Identify Yourself, written by Krystal South, is an article designed to highlight the unique role that technology plays on personal identity. Beginning with a fascinating assertion about the nature of technology in a manner that differentiates a computer's decision capabilities from human choices, South insists that humans are fundamentally different, and must operate on a higher plane of interaction. South transitions into several interesting and noteworthy points about our interaction with technology, including our ability to adopt a false internet personae and incorporate taxonomy, and the point I found most interesting is our ability to present ourselves, be it thought or talent, and receive feedback.
This section, entitled Output, was remarkably simple. Beginning with a personalized aspect of this topic (as the right side of this article appears to exclusively feature) South commented on the powerful ability to post thoughts or works that may receive internet feedback. I have personally seen quite interesting results from this as well. I recall making a post on Martin Luther King day in which I shared a dream of my own, one intended to reflect a modern day version of King's ideals motivated at current inequality issues. It was perhaps the most popular thing I've ever posted to the internet, in that people felt the need to share my idea, and individuals I have not seen in years, even those whom I've never met, took the time to like or comment on this post and share their thoughts. As South notes in this section, there is also the possibility of negative feedback, which I quickly found out about. While Facebook, the social-media vehicle through which I chose to express myself, does not also for a dislike option, as YouTube and others do, it still allows users to post an objection and receive likes for that comment. I soon learned that there was a vocal community of those who felt as though my comment had gone too far. I was then faced with a choice, one that South explains in the highlighted portion of this section. We have the ability to eliminate disagreeable feedback on such social media. There were several courses of action that I could have taken: I could have removed those who objected from my friend list; I could have deleted their comments; I could have blocked them from making future comments.
With our ability to choose, monitor, and filter output and feedback to said output respectively comes the inescapable responsibility we have to what we post, fail to post, and delete. While I could easily delete persons and comments from either my friend lists or posts, there comes with such action the repercussions from the remaining community. Deleting friends and comments puts the surrounding community on edge; they may feel as though they must censor themselves in order to communicate with me. There can also be positive and negative feedback for the frequency with which one posts. Failure to tweet every few days may result in someone unfollowing you, while tweeting every few minutes every day may result in just the same. In this way, such communities serve to not only provide feedback for what we post, but how often we post, in addition to providing feedback to our feedback. I ultimately deciding to allow the dissenting opinions to be posted on my wall, and keep my controversial comments to a necessary minimum. This is not the compromise suggested by some, who thought that I should unfriend these individuals, but it is the one that allows me the opportunity to post my thoughts to those who disagree and encourage mature dialogue, though some take the initiative to unfriend me. This is all to say that there is a complicated and intricate relationship between output and feedback, one that, as South suggests in the beginning of the article, requires a human emotive response rather than a mere mechanic rational one.
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