Joining the dots

[Ruth Harper]

We (as in, people who use the web a lot) increasingly inhabit multiple online spaces; Facebook, Upcoming, Twitter, a blog, forum contributions...

Does that mean that we have multiple online personalities? And if we're making an effort to be authentic, how do we join the dots between all these different channels of communication?

[Libby Davy]

Gra and I were thinking the other day about when people will start developing identity disorders brought on from online life… Intel Anthropologist Genevieve Bell at LIFT08 had very interesting things to say about identity (a fellow Aussie!) http://www.liftconference.com/secrets-lies-possible-perils-truthful...

About the secrets and lies we create - inevitably.

As did Jonathon Capiria on behalf of marginalized people http://www.liftconference.com/virtual-environments-and-social-justice.

Myself right now? I’ve started to keep a record of what I write in all the profiles out there, just so I have a clue about “who I am” in that sense. Interesting to look at how this changes and is context driven. Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life was a great read in my teens (eek) and keeps popping up everywhere. Might be time to have another read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life

There are some technical issues which might help. You can just put a link in to an /about page in every profile. Then just update it in the one place. Or keep a short intro handy that you use. But that means you miss out on the chance to be a chameleon. In the flesh, we edit ourselves and present/exist differently in different contexts. So it makes sense to have multiple profiles. But we cannot easily anticipate who will be viewing them.

I think there is a "safe" zone and an "experimental" zone. I tend to err on the side of taking risks.

We talk a lot about being Authentic. What does that mean to folk though?

Big topic.

[Mary Harrington]

One really striking thing I've noticed about messageboards is that a regular who deletes and then reappears under a new name generally gets rumbled by other regulars in less than ten posts - even if they don't tell anyone their identity. In the age of Facebook (which won't let you delete your profile!) and Google, people are less anonymous than they think they are. And this is a good thing - there's a well-established relationship between anonymity and trolling behaviour online.

So I'd argue that 'authentic' is actually what happens when you accept being traceable stop sweating the small stuff in the way you perform your online self, and relax into a comfortable, sustainable and consistent digital presence.

[Libby Davy]

Tell me more David! Intrigued.... Jump off the fence there and let us know what you're thinking?

[Libby Davy]

Good luck with the Ning. I'm really find it a much more compelling place to go than my blog just now.

[Libby Davy]

and the truth is... absolute? Or could it sometimes be contextual?

[Graeme Sutherland]

I've been thinking about this question for a few days, and been thinking about authenicity and the maturity of our social networking tools.

I'm now thinking that we need to be unconsciously competent with our social networking tools to be really authentic with them... and that will only come when the social network 'technology' has matured enough that all the rough corners have been knocked off and we don't really notice the networking part anymore.

My favourite example of a mature technology is a bicycle -- they just work, mostly, and if not are easy and cheap to fix, can be left in the rain and it doesn't matter too much. Contrast that with a car. Once you get the knack (the unconscious competence) you can ride them all etc.

So, the multiple social networks are all new and immature, so they are hard to use. It makes it hard to be authentic, because we spend a lot of time trying to work out how to be authentic in this or that network, and spend far too long fiddling around, joining the dots.

I figure 3 to 5 years ought to do it. The networks will simplify, the profiles will coalesce, and we'll find it a bit easier. And the next generation will use social networks like they were always there. Until then we just have to be the early adopters.

[Graeme Sutherland]

Thinking more about this.... We all have multiple offline (real world) personalities really. So, we are used to behaving differently and being different people in different situations. There a core of standard 'us-ness' in all of those situations

Online... well it is possible to make them all one. And that is attractive because it is easy, or will be easy online one day.

Are we looking for something where we can have our core 'us-ness' -- our core self available as a part of our online presence always, and then have some different personalities we use in different places online.

I'm not up with the latest in data portability and openid and stuff. wondering if that's been thought about,