http://elgg.ell.aau.dk/ryberg/weblog/183.html
Well - once again - long time no blogging. I have too much work with writing my dissertation and doing other stuff, which unfortunately leaves little time for blogging. However, I do have a research interest in social software and online services commonly refered to as Web 2.0, which is also going to be a small part of my dissertation. I think there are some interesting relations between current web-developments, the notion of networked learning and the notion of Remix Anlaysis, which I willl elaborate in my dissertation - I cannot yet really summarise it so it is suitable for a blog posting :-). This posting will instead be about online identity management, which I think will become increasingly important in the years to come...and already is! Well, the service ClaimID.com gives you the chance of managing your online identity and present to others what YOU choose to present and how YOU want to appear; rather, than only being in the hands of search engines to automatically generate your CV when people look you up on Google, Yahoo, MSN or whatever. But why is this important?
In an article for the Networked Learning Conference Malene Charlotte Larsen and I took up the idea of networked identities or 'open source' identities as we also called it (you can download the paper here») in which our empirical material was from the social networking site arto.dk that Malene has done some excellent research on. This, by the way, will also be the topic of her PhD dissertation, which she has just started to work on since she became a PhD student the 1st of January 2007 (do have a look at her blog»). What is interesting about social networking services, web 2.0, social software and the current developments of the web is the sudden transparency of identity, which is leveraged by search engines. Basically, we are to others what the search engines return about us. No doubt that more and more people use search engines to look us all up, whether it is your future employer, your colleagues or potential research partners, they will probably Google you.
Now that a lot of people are engaging in communities, sharing their bookmarks, favourite blogs, discussing in forums, putting up personal photos and basically displaying a wide variety of more or less personal identity clues online, the need to be able to manage one's 'online face' or identity becomes a pressing issue - what we want to tell people about ourselves and how we want to appear to others is not a trivial task (neither offline nor online) and we all spend time - more or less consciously - to manage the impressions or identity clues we convey to others (clothes, ways of speaking, acting, wearing badges, what we buy, papers we read etc.). We can never really fully control how others see us or think of us, but we can try to convey certain aspects of our identity through emphasing or suppressing certain aspects of it. In situations such as a job-interview or meeting your parents-in-law for the first time the activity of identity control and management is probably a lot more conscious than in other situations and a considerable effort is put into appearing 'right' and downplaying, hiding and suppresing aspects you think should not be included in their perception of you (on a personal note - the first time I met my parents-in-law and other parts of the family, I fell asleep on their couch right after dinner because I had been out drinking the night before...this of course has now become a recurring narrative adn story about my entrance into the family :-).
Now, with the pervasiveness of the one's life on the web it is much harder to manage identity - if your a regular user on the web and partaking in discussions, sharing pictures, writing a blog and so on, suddenly Google, Yahoo and MSN has become your trajectory of life, identity and personal history - the google search results on "Thomas Ryberg" will be my historical body and CV to people looking me up; The pages I appear on and what I have written, will be what they will know of me - before meeting me in person. Some people have realised this all to late e.g. Beauty pageant contestants, who never realised that their 'wild party pictures' would ever be seen by others than their friends...well - others did find them :) Equally, the uncovering of LonelyGirl15 was done through amateur data mining (a topic Michael Zimmer has written a lot about on his blog) where differnt pieces and identity clues were traced, compared and finally led to the conclusion that LonelyGirl15 was a fraud.
Getting back to the paper we wrote and also Malene's research about arto.dk - a lot of people never really realise that the web is extremely transparent and very public - they usually think that a page is just something that their friends will look at and it is a 'personal place' or a 'private party' - indeed it is, but usually the whole web-population is invited. I think a very important skill or something that will be important to think about for all of us (but maybe especially young people) is the management and control of online identity...do you really want to upload a picture of yourself as really drunk, half-naked and barfing in a toilet...and then have it associated with your profile? Do you actually even own the data and pictures you put up and for how long will they be stored somewhere on a server (myspace, I think, keeps your data for 10 years - wonder how many young newly elected (democrat) senators will fall on that account due to inappropriate teen party pictures owned by Murdoch).
I realised myself that an old page we had during 3rd semester where a friend and I wrote silly, fictional stories and rant about each other was appeared on a yahoo search for me...well - I guess most people would be readily able to see that it is fictional...but still :)
Anyways - ClaimID.com is a service that allows you to control at least some aspects of your online appearance - though you cannot fully control what a search engine retrieves about you, you can use ClaimID to Claim certain pages - and disclaim others (that is NOT me on this or that page). Of course you will be building up yet another database on your doings, personality and personal information that others can use for dubious purposes - but at least you are in control of what you present. Well - only thing left to say is - go have a look at my ClaimID page»
Keywords: blog posts, e-learning, Elgg
