and support groups. People write to express themselves and their problems, but they also read and react to others who are doing the same. The blog enables much more social interaction than a diary, which traditionally is a strictly private, self-reflective affair.

Given that these types of blogs are a blend between personal writing and social support, an interesting question arises concerning "perceived audience." Do bloggers consider who might be reading their work? Are they writing, both consciously and unconsciously, to someone in particular? The Washington Post article pointed to some examples of bloggers being unpleasantly surprised by who in fact found their way to reading their inner thoughts, almost as if in their own minds the bloggers had lost track of the distinction between a private and public space.

It would be interesting to study how people experience the creation of their blogs. Do they perceive themselves as writing for themselves, as writing for an audience, or as a combination of both? From a psychoanalytic perspective, therapeutic blogging might be conceptualized as a type of "transitional space" in which the person simultaneously experiences the blog as "my space" (private journaling) and "our space" (support group).

Defining the Digital Divide

2005-10-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

A recent survey of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, reported in a newsday.com article, has led some to propose a new definition of the "digital divide" - those who do and don't have a broadband connection to the Internet. The report said that 53 percent of home Internet users have residential high-speed connections, up from 21 percent in 2002. Education was the most important factor in determining whether someone would have high-speed access.

Surely there are some merits to this new definition. High-speed means more multimedia resources, so any online businesses that use such resources will want to know who is jumping the divide to enter their market. Educational institutions offering online courses will begin to thrive with multimedia communication. Who will have access and who won't will be an important issue.

The merit to these new definitions is in understanding exactly what some people will have access to that others don't. And will that enhanced access be a significant resource over and above the text information and communication, as well as basic imaging capabilities, that are already available to almost everyone online? Is faster and more better, or is this our Type-A cultural belief?

One problem is that if if we accept this new definition of the digital divide, we probably will find ourselves continually revising it as new and better technology rolls our way. Who has ultra-broadband and who doesn't? Who has an integrated domestic internet/entertainment system and who doesn't? Who has holographic projection? We might consider how these revised definitions of the digital divide could become an expression of technology competitiveness and the pressure to keep up with the Jones's.

There also is a measure of digital egocentrism in such new definitions. It's almost as if we who are online are becoming so preoccupied with who has what in cyberspace that we forget that some people don't have any kind of access, or even a computer, and perhaps don't even know what cyberspace is - the people on the other side of that very clear and broad digital divide as traditionally defined.

Online Lifestyles and eQuest

2005-09-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

Now that the fall semester is underway, I'm again working with students in my online psychoeducational program "eQuest." It's a comprehensive collection of exercises and online activities that assists them in addressing some personal issue that they wish to understand better and perhaps resolve. The eQuest philosophy holds that exploring online resources - and developing an online lifestyle - can enhance personal growth. As a participant in the BRIDGE faculty development program here at Rider University, I've begun work on developing a method to assess students before and after their eQuest project.

While working on that assessment instrument, I often find myself thinking about people's lifestyles in cyberspace. In fact, this is something I like to ask about during conversations with friends, family members, colleagues, and even new acquaintances. What do you like to do online and with your computer?

People often hesitate at first, seeming almost reluctant to reveal that they're really "into" something in cyberspace, but with a little bit of encouragement, they set aside any apologetic tendencies and open up about what they enjoy doing.

I find it fascinating to see how a person's online lifestyle and identity reflect their offline lifestyle and identity. In some cases it even supplements or extends their offline self, which is even more fascinating, although it's a phenomenon that some cyberspace researchers and theorists tend to exaggerate and overly idealize. Even though cyberspace offers new possibilities of which some people take advantage, people tend to be who they are regardless of the many opportunities available on the Internet.

That fact goes to the heart of the questions that come up as I try to develop the eQuest assessment instrument. What are the skills, preferences, attitudes, and experiences that determines a person's lifestyle in cyberspace? Do they like to read and write? Are they more visual or verbal thinkers? Do they prefer spontaneity or control, fantasy or reality, or something inbetween? How much do they accept information versus evaluating it?

Then comes the issue of personal growth and the possible therapeutic changes that occur as people develop an online lifestyle. I find myself thinking about the factors that lead people into trying something new in cyberspace, including making media transitions, as I discussed in earlier posts. I wonder if their preexisting skills, preferences, and attitudes change much as they develop an online lifestyle, or if they simply find new ways to express what they already have.

Good Aim

2005-09-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

Now that my daughter is off for her freshman year at college, it's time to consider the ways we can stay in touch with her. In decades past, writing letters worked well for parents and their kids. I'm finding it hard to imagine that scenario in this technology-accelerated age of ours. Telephones quickly replaced pen and paper, but even now the old land-line models have become almost extinct for our children. With cell phones in hand, they can speak to us even as they walk to class, though more likely they are chatting with their friends.

We recently discovered that instant messaging works quite well. Knowing that our daughter has been immersed in AIM for several years, we figured she'd stay with that online environment while at college, and that we might be able to enter it with her. Fortunately, we knew her username. Having done lots of chat in my early years of online research at the Palace, I also felt comfortable with the techniques and spirit of synchronous text communication.

To our surprise and delight, she welcomed us into her AIM space. She doesn't always respond to every IM we send, but that's often the way it is in the IM world. The icing on the cake is that she leaves AIM on almost all day long, so it can tell us if she's on the computer or not, and for how long. Knowing when she's in her dorm room and at the computer is quite comforting, even if she isn't communicating directly with us.

