It's only the beginning

I have been sitting at my computer for most of the day. I have checked my email, searched websites, read other blogs on academic sites, texted my brother who lives 1000 miles away, answered my cell phone and created this blog. How many variations of my "self" have I displayed in each of these technological acts. The scholar, the student, the sister, the lover, the techno-rhetor. All of these are part of who I am and yet they have been filtered through these separate technologies. Who do I become on the screen? Do I become data? Binary code? Is there an authentic voice with which I can "speak"? After all, I am only typing on a screen and somehow this typing has become routine for me and opened up venues and opportunities to connect with others that once was only written about in science fiction stories. There is a great deal of debate on whether technology is enhancing our lives or crippling us by our increasing dependence on it. I am interested in that debate but it is not what I want to go into here. Instead, I want to focus specifically on ethos, on identity and how they are filtered, changed, enhanced, or destroyed by this digital media. As a PhD student, this is the path of research I am following both in the classes I teach and in the research I conduct.