Toward a general theory of digital identities: Overlooking Serial Experiments Lain

Abstract:Originally released in 1998, Nakamura’s anime series Serial Experiments Lain anticipates many social transformations that have occurred in the decades since its broadcast. The series highlights the ways in which cognition and consciousness are transformed as technical assemblages through interaction with the internet. This change in cognition can be characterized in part by a bifurcation of Cartesian identity; individuals develop more than one sense of self, with different identities offline and online. The series articulates this bifurcation of Cartesian identity both by its emphasis on the fantastic, a narrative and visual style that makes it unclear where the Wired ends and the “real world” begins, and by updating the narrative figure of the “double” for the digital age. Individuals grapple with their own digital “doubles,” versions of themselves that exist online with disregard for the emotional needs of their friends. In doing so, the series helps formulate a general understanding of the social problems posed by the formation of digital identities. What does friendship mean when individual identity is divided between online and in-person personas? This bifurcation in Cartesian identity leads to the “empathy problem,” which is loss of empathy from technology use in conjunction with a rupture in the continuum from empathetic understanding to sympathetic compassion. The empathy problem is an innate byproduct of two competing desires among internet users: the desires for privacy and visibility. This problem has amplified other concerns that have been stressed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including loneliness and depression. Although technological developers hope to mitigate the current psychological problems of digital spaces through increases in synchronous telepresence, particularly amid the rise in remote work, this paper argues the empathy problem is a byproduct of these two competing desires, due to the differential in representation these competing desires produce. As such, the empathy problem is a foundational issue that will continue to challenge individuals working and acting in digital spaces.