Having recently registered at Facebook, I thought I'd test my online good fortune even further by inviting my daughter to be my friend. As I mentioned in my previous post to this blog, that did not go over as well as AIM. Jokingly, she rejected me. Parents are not welcome in some online hangouts.

So why does AIM work well? For one thing, AIM is private communication, unlike Facebook where teens can communicate as a group via "the wall." My daughter's AIM friends have no way of knowing I'm instant messaging her along with them, unless she tells them.

AIM also fulfills the developmental needs of teens that some psychoanalysts might describe as "rapproachment." They want to be independent, to dart away and do their own thing, but they also want to be able to touch base when necessary. Cell phones can do the trick, but a phone call leans towards a slightly heavier communication committment. You're obligated to talk for a least a few minutes and you must respond when someone says something. Instant messaging is more suited for connecting when you want, responding if you want, running off when you want. It's a compromise between dependence and independence.

The Facebook

2005-09-11T07:28:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I attended a workshop devoted to a discussion of new online communication tools. One of the topics was social network services, such as Friendster and Orkut. Summarized in a nutshell, for those who are unfamiliar with these services, they enable people to create a personal web page, invite other people ("friends") to view and link to the page, and then use the resulting network of inteconnected friends to discover new people (friends of friends of friends...) with common backgrounds interests.

During the workshop I asked the presenter if colleges were using social network services. To me, it seemed, this sort of communication tool would be perfect for students, faculty, and staff to connect to each other. "Some are starting to do it," the presenter replied tersely.

Now it's several years later, and if you haven't heard, the social network system called The Facebook is the new rage on college campuses and high schools throughout the country, and even around the world. On that very plainly designed home page, it states: "You can use Facebook to: look up people at your school; see how people know each other; find people in your classes and groups."

That simple description seems to underplay the fascinating and complex social dynamics that has made the Facebook so popular. Students are connecting and forming relationships even before they arrive for their freshman year. Upperclassman are checking out the new students. Clusters of friends become an in-group with their inside jokes and stories. Students use Facebook as a springboard for flirting, dating, and breakups, and for comparing their campus life with their friends at other colleges.

This semester in my Group Dynamics course, when we talked about the online component of the course using the popular education software called Blackboard, we found ourselves discussing Facebook. Someone mentioned that we should form a group in Facebook as another way to get to know each other better. One student volunteered to set up the group. Some students quickly joined it, but others haven't yet. At least one student is reluctant to even join Facebook at all. For me, this a fascinating feature of the course: how the online component of our group compares to the in-person component, and how events online might indicate something hidden but important about how we react to each other.

While setting up my page in Facebook, I decided to invite my daughter to become a friend. She's a college freshman and has been using Facebook for several months. When I spoke to her on the phone about it, she said that it felt a little awkward having her father enter her Facebook space. It was something for her and her friends, and not for parents. That made sense to me. And it also reminded me of how people attach specific meanings, feelings, and purposes to their online spaces. The world of Facebook has the distinct energy and excitment of a "college student" atmosphere. If you get a chance to enter it, you'll see what I mean.

When Old Rules Don't Apply

2005-09-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

I recently was invited to participate in a panel discussion for the State of Play: Social Revolutions Conference, which is being sponsored by a number of organizations, including the New York and Yale Law Schools. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend, but I wanted to mention here how interesting the conference looks.

The major topics include legal issues, the stock market, architecture, property, and (one of my all-time favorite topics), psychological identity in cyberspace. It seems like an eclectic set of issues, yet the overarching question is this: Is cyberspace such a radically different environment than the "real" world that many of our traditional rules no longer apply?

The basic psychological features of cyberspace defy many aspects of in-person interactions we humans have taken for granted. Time, geographical distance, sensory stimulation, social connectivity, recordability of events, and social status are either enhanced, radically altered, or virtually eliminated. The results are new spaces that force us to rethink old standards about law, politics, finance, property, and social relationships.

We also need to be cautious. The challenge for us social scientists - as well as for thinkers in other disciplines - is to realize when we need new theories to explain what is happening in cyberspace, and when our old theories still apply. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is never a good idea. When do we need entirely new paradigms, as Kuhn discussed in his analysis of scientific revolutions, and when should we modify and build upon the old?

The unique features of cyberspace are interwoven with how fast cyberspace is changing. In his book The Evolution of Consciousness, Ornstein argues that the human brain and its basic functions have not changed much over the past 20,000 years. And yet, especially within the past century, the environments we have created are changing rapidly. Ornstein warns us: Will the human mind be able to keep up and adapt?

Love/Hate Relationships with Computers

2005-08-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, this week in cyberspace was a rather frustrating one. Within the course of a 24 hour period, I had to call tech support at HP to get my daughter's new printer set up in her dorm room, at Apple to get my wireless mouse working, and at Epson to fix the poor print quality of my R800 printer. Then the brand new Creative speaker system for my daughter's dorm computer didn't speak, and the turntable my other daughter bought on eBay didn't turn.

On the optimistic side, I like to think a useful lesson can be learned from these experiences. This week led me to speculate about how there are at least three types of love/hate relationships with computers:

1. Love to use them; hate to fix them: I imagine many people fall into this category. They love using computers to write, gather and organize information, shop, do video and digital photography, communicate online, etc. However, they don't want to have to fix them when something goes wrong. They get annoyed, frustrated, or even very upset when faced with a software or hardware problem. An analogy might be people who love driving and car trips, but don't want to be bothered by car mechanics or fixing a breakdown. Some people in this category might actually know something about computer technology and possess some skills in fixing a problem. They just don't like doing it.

