At its core, this blog is an exploration of the concept of fractal identities, a complex topic that will be fleshed out and grappled with in the coming months.  It serves as a final project - the capstone - to my academic career in the Emerging Media & Communication (EMAC) graduate-level program at the University of Texas at Dallas.

To varying degrees, this blog will blend elements both biographical, academic, and creative/artistic as it delves into an admittedly complicated but not entirely inscrutible concepts of self and identity. The concept of fractal identities was originally inspired by an idea presented by Douglas Rushkoff in his book Present Shock: Everything Happens Now - digiphrenia - which is explained in the first post to this blog.

This project will explore and comment on the state of the multiple identities - digital and analog - that collectively make and define one’s self. I go a step further than Rushkoff by adding the adjective fractal to indicate not only the nearly countless  number of additional identities one can have online, but identities that moreover are slight variations of an original identity, that is,  identities closely related to a core or seed identity and yet exhibiting additional or new traits (ultimately, no two are ever technically alike). Given that the typical digital denizen maintains multiple social media, e-mail, and other online persona, it is often the case that all these digital identities are closely related but not necessarily identical, as my reading of Rushkoff posits. Furthermore, it is possible to generate countless online identities through digital technologies to obtain a kind of virtual omnipresence, for example flood message boards or give the sense of having thousands of social media followers. Ultimately, I assert the concept of fractal identities as a mode of conceptualizing the analog self as it produces potentially near-endless digital selves or idenities.

Fractal identities also play into the notion of the self as an organic, growing, ceaselessly changing (infinite?) entity that may or may not have a permanent, definable core. In essence, our fractal identies stem from - are essentially an extension of - the self in contact with (digital) technology. This concept is yet another way to frame the issue of the human as it merges, fights, builds, and grapples with technology/the technical.