For my avatar, I wanted an image that projected not only a part of my self-identity but also how I felt this part of me integrated and interacted with the online culture. So I photo-shopped a picture of my own lengua to represent my interest in lenguas. I then put a layer of binary code (yes, it does say something) over the image to connect my interest with online and computer language. My avatar currently appears like the Rolling Stone’s cartoon tongue with ones and zeros running down it. It is not extremely thought provoking, but this is the image I had in mind when I started to create the avatar. Naturally, I wanted to compare/contrast my avatar with a similar tongue representation and went to a deviantART (http://www.deviantart.com/) message forum to find one. However, surfing to one member’s page (http://snakejake.deviantart.com/), I was drawn a certain avatar under the comments section. The avatar of someone calling him/herself “corruptangel” made me question how the Internet and the computer function as a panopticon. I had previously viewed the Internet and computer as the eye of big brother watching me, the user; now I view myself as both the watcher and the watched.
As “corruptangel” made me realize, the power-relationship is like Foucault’s panopticon and not a one-way relationship. The avatar of “corruptangel” is a simple drawing of a singular eye with long lashes and an arched eyebrow. At first, I saw this image as support for my notion of an authority watching me through the computer. But then, I realized that I was the one staring at the computer, lurking about the personal web pages of other people, and compiling and comparing information that I had gleamed while randomly surfing the web. Perhaps when coming eye-to-eye with this image, I entered my “mirror-phase” and became self-aware of my online participation. The eye was watching, but so was I.
Am I being monitored through the computer monitor? Certainly, since I must use a server to get on to the internet, my viewing movements may be recorded and viewed by a “big brother” governmental agency or large corporation, although I am never sure of just when this viewing may occur. The prisoners in the panopticon know they are under surveillance. But even if the computer user knows they are being watched, do they know who is watching? With the idea of the corporation or commerce aspect of the internet, I cannot help but see parallels with the other little prisoners in the panopticon who may monitor me for some type of gain. I am referring all the adware and spyware that collect and transmit information about my online habits and myself. Yet when I look at “corruptangel’s” eye, I realize my viewing of the panopticon’s “eye” is much more complex and fluid. As I, surf, lurk, play games, or blog, the gaze of both the panopticon and myself change with each particular action I am doing online.
While the different degrees of the gaze is something I must do more thinking and research on and cannot cover in a paper this size, the avatar of “corruptangel” reminds me that the ideas of watcher/watched must not be too rigid. The contradictory name “corruptangel” also forces me to think that ideas cannot be too polarized. I believe the “borderlands/frontera” ideas of Gloria Anzaldúa are appropriate in this thinking. Anzaldúa states that a person existing in multiple cultures must develop “a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” in order to perceive the information and points of view they receive (Anzaldúa 101). To exist in the real and virtual worlds we must do the same and keep our ideas and concepts flexible.
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. 1987.