2. Love to use and fix them: This is a fortuitous and probably somewhat unusual combination. These people often possess an intrinsic interest in computer technology. At one end of this category are people who use the computer for specific productive purposes, as well as tackle breakdowns with energetic motivation and even delight. At the other end are people whose primary focus is exploring and fiddling with the technology itself. While they may use the computer to accomplish some tasks, those tasks might actually be a means to an end - the "end" being the delight in playing with computer technology.

3. Hate them, period. These people want nothing to do with computers. Their hate might be a cover up for ignorance and fear. They may not understand computers. They may believe they are not up to the challenge of using them. In Luddite fashion, they may believe computers are creating more problems for society than they solve. I suspect this group is dwindling rather quickly. A decade from now, only rebels, eccentrics, outcasts, and perhaps a few bonafide visionaries might find themselves in this group.

Virtual Impermanence

2005-08-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've undergone some significant computer transitions this summer - a batch of new programs, upgrading to a new OS, backing up my entire drive, reformatting it, and migrrating back all my files after that OS became corrupted.

Some perturbing but enlightening things happened along the way. Text files I had written years ago for a ongoing book project - an anthology of stories about raising our daughters - were difficult to open. Word finally managed to translate these old AppleWorks files, but with all the formatting lost and lots of glitches. While migrating all my family photos back to the reformatted drive, I spent a hour in a state of panic trying to find two months worth of precious pics, including shots of my daughter's high school graduation and prom. Had I forgotten to back them up? Much to my relief, I finally found them.

In my readings of digital photography, I learned about the marvelous benefits of my shooting in RAW, except that the RAW format is specific to each camera brand, which means that sometime in the future that format might be abandoned, which in turn means that I may not be able to open those files with software of the future. Should I save my pics in the currently standard TIFF format, or the new Adobe DNG format that some experts think will become the new standard... or will these "standards" someday become obsolete too?

This summer I also transferred all our old family VHS video tapes to DVD, some forty disks worth. After completing this rather time-consuming project, I learned that the ink from the marker pens I used to label them tends to seep into the disk and may eventually damage the images. I also learned that an entirely new DVD format is on the horizon.

All of this has reinforced a realization that I have tried, over the past 25 years of using computers, to minimize or even deny: Cyberspace is replete with impermanence. Electrons whiz around the world at the speed of light, enabling us to reach into all sorts of online territories quickly and efficiently. But as Heisenberg aptly noted, electrons are uncertain, ephemeral things, as are the worlds constructed from them. A person's email address is here today and gone tomorrow. As I type this sentence, there are probably hundreds or even thousands of people searching their computer for a file that mysteriously disapeared. When I first created my online book The Psychology of Cyberspace, I eagerly incorporated links to other Internet resources. One by one, almost all of those external pages disappeared, leaving behind dead links and 404s.

Given how quickly and efficiently we use computers to store incredibly large numbers of text, image, music, and movie files, it's comforting to think that we can create a large scale continuity of these resources over long periods of time. But with the wrong click of a button, those things are gone. If you aren't diligent in periodically transferring files into the new formats, they are as good as gone. And even if you are diligent, will your children and grandchildren be as conscientious in continuing to transfer those family photos into the now unimagined formats of the future?

All things must pass, the eastern mystics tell us. In our modern cyberspaced culture, we push the limits of that truth and immerse ourselves into media that come and go almost faster than we notice their existence. Does encountering impermanence on a daily, media-enhanced basis make us appreciate things more, or less?

While I think about that, I will continue printing out and binding all the chapters of that book about my children, as well as printing out and even framing some of my best digital photos.

JPEG and RAW reality

2005-08-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

As I'm learning more about digital photography, I'm continuing to think about the imagistic qualities of cyberspace and how we construct reality within it. This week I've been thinking about the jpeg.

I won't go into the details of what a jpeg image is. If you're interested in such details, you can check out that wikipedia link above. In a nutshell, it's a smaller or compressed format for images - compressed because, in cyberspace, we want to read and transfer files as quickly as possible. We also want to save space on our drives. Right away that tells us something interesting about our attitudes concerning representations of reality. We want it ASAP and we don't want it to take up too much room.

Jpeg also is a "lossy" image format. When you compress an image into a jpeg, some information is thrown out. The quality of the image degrades a little bit. In fact, savvy digital photographers know that each time you open, edit, and resave a jpeg image, the quality of the image degrades a little bit each time. So in our need to work quickly and conserve space as we edit reality, we might unintentionally sacrifice its clarity.

There's a reverse side to this clarity issue. Almost all digital cameras have a default setting that processes the "raw" image recorded by the camera's sensor and transforms that image into a jpeg. However, that jpeg is quite different than the raw image. Most cameras are set to enhance the jpeg by boosting, just a little bit, the sharpness, contrast, and color saturation. The end result is an eye-popping picture that elicits a "Wow!" response from people when they see it on the computer monitor or in a print. It's not how the scene actually appeared to the human eye. Part of the popularity of digital cameras is that it gives reality a little boost. In these modern media-driven times of ours, we like our reality served in a souped-up fashion.

Some digital photographers are rebelling against the jpeg and the factory-set processing of reality. They are working with the raw image recorded by the camera's sensor. They want to return to the reality as the camera originally recorded it and massage that image according to their own preferences. Perhaps they want to recreate the scene as the eye actually saw it, or perhaps they want to reconstruct reality according to their own vision.

Might this transition from factory-set images to images managed by the individual say something about how we are changing in our attitudes about the realities created in cyberspace?

