think about it.

amazing how “character” and “Character” are now beyond difference.

These blogs have become like every Twilight Zone episode realized.

Dusan, you should try to drive down to Silly Valley while youre here. SF is just a “set or fascade” the reality is 30 miles south. Go beyond tourist mode:)

Just to take a tiny bite out of what I am meaning… I see people falling all over themselves to pour their personal info and artifacts into facebook, who then owns this information that before would have required a private investigator to obtain. In this type of identity scenario, the user has limited control.

We simply do not have a good model for identity. My RL identity does not need or want attribution for what I do as Pais. I enjoy Pais having his own identity. In a way, his eventual identity to a responsible and legally eligible person is repudiated through the account with LL, however, my trust of them is limited.

When I saw Prok’s quote of Duke I thought about how I had to adjust to anonymity in SL. I was so used to introducing myself as a package of age, address, where i grew up, my education, my vocation, and so forth. However, all these are simply trappings that may or may not reflect our true selves. The challenge, as I saw it, was to use the avatar and text chat to channel myself without using the crutches of the RL to create that identity and personality for those I met.

I *have* heard of similar issues with XstreetSL, prior to transfer to LL, and in such a case it involved not the RL info of the defendant, but the filer. I do not know if such continues to be the case under the site’s new management.

While I do not have any problems with folks who wish to protect their identities in a personal setting, by and large I have run in to *huge* issues with people who have not been transparent about their identity, availability or trustworthiness. It often leads to work not being done on time, extreme difficulty contacting said individual (it’s as easy as not logging in, ignoring email or clicking the invis box, after all), and leads to a *lot* of lost time and opportunity.

While identity is not the sole factor towards developing trust it is at the very least something to go on, as Valiant brought up in an earlier comment, towards developing accountability on both sides of the table. The willingness for both parties to trust each other is key in developing a positive and responsible working relationship.

By that same token, companies employing individuals who may wish to keep their true identities unpublicized should respect those wishes… but I think you would be hard pressed to find a company seeking to employ workers in any field who refused to provide RL name and contact info. Expecting such would be much like walking up to an office for employment, dropping off a resume with a fake name and address on it, and then calling back later to ensure they’d received a resume from ‘SexyBimbo21 Hot’.

Yes, we should all be able to work within our ‘Second Lives’ - but that doesn’t mean that all social, governmental and business conventions should be tossed out the window.

Yes, some of the ‘bigger names’ can get away with - and indeed market themselves based on - their avatar identities. But these are few and far between and I can guarantee you that at base level, they MUST deal with real world identity for tax purposes and DO NOT go around claiming they should be addressed by some made up name that holds no legality.

LL- the business,morphs every few months to sustsain itself and self corrects for its existance not as any society, bit only as corporate buisness entity(avatar) sanctioned by the state of CA.usa..

Its expression,its product/service is based on only one ideology of how to use technology.

Virtuality- avatarzation SL style is not based on any past social lessons for a balanced society, it is directed from tech lessons for execution of actions and pyramid economics for its monetary survival.

The “concept” that SL or virtuality or technology as a whole offers any “new or better” ways of social interactions seems a falicy.

NO New forms of trust, respect, power plays/ social outcasting, or human inter-actions have been expressed. For any Second Life act, the truth is its aleady been expressed in real life , and for centuries.

The ONLY change technology offers is in its EASE and its WIDENESS and SPEED of affects that allow for the same human individual and GROUP identities to be considered as valid at a particular place or time and within a particular set of experiences learned.

I await some evidence that the affect of “avatar identity” leads to a better expression of the human psyche.

Until the “shiny of technology” is removed from our latest “offsprings” we wont truly treat them or ourselves fairly.