Menu-driven Identities

Lisa Nakamura argues that cybertyping forces us to choose our race from a list of defined categories. While this may be true in some portals, I think that this is an outdated perspective. Email is not the only aspect of the Internet to privilege cultural affinity over biology.

One example that most of us would be familiar with is Facebook. It allows you to add many applications and join multiple groups. You could thus create a hybrid identity for yourself of different races, and even include age, gender or location.

Digital literacy also allows us to create hybrid identities when, for example, searching Google. By using the correct search terms, you could find a specific identity. Alternatively, you could conduct multiple searches and synthesise the information in a way appropriate to your identity. These are just some of the challenges to menu-driven identities...