Online Reality Testing

2005-08-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

As I've been learning more about Photoshop, I've developed some skill in editing images to the aesthetic version of reality that I prefer. I recently showed my wife a shot of her at the beach in which I removed a person in the background who disrupted the composition, and added in a seagull from another shot. It was difficult to tell that the image had been altered. "I'll never automatically believe any photograph again," she commented.

For a quite a while now the media has had many tools for altering reality. But the issue of what is real and what is fiction seems to be blossoming in our contemporary culture - as evident, for example, in the current fascination for "reality" TV.

Cyberspace adds even more fuel to the fires of questionable realities. All sorts of reality-bended images, games, and websites proliferate online. Even in seemingly normal text-based interactions with people, we never know for sure if others are presenting themselves as they really are, or in some fictionalized and perhaps (in their mind) idealized way.

Life on the Internet also highlights the questionable veracity of information. They say you can find anything online, but is a particular web site giving you the accurate and therefore real answer to your query? Will other sites confirm that information, or say something quite different? Post any question to an active discussion group and you may get dozens of replies stating all sorts of facts and opinions, often contradictory facts and opinions. Who is offering the "right" information? Can you even tell the difference between fact and opinion?

And so I'm wondering, if our lives in cyberspace immerse us, on a daily basis, in a sea that embodies all shades of truth, are we getting any smarter in discerning fact from fiction? As we swim through all sorts of real and imaginary encounters, are our powers of reality testing improving?

Cyberspace therapeutics

2005-07-31T09:07:00.000-07:00

There's no doubt that cyberspace can be used for therapeutic purposes. In fact, some clinicians are doing email and chat psychotherapy, which are fascinating analogues to in-person therapy. As a clinical psychologist, I was intrigued by these kinds of interventions when they first appeared online and have had many interesting discussions with professionals who do this type of work. My colleague Michael Fenichel and I founded one of the first online case study groups to explore the pros and cons of psychotherapy in cyberspace.

But I've also been drawn to thinking about the therapeutics of cyberspace on a wider scale. Other than analogues to individual psychotherapy, how else might cyberspace help people address social and psychological issues in their lives? Well, there are thousands of online support and self-help groups that address almost any issue you can name. But what about computerized psychotherapy? Or the online communities that people join, the relationships they form, the information they discover, or even imaginary gaming and role-playing environments. Can they be therapeutic too? I think so, which led me to develop a psychoeducational program called eQuest that encourages a person to address and resolve some personal issue by exploring online resources, relationships, and groups.

The basic philosophy of eQuest is that developing a healthy online lifestyle can improve one's in-person lifestyle (and vice versa). Although a consultant might assist a person in this objective, such professional guidance isn't always necessary. On their own, people can discover and benefit from the therapeutic features of cyberspace.

Now this conclusion might seem obvious, but it's important to examine it in light of an important debate in the history of clinical psychology - a debate between what I'll call the Stuck Theories and the Growth Theories. The Stuck Theories (like traditional psychoanalysis) maintain that people are so locked into their psychological and social problems that they cannot change on their own. Some outside intervention, as from a mental health professional, is required. On the other hand, the Growth Theories (as in many humanstic approaches) state that people have an intrinic potential to change for the better, that this potential might be blocked by outside forces, but the internal push to change will thrive as soon as the right opportunities present themselves.

I'm leaning towards the rosy and optimistic Growth Theories when I say this, but I think cyberspace can provide those opportunities. The Internet is all about empowering the individual. When developing an online lifestyle, people have so many possibilties to explore - information, relationships, media for self-expression - that they are bound to find the right ones to open that path to personal growth.

The Behaviors of Tech Support

2005-07-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

Given the rather relentless problems with my computer lately, I have spent quite a bit of time on the phone with tech support people from various companies. This is nothing unusual for any of you out there, I'm sure, because negotiating tech support is an unavoidable part of life in cyberspace. It's a learning experience. As such, especially being a psychologist, I could not help but take note of the various ways they behaved. In fact, as "helpers," tech support people face challenges similar in many respects to the psychotherapist. Here are some of the challenges I noticed:

Dealing with emotional people: People who call tech support often are frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, and sometimes desperate and angry. They might even show transference reactions to the tech support person - emotional reactions that come from other relationships in their lives and really have nothing to do with the tech support person. Some tech supporters are patient in the face of these emotions. Others lose their composure, and respond with impatience and poorly suppressed anger. They might be struggling with their own transference reactions.

Assessing the client's knowledge: If you're going to help a person with a problem, it's a good idea to get a sense of how much the person knows about it. Some tech support people catch on quickly to the fact that the client is computer savvy. They are willing to "work together" in solving the problem. Others seem oblivious to the client's knowledge. They continue talking in a rather pedantic way, even when the client tries to prove that he/she is not a total newbie.

The tech talk ratio: Once the client's knowledge level is assessed, the tech supporter should, ideally, talk at a level of technical sophistication that matches the knowledge level of the client, or maybe slightly surpasses it, which gives the client an opportunity to learn something new. So a 1:1 or slightly higher ratio of expert-to-client technical discourse is good. A low ratio means talking down to the client, which no one likes. A high ratio means talking over the person's head, which may impress some people... but nobody really likes that either.

Avoiding rote responding: I'm sure tech support people deal with many of the same issues over and over again, so there's a tendency to fall into rote patterns of solving a problem. Their instructions and speech patterns become robotic. Unfortunately, there's a danger that they might be thinking in a mental set and not actually be hearing what the client is saying, Instead they hear and respond to what they expect the person to be saying. Sometimes doctors make the same mistake.

