WebCamp

Back to SNP page

Portable digital identities will (or might?)…

• solve problems by allowing people to interact & collaborate
• call for new rules about opting in / opting out, e.g. for disclosing or sharing profile information?
• change distributed work in business, educational, … contexts
• merge identities that used to be separate

online interaction collapses two kinds of boundaries (see also danah boyd on mediated publics):

• "sociospatial boundaries": interaction situations are delineated by space (think "frontstage - backstage metaphor", e.g. the waiter interacting politely with patrons vs. the waiter complaining about them in the kitchen
• "sociotemporal boundaries": many interaction situations are not recorded, so our actions are "forgotten" - information online, in contrast, is persistent and searchable. Should there be an expiry date for digital information (see also Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger)

Recognizing the facetted nature of identities - some consequences:

• showing different facets might facilitate interaction, e.g. blogging about personal stuff in a corporate blog can help find common ground for business interaction
• pressing question: who gets to decide when to disclose which facet to whom? (further complication: lots of identity facets are relational, so there are at least two "owners" of the information that A has a crush on B)
• collapsing or integrating different facets into one 'online identity' ist (probably) technically possible - but is it socially feasible/desirable?

Problem: in "real life", there is no such thing as a "core identity" or "central identity" that belongs to one individual; rather, identity is socially negotiated, ever-changing, highly contextual