Our Real Self

Ever since the day we were born, we have been taught that we are our own person and that there is no one like us. Well today Dr. J had spiked my interest by suggesting a different view. She suggests that we in fact have two "selves". I find this assertion to actually be fairly accurate. It seems to me that we do have two selves. Our physical self is constantly being preceded and proceeded by another self, our digital self. Every American  who has grown up around the advance of technology has a digital self even if they have never had a Facebook, an Instagram, or have never ordered anything online. The fact is that when we are born, our names are recorded along with our height, weight, social security number, eye color, and hair color among other things. From the moment we first see the light in the hospital room, we will be kept track of for the rest of our lives. Even a person wasn't born in a hospital or regulatory medical institution, the United States makes gaining a digital self virtually unavoidable.


Just think of all of the things you have to do using technology. If you want to ever drive a car, own a house, go on a vacation, eat at a restaurant that doesn't take cash, or if you want to buy something online you will have to do something that involves using or creating your digital self. When you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a drivers license, your picture is stored on a computer and transferred to a database. This insures that you can be matched to any tickets, accidents, or mishaps you commit. Unless you have $30,000 in cash ready to give to the person selling it, you have to use your digital self to purchase a nice car and likewise to purchase a house.


We also carry parts of our digital selves with us everywhere we go. Our cell phones!!! If you are like the typical American, your cell rarely ever leaves your side. Our phone numbers are apart of our digital selves. At any time the government can use our phone conversations, text messages and pictures against us in court cases. These phones also often connect us to other parts of our digital selves. Snapchat, Instagram, GroupMe, Facebook, and Twitter accounts can all be linked to us and reflect us to people we don't even know most of the time. Every time we access these accounts or even play online e games that require us to create accounts or use our emails, we are shaping another part of our digital self. The sad fact is that, in most cases, we spend more time shaping our digital selves than we do our real selves, but who am I to tell you which one is real.