Showing optimism and enthusiasm: People with problems like to know that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. A good tech supporter shows some optimism. It doesn't happen often, but once in a while the tech support person gets excited talking about computers, usually in response to a question they find interesting, or in reaction to a client who seems to understand something about computers. People who are frustrated and disappointed with their machines usually want to regain that enthusiasm that they might have lost.

Speculation: One tech support person told me that "I'm not supposed to speculate." I guess they don't want to mislead people. And yet, they often seem to speculate about the cause of a problem. Seems to me that's a good thing, as long as the client doesn't get confused or makes bad decisions based on the speculation.

Recognizing one's limitations: We may want to idealize the tech support staff, hoping and praying that they have the solution to our problem. But let's face it: no one knows everything about computers. Perhaps in some cases the tech supporter needs to appear like the omniscience healer of the machine, but most of the time it's probably better to admit when they don't know something - that when they have to put you on hold it's because they're running to consult their supervisor or some documentation. When I asked one worker at Apple exactly what "file persmissions" were, he replied honestly, "You're asking something that goes over my head"... and then he proceeded to describe to me what he did know about the topic, which went over my head. I appreciated and respected him for that.

The Land of Errors Revisited

2005-07-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

To be quite honest, I'm not terribly motivated for computering this week. So this post will be short.

Now perhaps some of you might have thought that I was exaggerating in my previous post about living in the land of computer errors. I wish I was. As the story of my still rather new dual processor G5 Mac turns out, the TIger OS was corrupted - corrupted by causes unknown. So I spent the whole past week erasing/reformatting the drive, then slowly, one by one, reinstalling all my programs and migrating back all those gigs of files that I had backed up to DVD. Then came reconfiguring all the settings in those programs in order to recreate the environment that is my "home." And that's what it's like when you have to erase and reconstruct your system - like your home burning down and having to be rebuilt.

I did learn one important lesson, far more important than things like why we should repair permissions. Our trepidations about the machine going awry really boils down to two fundamental anxieties: separation anxiety (being disconnected from online living).... and.... anxiety about loss (losing files, perhaps permanently).

Actually, those two really boil down to one, because anxiety about separation is anxiety about losing the connection to others.

So there you have it. It's all about loss. Cultivate a healthy Buddhist attitude about how all things must pass, and you'll never get anxious about your computer again. I can imagine a modern Zen master instructing us on how every program and every file on your machine is a little piece of your identity that you don't have to cling to. Just let go.

As for me, I've got several gigs of images to migrate.

Perhaps in my next post I'll say a little about phone calls to tech support. I learned a lot about that this week also.

Vacations from Cyberspace

2005-07-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

This past week we were away on a family vacation, which meant a week away from my computer. A whole week. What would that be like? It seems to me that the way we respond to periods of separation from our computers reveals something important about our relationship to our machines and our lives in cyberspace.

I remember in years past feeling a distinct separation anxiety while away on long trips. What was I missing in my online groups? What important emails were waiting for me? Things move fast in cyberspace, so even a few days absence could seem, in net time, like weeks or months. I remember devoting much time during car drives or airplane flights to ruminating about my online activities and relationships, composing emails in my head, formulating plans of action for when I returned to the net. When I bought a laptop, I'd sometimes bring it along, hoping that the hotels were wired. Or I'd hunt down an Internet cafe. Sometimes my concerns weren't just about keeping up with cyberspace happenings, but preventing problems - especially problems that could trigger a breakdown in communication. For example, would my email account fill up with spam, causing incoming mail, including important messages, to bounce?

At the very least, these kinds of ruminations reveal the prominent place cyberspace holds in our psyches. Separated from the net, we might feel separated from important parts of our identity, or from that sometimes soothing or exciting, and maybe even oceanic feeling of participating in something bigger than ourselves. Extreme responses might be a sign of what some call Internet addiction - a withdrawal reaction complete with anxiety, depression, and unrelenting cravings.

Curiously, during my family vacation this week, I felt very few of these things. I gave some thought to my online living, but mostly I felt refreshed to have a break from cyberspace. This was probably due, at least in part, to the fact that my machine was not especially nice to me last week. The problem with crashes that I mentioned in my previous post forced me to call Apple tech support and then reinstall the OS and all my third party programs. It took a whole day to get all my configurations back to "normal." And what caused the problem in the first place is still unknown.

My low net separation anxiety during this vacation might also be attributed to the fact that my attention was more focused on my new Canon slr camera. Sometimes we substitute one technological preoccupation with another.

My personal opinion is that it's a good idea to take time away from computers, cyberspace, and technology in general, including longer vacations as well as a routine weekly respite - a day of rest, a Sabbath for appreciating in-person living. There aren't many things in life that you should do every single day. It might not be a good thing to ALWAYS be connected. In Inherit the Wind, the Clarence Darrow character mentioned the "charm of distance." Important lessons can be learned in cycles of disconnecting and reconnecting.

Living in the land of errors

2005-07-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

A piano teacher I know once summarized what it was like taking piano lessons as a child: "It was like I was living in the land of mistakes." Because I too take piano lessons - but as an adult - I easily can resonate with that perfect lack of anything even close to perfection in my playing.

I'd like to offer up a variation on that phrase - one that applies to computering. It is like I am living in the land of errors.

Do you ever go one day without something - big or small - going wrong with your computer? I surely don't. Since I've been installing and working with several new programs this summer, my family will quickly attest to the fact that a string of obscenities can be heard around the computer workstation at least once a day.

