For an effective use and analysis of the new media, we should let go of the idea of fixed, unified identity with clear boundaries, says Sherry Turkle in her article "Rethinking Identity Through Virtual Community". Instead, conceptualising of identity as fragmented and 'floating' serves much better to theorise the self in a hypertextual environment. Making the windows system into a powerful metaphor, Turkle writes that

"Windows have become a powerful metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed system. The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times. The life practice of windows is that of a decentered self that exists in many worlds, that plays many roles at the same time. Now real life itself may be, just one more window."

The boundaries between human and machine, and especially between virtual and real, thus become effectively blurred in her vision. That virtuality is then as real as reality is taken up by Bolter and Grusin's concept of remediation.

The formation of virtual communities that cross the barriers of difference become a useful effect of the new media. This may result in new conceptualisations of non-cartesian subjectivities, in particular to the Deleuzian notion of subjectivity as nomadic: always in a state of becoming towards the marginalised other, never stable.