Our mirrored selves: Reconfiguring disability and technology

Charmaine Brosnan

"In my computer - mediated worlds, the self is multiple, fluid and constituted in interaction with machine connections, it is made and transformed by landscape, sexual congress, is an exchange of signifiers, and understanding follows from navigation and tinkering rather than analysis"

The development of new communication technologies like the telephone and the Internet have consistently shaped the construction of new forms of identity, by giving people the chance to express multiple and often unexplored aspects of the self, to play with their identities and maybe even try out new ones. New technologies also transform the spaces through which this interaction takes place, yet at their fundamental level, these technologies interact with traditional sites of identity formation, notably the space of the physical body. I will therefore examine the development of cyberspace and query the implications of forming 'new' identities or reconfirming 'old' ones for people with disabilities. However I will also look to the physical environment as a space which excludes disabled people and how, because of this, people with disabilities feel the need to escape their physical form in favour of a virtual one.

What is the significance of space? And how does it act as a medium through which identity and subjectivity are created? Because we live in the midst of an 'Information Revolution', physical space as we know it has almost been diluted and distilled in favour of a new medium, that of cyberspace. A 'space' that is predicated on knowledge and information, in the shared beliefs and practices of a society abstracted from the physical. This space had become important for people with disabilities because they, if not more so than able-bodied people, can use 'cyberspace' to separate their physical 'dis(abled)' body from their identities. MUD's (Multi-user domains) and chatrooms can be used as a form of escapism, a space that is not contested or exclusionary. Escapism has become a recurring theme in the interviews I have conducted, particularly in virtual spaces as one's body is represented by one's own textual dimension. "Well like I don't really mention that I'm disabled, there's no real need, it's not that I'm embarrassed�I just want to be, am for once me�it might sound silly but some people do judge us when they can see our disabilities" . For people with disabilities, on entering chatrooms one becomes disembodied, assuming new roles and essentially differentiating them from their real life. Physicality becomes fragmented, almost unimportant. We can escape the restrictions of our bodies and therefore the identities we have been 'made' to assume.

From recent qualitative research I have conducted, mainly semi-structured interviews, I began to realise that, although cyberspace maybe seductive for some in terms of escaping the 'disabled' body, it is a space that can bring disabled people the opportunities to navigate space for themselves: "I'm not lifted into a chair, or waitin' for a bus or am causing inconvience �I can do whatever the hell I like without people even lookin' twice at my wheels�I can be whoever I wanna be�It's class, for anyone." Another important element is the "sharing of information." It is not sharing in the sense of the transmission of information that binds disabled communities together but the ritual sharing of information that pulls it together. "Life will be happier for the on-line individual because the people with whom one interacts most will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by activities of proximity." We, as humans, are seeking out community in other spaces as it dissolves in the places we physically inhabit.

What is it then that discourages people from using physical space and opting for a virtual one?? Imrie argues that a lot of the problems encountered today by contemporary cities, and previously by industrial cities, is the fact that, underpinning 20th century architecture, was the propagation of an engineering aesthetic based on the idea that pure, distilled, design could be produced when fixed around the unified body of the Vitruvian image, the body of geometric proportion and symmetry. An image modelled by the famous Parisian architect Le Corbusier, a seemingly able-bodied body- normal, male, upright, healthy and vigorous. On a similar note Golledge argues that indeed disabled people inhabit 'distorted spaces' and that the naturally 'limited' body itself is that which encounters the surfaces of urban landscapes as daunting barriers to meaningful social interaction. However, he does acknowledge that the impaired body is not the sole reason for spatial 'distortion', but it is the physical urban environment and the way it is structured that magnify the distorting effect of disability through careless design.

Discourses and systems of representation construct places from which individuals can position themselves and from which they can speak. The media, providing us with information, tells us what it feels like to occupy a particular subject-position: the beautiful woman, the skinny teenager, the clean citizen. This 'information' works to confuse identity formation. In a built environment that fundamentally blocks disabled people out, this failure to recognise bodily and physiological diversity has also seeped into the design of cyberspace and is the sole reason why we disengage from our physical inabilities and disembody when on-line. These conceptions of the body have their roots in the post-Galilean view which conceives of the physical body as a machine and as a subject of mechanical laws, an object with fixed measurable parts, without sex, gender, race or physical difference. It may be argued, therefore, that identity itself is limited because it does not mark the same place- no one is identical. This however does not stop people playing others into stereotypes such as 'ill' or 'disabled'. It is because of these representations that disabled people 'flee' to the virtual world, ridding themselves of their shell. Essentially what they then feel is a world without steps, railings, physical awareness or judgement.

One does, however, have to question the utopianism of cyberspace. And although negative and patronizing societal attitudes have long made people with disabilities the objects of oppression and discrimination, in life one must accept individualism. If we used the cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) of our imagination why can we not break down societal barriers and strive for optimism in 'real' life? According to some influential observers, disability may be a 'natural ill' that technology can supposedly overcome. In this view, the development of even more sophisticated, and increasingly computerized adaptive technologies - in the form of aids, appliances and accessible urban design - will eventually liberate disabled people from the social and economic constraints 'imposed' by their bodily impairments.

We must become aware of our own identities in the RL (real life), a thing many people become disengaged from since computer screens have become the new locations for our fantasies. Individuals are now using computer screens to become more comfortable with new ideas relating to identity, friendships even relationships and escapism. Due to the advancement of technological innovations, "computers are becoming mirrors for the modern self, in which we are capable of stepping through this looking glass into the world of cyberspace, which for more of us is becoming an aspect of everyday life."

Can the physical environment ever then achieve the optimism with which people look on virtual worlds? Should the focus of debates be moved away from the disabled themselves and onto the policies that shape the urban environment? This transition would allow the city to be viewed as a dynamic structure and not simply an arrangement of lifeless objects, a world that shifts the onus from the disabled onto those who actually produce and reproduce exclusionary environments.

Charmaine Brosnan is currently undertaking a two year research masters on 'The new geographies of ICT: an analysis of the impacts of Information and Communication Technology on the social worlds of people with disabilities within an Irish context' in the Department of Geography, University College Cork under the supervision of Dr. Denis Linehan.