Sometimes the error is simply a failure to communicate between me and the machine. For example, prior to OSX, I easily could select all the files in a folder and move them to another location. Just yesterday I once again was trying to figure out how to do this in Tiger. The Help Center gave me no insights, so I experimented on my own. I tried every variation of selecting, dragging, and dropping that I could think of, but nothing was working. Several times I ended up opening 150 files rather than moving them. Once my mouse aim slipped and I accidentally opened up all the files and applications on my desktop. Did you ever sit there and watch your computer struggling to open up many dozens of files and apps in rapid fire succession? Of course, command-period didn't cancel the struggle, like it would in the pre-OSX days. So I just sat there and watched helplessly until the fireworks ended.

Sometimes, I believe, the responsibility for the error rests squarely on the shoulders of the machine. Now I don't want to sound like I'm picking on Tiger - because when all things are considered I truly love it - but I installed it about two weeks ago with some considerable trepidation. As I mentioned in my previous post on "mysticism," the OS can be a Pandora's box. At first, after the smooth installation, everything seemed A-OK - until I try to shut down at the end of the day. About half the time the OS crashes. It's one of those hard crashes where the only way to escape is to press and hold the power button. On the positive side, the G5 is at least courteous enough to tell me that I have to press it, and, upon restarting, that the "OS unexpectedly quit"...... No, really?!.....

I'm sure you have similar stories. I assume that every day you too are running into all sorts of errors with the machine. Things that don't work. Things you might be doing wrong. Things the computer is doing wrong.

So what is the psychology of living in the land of errors? I guess we might react in several ways:

- To avoid more errors, we don't try something new

- We devote some time to trying to solve the problem, then give up if we can't

- We call tech support and hope that the call won't last hours, they know what they are doing, they don't talk to us like we're children, and their fix works

- We work around the problem, perhaps in a way that's less efficient, maybe even forgetting that there was a problem (a kind of denial)

- We get annoyed with and blame the computer, like it's some kind of stupid person or unruly child

- We get annoyed with and blame ourselves, perhaps thinking that we are inadequate to the challenge

- We refuse to accept errors and compulsively try to make our machine "perfect," perhaps driving ourselves crazy in the process

Some of us might indeed expect or hope that our machines will be flawless, that because we have control over it we can create a place where everything is just right. But as we all know, nothing is perfect. Perhaps our computer companions are doing us a favor by reminding us that we always will be living in a land of errors.

Images and the edges of cyberspace

2005-06-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

When I first went online more than a decade ago, I found the text-based tools of the Internet - like Gopher and WAIS - interesting and useful, but it wasn't until cyberspace went visual with the new "browsers" like Mosaic that my eyeballs started popping. Let's face it, what made computers and cyberspace take to public use like wild fire was the fact that we weren't just reading text, but rather interacting with windows, icons, and pictures - and experiencing the sense of space and place that images create. Words appeal more to the conscious rational mind, images to the unconscious dreaming mind. In fact, it was my fascination with the visual and spatial qualities of the Palace chat community that launched me into cyberpsychology.

As an imagistic type person, I've been delving deeper into digital photography this summer. I recently purchased the slr Canon 20D and am digging into Photoshop CS2. I contemplated writing about these pursuits here in this blog, but I hesistated, thinking that perhaps it wasn't relevant to cyberpsychology.

Or is it? As I suggested in my previous post, I'm not entirely sure what "cyberspace" is. I can't exactly define it, but I know it when I see it. When I place online a picture from my camera, clearly that picture becomes part of cyberspace. So then the camera itself has entered cyberspace, has become an extension of cyberspace, another eye for the Internet.... Right?

If there are any doubts remaining, I should mention that I'm researching online resources for digital photography, and have entered the forums at PhotoPoint and dpreview, where I get information and insights that lead to changes in my camera and PS settings, my techniques, and my philosophy of photography. I share photos online with family and friends. After contemplating the pros and cons of whether I wanted to bother with the arcane world of color management, I decided to go ahead and download the printer profiles that have now become integrated into my computer workstation and how I interpret color. Since I first started my online book The Psychology of Cyberspace, I've been creating graphics for it in order to highlight certain psychological themes. It seems to me that the psychological aspects of photography are intimately intertwined with the psychological aspects of what I do in cyberspace.

Which makes me think.... is it possible to find the edges of cyberspace, the boundary beyond which we have left that psychological realm? If you have your hands on a cell phone, the Tivo or XM radio clicker, or an iPod, don't you have at least one foot in cyberspace? As technological gadgets enter more and more spaces in our lives, cyberspace follows. It and we are all interconnected in very subtle and hidden ways. Perhaps we don't even need the gadgets in our hands to be there. Perhaps just a thought, an image, of something you experienced in cyberspace places you there.

When it comes right down to it, cyberspace is an extension of the mind - an image of the mind.

Mysticism in Cyberspace

2005-06-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

Even though I've been tackling a variety of new programs and online activities so far this summer, I've noticed that there's one challenge I keep putting off - installing a new operating system. Gossip says that Tiger, despite its name, goes in smoothly without much of a fight, so why am I hesitating?

Back in my early days of computing, I played with the operating system like it was a game of tiddly winks, cheerfully flipping in and plucking out extensions and control panels in order to customize my machine with such necessities as Christmas lights hanging from the menu bar. Over time, as I realized that things can go terribly wrong if the OS is not happy, I came to appreciate it as the mysterious heart and soul of the machine - that complex entity that you don't mess with unless you have a good reason. If the OS is peaceful and harmonious, all is well... If not, something, maybe everything, goes awry.

