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Information technology and the institution of identity: Reflections since Understanding Computers and Cognition

The author’s previous work, itself based on the work of Martin Heidegger and then the Speech Act theorists grounded two important claims. First, computers are about communication, not computation or data processing. Second, communication is primarily about the coordination of commitments to act. This paper argues, as a review of the thinking in Understanding Computers and Cognition, that much is still to be learned about how speech acts work to structure commitments and how the interlinked structure of multiple commitments determines the kind of actions possible in any institution. The paper considers the way the Web establishes sites, virtual communities, and so forth. By referring to Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger on identity, the paper examines the sorts of identities virtual places are currently making possible and the development that virtual, identity forming practices will need to undergo if virtual sites are to act as real sites do.