IDENTITY IN A VIRTUAL WORLD: THE COEVOLUTION OF TECHNOLOGY, WORK, AND LIFECYCLE

Abstract

This article draws on personal experiences of remote work that is facilitated by virtual or on-line communication and collaboration technologies. This personal story illustrates how technology, work, and lifecycle coevolve and how the integration of work, family, and friends into the new, virtual workspaces can open up new conceptualizations of personal identity. An identity that is discretely bounded and that is dependent on physical surroundings can give way to one that more closely aligns with the lived experiences of mobile work and life. If we think of identity as multiple, as open to possibility, and as flexibly responsive to multiple cultures and contexts, we can alter our ideas about work and its relationship to our lives in ways that more closely align with today's hybridized, dematerialized and decontextualized world.