Mixed Reviews, Creating your Online Identity, and Follow-ups

Apparently, I have a couple of friends who cyberstalk me, particularly through this blog. (They're close friends, one of whom I've known for 20 years, so they have full cyberstalking rights.) But I got mixed reviews from them, in person, about my previous post about confidence/competence/self-assuredness. So I should ask my dear friends who cyberstalk me (you know who you are): While I do appreciate your comments in person as we're eating lunch, I have to ask, nay beg, even, that you post comments here, too. (Carol is very good at this. Thank you, Carol!)

AND this brings us to our next topic: Online Identity Creation.

Recently, I've been conducting informal research on how people present themselves online. While word-of-mouth is one way to build a reputation, another way is to deliberately shape online one's identity in whatever light one wishes to do so. For instance, someone who wants to find "Ana Krahmer" online, can pretty easily verify where I work, what I do in my job, and what topics of discussion interest me. But, out of all this information, in reality, the only thing that is verifiable is where I work because I'm listed in the staff directory there. My worlds sometimes merge, as I describe in the first paragraph, where a close friend will poke around my blog out of curiosity about what I'm discussing, but sometimes, I'll get an email inquiry about something I've discussed in the blog. But what I find interesting is, I have never received questions in email based off of the staff directory at work.

I don't really know what that says, beyond that you have to be very deliberate about what goes up online about yourself. Do you want to set out to establish yourself as a software developer? A system engineer? A graphic designer? Then make for darned sure that everything on the Internet that pertains to you relates, also, in some way to how you want your identity to be represented.

I mean, I don't care if people know that I consume any kind of book as some people consume candy, or that I can be a complete grammar snob, but these aren't things I'm really developing my online identity around. And, although I'm using myself as the example for this discussion, this topic arose from talking to another friend who has done a great job of professional self-promotion through his career interests; it's in fact a very skillful use of Web 2.0 and 3.0.

Do We Need a New Internet? (Article)

Article: "Do We Need a New Internet?"

"The idea is to build a new Internet with improved security and the capabilities to support a new generation of not-yet-invented Internet applications, as well as to do some things the current Internet does poorly — such as supporting mobile users."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/weekinreview/15markoff.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

Stanford engineers are looking at building a more secure Internet. One security specialist quoted in the article discusses how the current Internet is Pearl Harbor waiting for the planes to land.

I wonder what the future of open source software would be on an Internet built by Stanford; of course my previous statement is mildly cynical. (Look, this is a job for a technical communicator!)

To quote the article again with something that most interests me as a dissertation topic:

"Proving identity is likely to remain remarkably difficult in a world where it is trivial to take over someone’s computer from half a world away and operate it as your own. As long as that remains true, building a completely trustable system will remain virtually impossible."

What will force us into Web 3.0 may actually be Internet security; Dell already ships laptops with the thumbprint scanner--and anyone who watches "Burn Notice" knows that THAT isn't very hard to get around. But if we're going to think of an absolutely secure Internet with some sort of driver's license verification, there's going to have to be a retinal scan database somewhere, perhaps a sub-dermal DNA database, and an agreement that Someone (capital "S") monitors that database to protect security interests. Of course there is a split problem with a centralized database: 1) Who monitors it, and 2) How much is it going to cost?

And really, now we're getting into my favorite consideration: can the Capitalist game that recognizes money as the points system viably survive when an individual is required to give physical evidence to prove that it is he who plans to buy that caparisoned wooden elephant figurine from, say, Thailand? And, in return, does that individual really need the Someone who Monitors the DNA Database to know he also has Addison's disease, via the DNA he supplied as his Internet driver's license?

I know this sounds sci-fi, but really, folks, don't be naive. Ten years ago we could argue that this dramatic shift would not happen, that we have nothing to worry about with unstable electronic identity narrative, but that was during Web 1.0--you couldn't make a web page where people left footprints. Now, electronic footprints are as easy to follow as if someone were collecting hair falling out of your head as you walked down a street.