I tend to think of identity in two parts. The first is your identity relative to your own experience, your personal identity. This is a multi-faceted and complicated amalgamation of your various interests, ideas, and experience. It forms the basis for your view of yourself and also allows you to interpret and integrate new information and experiences against a backdrop of your personality. The second part is your identity relative to the experiences of others. This is harder to quantify because it is effectively the sum of the experiences that other individuals have had of you. Each individual has their own fragments of interactions with you, and when combined they create a shared external conception of your identity.
The struggle to create a harmony between these two conceptions is central to the issue of identity. The external identity that others see you through will never entirely match the complicated personal identity that you have for yourself. It is easier to create simple categories that people fall into than it is to hold all of the intricacies of their personality in your mind.
When it comes to technology stereotypes, the same concepts apply for me. I definitely personally identify with certain aspects of some stereotypes, but I also do not feel that I manifest entire stereotypes. In my experience it is almost impossible to distill any individual down to a stereotype. I am interested in math and computer science and find them fun to learn about. I program for fun sometimes. I am also a huge tennis fan and enjoy being social. These traits don’t fit into a single stereotype.
I do think that I manifest more Notre Dame stereotypes than technology stereotypes. I care about school, probably over-schedule myself, and I am a huge ND football fan. I think that as I have spent more time at Notre Dame I have taken on more of the traits of a “stereotypical” Notre Dame student, which is an interesting example of environment affecting identity.
Privilege also plays an important part in the formation of a personal identity. I think you have to acknowledge all the advantages you have had when considering your identity. A popular American trope is the individual who built themselves out of nothing. While I appreciate the lesson about the value of hard work that this trope provides, it glosses over the difficulties that many people face everyday. I try to cultivate a sense of gratitude for the privileges that I have had while keeping in mind that others may not have had the same opportunities as me.
Overall, I believe that it is important to cultivate a strong sense of personal identity in order to guide you through the world. Working to avoid simplifying others down to stereotypes and cultivating a sense a gratitude both lead to more effective and altruistic senses of identity. As a Notre Dame student, I do feel a sense of duty to use my gifts to help others, and my identity is tied to that idea.
CS Ethics 