How many people really understand the OS? Those of us who take pride in our computing skills know a thing or two. The tech support people usually know a lot more, until they face a dilemma that forces them to put customers on hold so they can run to the company guru. Who do the gurus go to when they don't understand the machinations of the OS? One of my fellow students in graduate school (since serving as a consultant with many elite computer companies) could understand what a computer was doing by reading the binary code .... that's right, by perusing the seemingly endless string of ones and zeroes! Are people like that the ultimate gurus?

I don't think it's happenstance that we use terms like "guru" and "wizard" to describe the technological elite. Despite our scientific zeitgeist, a part of the human mind still views the workings of computers as magic and mysticism. We just can't help ourselves. It's in our nature to sense the transcendent when we experience something new and wonderful springing, seemingly, from a source beyond our understanding. The first time I saw a photograph on my Mac Quadra, I nearly fell off my chair. "How does it do that?" Even the guru's gurus have that same feeling of wonder and awe when they witness some new software or hardware marvel, or when an old and familiar program suddenly produces something unexpected.

Of course we could argue there's nothing transcendent at all happening here in our machines. Even though it may seem like a mind-boggling constellation of code, it's still just code. Just a string of ones and zeroes doing their job like the programmers instructed them. But when you stack up enough ones and zeroes, something mysterious starts to happen. The interaction effects go beyond what the programmers expected. It takes on a mind of its own. The transcendent "other" steps in. Call it HAL, Colossus or Skynet - if we want to get a little paranoid about the machine somehow developing that mysterious thing called consciousness - but it's not necessarily a threat or just science fiction. It's the Internet, Cyberspace, that living and growing entity, maybe even a consciousness, that transcends the sum of its individual human and microchip parts.

There's even something mystical in that simple one and zero at that micro-level of the bit. The mathematician Leibnitz created the binary system. Where did he get the idea? One legend says he was inspired by the I Ching - the ancient Taoist text based on the insight that all things arise from the interaction of ying and yang, the this or that, the simplest dichotomy that springs from the unity of all things that knows no distinctions.

So we might consider the possibility that in our everyday computing, even though we don't realize it fully, we reside between the infinites. To one side, there's the deceptively simple but marvelous bit. And on the other, the incomprehensible complexity of all of cyberspace. What could be more mystical than that?

Perhaps this mysticism also helps explain the media motivation and anxiety that I've been discussing in previous entries. Does that awe and wonder, that sense of magic, draw us into new realms of cyberspace.? And might our encounter with unknown forces beyond our comprehension also create some anxiety? Tell me you didn't feel those things the very first time you turned on a computer or logged onto the Internet.

MMS: Media Mental Set

2005-06-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Because I'm on a roll here with discussing media transitions - and creating new terms and acronyms - allow me to add just one more: Media Mental Set (MMS).

Traditionally, in psychology, "mental set" refers to a fixed pattern of thinking that fails to take into consideration new information or perspectives. For example, the early astronomers tried to calculate the movement of planets based on their assumption that all heavenly bodies revolved around the earth. They were caught in a mental set that led to bizarre conclusions about the shape of planetary orbits because they failed to see a different perspective: all the planets revolve around the sun.

Extending that concept, I'm proposing the idea of Media Mental Set - i.e., how people's thinking and perspective can get stuck within a certain computer-generated environment (media). They approach issues and problems, including psychological and social ones, strictly in terms of that particular environment, while failing to see alternative solutions and experiences offered by other types of environments (media). Their thinking gets "stuck" within that media.

MMS might be determined by personality and attitudinal factors, and not simply intellectual and critical thinking abilities. It's interesting how even some intelligent people who are quite knowledgeable about online communication can still get locked into a mental set about the type of communication modality they prefer. They tend to idealize that modality. They harbor nostalgic feelings about it, and feel they need to protect those feelings. Their intellectual defense of that modality postures like territorial behavior. They might also feel some of that media transition anxiety that I discussed in my last post.

A few times, when offering some consultation for professional groups operating via an email list, I've recommended that the group experiment with a discussion board format. Even when the group considers itself sophisticated about online communication and specifically wants to develop itself as an online organization, the resistance among some people to trying a new modality can be surprisingly intense. Every time I mention a benefit of discussion boards over email lists, there is a flurry of retorts about how "you can do that in email too." Or the points about the benefits are ignored, as if they flew right past people's heads. If I could see their faces, I imagine their eyes momentarily glazed over before their thinking snapped back into place and returned to the same old same arguments about why they prefer email lists.

You see the same sort of debates - the same sort of arguing from one's media mental set - between some PC and Mac users about their particular platform. In fact, in order to be here right now typing this post, I had to shake loose some of my own stiff thinking before I realized that creating a blog might be a worthwhile pursuit. I caught myself saying things like, "A blog is really just a web site".... "Chronological formats for posting aren't really useful".... "Blogs are just a fad anyway."

Now I don't want to overly pathologize Media Mental Set, because I think there is a natural human tendency to see things in terms of what we already know, according to the familiar mental templates that make our lives predictable and managable - and to overlook or minimize things that are novel. Ideally, we learn how to balance our familar and useful mental maps with the ability to challenge and modify them with alternative ways of thinking.... Read Piaget. He explained this very well :-)

MTM: Media Transition Motivation

2005-06-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

Media transition anxiety, as I discussed in my last post, would stop us dead in our tracks if not for its counterbalancing force - Media Transition Motivation. "Motivation" comes from the Latin "motus," meaning "to move." Something moves us from our old cyberspace environments into new ones. Something internal pushes us into trying out new software despite any trepidations that stand in the way. What creates that motivation? Here are several possibilities:

1. Necessity: It's the mother of invention as well as media transitions. Our familiar programs, workspaces, and social environments seem a bit tired and outdated. They don't work as well as they used to, or we become painfully aware of how we could be doing a lot more than what the status quo allows us. In this age of information and communication, if others are gathering resources and sharing in ways that we can't, we may find ourselves woefully behind the curve and out of the loop. I was forced to upgrade to OSX when Eudora for sys 9 could no longer send emails. Sometimes you just have to move on.

