Research Proposal

I know that the mouse controls the cursor on my screen and the cursor has the power to enter into the digital space of the internet, but a human mind controls the mouse. What can I surmise about the identity of the person between their digital reality and their actual reality that they occupy? As an anonymous user, a person becomes less identifiable, not only to other people with which they interact with through the internet but to themselves as well.
It is within this anonymity of internet users that the identity of the self diminishes, resulting in the crisis of importance. Over the past century, with the exponential development of technology, evidence of significance and self identity of individuals has faded. A loss of belonging to a community or a culture has created an “undifferentiated emotional hunger (Garcia-Montes, 4).” A hunger, P. Cushman claims, is satisfied by mass consumption (Garcia-Montes, 5). This mass consumption, which can be seen as consumerism, is practiced by the internet by providing mass amounts of free information that definitely surpasses the information any person can provide.
The project I am proposing to do is a historical and current investigation in order to make a connection between the technologic advancements and the fading of self significance. Historically, an investigation of Emile Durkheim’s theory of anomie (slowly coming to the point of moral degradation due to the Division of Labor) for the reinforcement or early accounts of fading self significance. The psychology theory of nihilism that was thoroughly explored by Nietzche will also relate to the theory of anomie. Through these theories it will make it possible to see how outside forces have continually guided our self identities and behaviors over the past century and how the current effect of little human interface has made individuals lose their sense of self significance.