Borgmann and Hayles...

An interesting idea is brought up in "An interview/dialogue with Albert Borgmann and N. Katherine Hayles on humans and machines:" sometimes, people lose their normal moral ground when interacting on cyberspace. When I say normal, I mean the moral set they live their lives by when not on a computer or other technological device, and more specifically not in cyberspace. I believe the inevitable sense of anonymity when communicating with other people via chat rooms, social networking sites, instant messaging, or other media for communication causes the willingness to step out of one's morals. 

Furthermore, according to Borgmann, "...people, when entering cyberspace, sometimes reduce themselves to the shallow, disjointed cliche-ridden persona that can be mimicked by information technology and so become co-conspiritors of their confusion about who is who" (1). People alone at computers can create whatever persona they want, true or false, and present themselves as such to the world. The people receiving their "message" will never truly know the identity of those they are communicating with; thus, anonymity, despite however flamboyant or charismatic the characters are, gives confidence to communicate in ways that people wouldn't do in everyday face-to-face interaction. The problem is, as stated in the quote above, people usually do not become more intelligent, stand out, or appear phenomenal in any way; they conform to be what the audience of cyberspace wants them to be. 

On a side note, I noticed an interesting connection between Hayles comments and the hypotheses of Marshall McLuhan. Hayles mentions, "...part of the intelligence resides in the human, part in a variety of intelligent machines, and part in the interfaces through which they interact" (2). The last part of that construction is what resembles the idea that McLuhan presented in his article, "The Medium is the Message." He writes, "...it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action" (203). Both theorists agree, at least in part, that media play a major role in human communication.