2. Pride: Being behind the curve is not exactly a prestigious position, especially for those who consider themselves sophisticated users or even hackers. Maintaining one's self-esteem requires that push into the next new thing that everyone is talking about, or perhaps even beyond them and into the leading edge of the curve. I'm not a professional digital photographer or website designer, but CS2 and Studio MX make me feel like one :-)

3. Competition: Not far from pride is the need to be at least one step ahead of the others. Bigger, faster, more powerful, unique. The shine of those winning medals can be irresistable, especially in a culture that idealizes both technology and competition.

4. Mastery: Even setting aside the pride that might accompany one's accomplishments, people sometimes push forward into a new cyberspace challenge simply because it's a challenge. The competitive perks may be irrelevant. It's the sense of mastering the thing that motivates you.

5. Adventure: Some people shy away from the unknown, while others seek it out. There are sensation-seekers who repel down cliffs and jump from airplanes, and they have their counterparts in cyberspace - the people who want to go where no one has gone before. It's an online rush. That was my impression of many people at the Palace, back in its pioneering days.

6. The Carrot: At the end of the struggle, there's a specific reward. Your own blog. A burned disk of your favorite mp3s. Talking with people who love pugs, like you. Psychologists call it a "reinforcement." People will work long and hard for a big reinforcement, though usually there are small ones along the way, including those step-by-step moments of mastery.

We might organize all of these motivations according to Maslow's famous hierarchy. At the bottom, we have those basic needs to resolve the practical problems of everyday living, which means we have to communicate in order to acquire resources. At intermediate levels, we establish social bonds, share experiences, and feel like we belong. At the highest levels, as we pass through stages of mastery and self-esteem, we enter new cyberspace environments as a way to self-actualize, to creatively express ourselves... and figure out who we are.

MTA: Media Transition Anxiety

2005-05-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

Since the academic year ended and I now am launched into my more flexible summer work space, I've begun to tackle a series of new programs and online activities, including Firefox, RSS, Tiger, Photoshop CS2, Dreamweaver, and, of course, Blogger.

I've been forced to consider, up close and personal, a phenomenon I've thought about often, what I like to call "media transitions" - broadly defined as the psychological changes that occur when you enter a new computer-mediated environment. What motivates us to try a different program or venture into a new place online? What stops us? How do cognitive and emotional factors influence the transition?

In my last post I mentioned some reasons why I wanted to create my first blog, some of which I no doubt share with other people who are enthusiastic about the blogosphere. I also mentioned what took me so long. I'm busy, again a handy rationale for many professionals and citizens of cyberspace.

But it that the only reason?

Sometimes we convince ourselves that we're happy where we are. Do I really need a blog? Is it worth the time and effort? Do I want to deal with the inevitable technical frustrations. My computer lifestyle is going fine now, so why bother. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Blogs are things other people do. I'm not a blog-type person (feel free to substitute in any other word for "blog"... like RSS, Firefox, home page, OSX)

All of these things indeed may be true. Despite the insanely fast-moving world of computers, it isn't always imperative to stay ahead of the curve. Sometimes indeed we are fine just where we are.

And sometimes the idea of making a change makes us a bit anxious - what I call "media transition anxiety." That trepidation ranges from small to large, depending on one's personality and the magnitude of the change required.

There may be a variety of reasons for that anxiety. A fear of creating software and hardware problems we never had before. A fear of feeling incompetent or stupid. A fear of failing. A fear of the unknown. If it involves entering a new social environment, we might worry about being rejected, or, as is so common in cyberspace, being ignored. So it comes as no surprise that we might cover up those worries with a few rationalizations to convince ourselves that our digital lifestyle is fine as is.

In some cases simple ignorance blocks our way. We just don't understand what we're missing out on. We don't get it. That may be a lack of imagination and curiosity on our part, or we just don't want to understand, in which case we're probably suffering from unconscious MTA.

Why this blog? Why Now?

2005-05-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning to set up this blog for quite a while now. Intending it as a companion reader to my online book The Psychology of Cyberspace, I wanted to use the blog format as a way to give readers an inside view of a cyberpsychologist’s life and the day-to-day issues we deal with. What’s it like to study how people behave online? What issues are my colleagues and the media talking about?

If you’re looking for well-organized, carefully composed readings on the psychology of cyberspace, you might take a look at my book. This blog is going to be quite different. More spontaneous and casual. I’m hoping that will be the fun part of it.

So why did I wait until now, even though the blogosphere has been booming for quite a while (in cyberspace time, that is). I just needed a little boost to try something new. And I got it from John LeMasney, our residence instructional technology expert at Rider. At the end of his Faculty Development Day presentation on blogs, wikis, and podcasting, he told us to log into blogger and set up an account. So here I am…. Thanks for the boost, John.

I plan on going at a slow pace. After all, we’re very busy, multitasking people in cyberspace. But more on that later. I plan to post maybe once a week, while in-between trying to tune up this blog to make it another home away from home. Media transitions can be a challenge. But more on that later too.

So if this sounds interesting to you, come back in about a week, or plug me into your RSS feeder…. and I’ll see…. or rather READ you, later.