Icons in the Information Age

Reading McCloud's piece about icons and representations made me wonder how much different the piece would have been if it had been written today.  He talks about how our faces are masks that do not actually represent our personalities since they exist in the conceptual realm.  Obviously this problem compounds today.  Not only are our faces masks but the faces that we create online have become another layer of intentional misrepresentation.  This becomes even more interesting when you consider his example about the internalization of a car.  He says, "When driving, for example, we experience much more than the five senses report.  The whole car - not just the parts we can see, feel and hear - is very much on our minds at all times.  The vehicle becomes an extension of our body. It absorbs our sense of identity.  We become the car" (McCloud 38).

If every object that we utilize becomes an extension of our body what does this mean in the digital age.  The keyboard becomes a way to type information of course but what about the computer as a whole.  As we use it we internalize it and it exists simultaneously within the conceptual and physical world.  However, as we use it we only recognize its conceptual use.  I think that while this can be said to be a product of lifelong acclimation to technology, we are inherently tool using creatures.  The personal computer, the mobile device and the internet in general have allowed us to push our identities even more into the conceptual world.  We can create an identity outside the realm of the senses.  While it may exist physically in 0's and 1's we never see that physical representation.

My facebook profile picture is not me, my twitter picture is not me, my tweets are not me speaking.  This does not cross our minds.  We are so far embedded in the conceptual replacement of the physical that it bleeds into how interact with each other.  The physical representation of someone is not enough.  We are not friends until we're facebook friends, or until I follow your concepts on twitter.  Obviously this is not completely true but this our knee jerk reaction.  The symbol and tool using animal has created a tool that negates itself and, going a step further, negates our physicality.

Work Cited 
McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics.” In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. 24-45.