Erica Driver, who is doing wonderful work at ThinkBalm in assessing and advocating for the use of virtual worlds, posted a policy and invited comment on the use of actual identities in order to participate in the idea-sharing, brainstorming, and general advocacy of the group.
Now, this issue has come up before, and I’ve blogged about it frequently. My main touch point is the connection of my own virtual identity with my actual one. When I was asked to appear on Metanomics there was a subtle pressure to use my real name – it wasn’t forced, it wasn’t required, but at the time I remember thinking “OK, wow….well, now I need to ‘connect’ my identities” and while I decided to do so I did it reluctantly.
Frankly, I thought there was a lot more I could learn by being, well, Dusan Writer. Making the connection to the ‘real me’ felt like it would cut off a pathway to thinking and exploration, although I wasn’t sure. In the end, I can fairly clearly say that while there are benefits to having the two connected, I lost out on something – I lost the ability to pursue the limits of virtual identity, to continue along a sort of creative path that became harder once the “me me” was part of the picture.
In any case, Erica posted the following on the LinkedIn ThinkBalm group:
“One of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community’s core values is transparency and openness and one way we accomplish this is by members using their real names on their profiles (which means in their posts here in this group), at community events, and on community work products (like issues of the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Storytelling Series and community machinima projects).
Many immersive environments allow people to use names other than their real ones. This is perfectly appropriate when the technology is being used for entertainment. But it is problematic, for our purposes anyway, in the work context.”
Now, she doesn’t actually explain why it’s problematic. She just says it is, but I look forward to her explanation of what the problem is.
In any case, I thought I’d share my response to her post here:
Erica:
As someone who runs a business and who is selling virtual worlds to enterprise, I understand the importance of reputation, transparency and trust. At the level of engagement we have with clients, working at senior executive levels whether with pharma or non-profits or the military or whoever, I know that their ability to make decisions on investments partly hinges on their ability to verify our reputation.
However, this issue has come up previously in ThinkBalm sessions and is something I feel fairly strongly enforces a set of values which does not, I believe, fit in with what I *thought* was the mission of the community – namely to explore ideas, approaches, tools and technologies towards their wider adoption. I’ve seen a sort of ‘peer pressure’ happen at ThinkBalm events as well, which makes me decidedly uncomfortable and while in some ways I respect that LinkedIn offers a different venue for sharing, we’re talking about the same community and the same potential for ideation and identification of best practices.
Virtual worlds (yeah, I’m still a hold out on calling it that, because much of the Web is immersive, as are games but that’s a side quibble) offer a rich range of cultural and creative expression. These are features that I point out to clients: moving past the “saves costs on meetings” value proposition, I personally position virtual worlds as a site for managing change and innovation. Most of my clients are looking to understand how to be innovative, how to look at old problems in new ways, and how to come to grips with the broader challenges posed by social media, collaborative tools, and globalization of talent.
Against this backdrop, virtual worlds have attracted talent that might not otherwise have a voice in ‘corporate America” or wherever. Those are the voices that can give us some of our more profound insight into how collaborative culture, creative communities, and the production of value outside of the walls of the enterprise are shaping and will continue to transform the world around us.
The insistence on linking avatar names to actual identities excludes these voices. I’d propose that there’s a lot to learn from someone like Scope Cleaver – his work on creating virtual environments as sites for social interaction and commerce have a lot of lessons for enterprise. He has worked with major schools and enterprises but would be excluded from ThinkBalm under this approach.
Or what about Grace McDunnough, who could talk about the use of virtual environments in ways that engage both community activity and multiple senses?
Or, I support the work of Bryn Oh, who has done the most incredible work using virtual worlds for storytelling, and which I show to clients as an example of the immersive training properties of virtual worlds, and the possibilities for creating deep and rich branding experiences.
Or what about others like them, who have arrived in virtual worlds for 1,000 reasons and may have found some talent, or have built some tool, or who have some sort of insight to share but for a variety of reasons wish to keep their actual identities private.
When you go and pitch the findings that you gather from the free contributions of the ThinkBalm members, fine, don’t include insights from the people who don’t use their real names. But I’d encourage you to rethink this policy – I really felt that ThinkBalm was meant to be a community, and as such I look around in virtual worlds and recognize that there are people who can provide rich insights into the issues we explore but may never reveal their actual names. And I want to hear what they have to say.
But I also understand that ThinkBalm is a commercial facility that you’re managing, and so you have your own commercial interests in packaging the community’s inputs. I just think it’s a shame to lose track of those voices, although I’m sure there are other ways they can be heard.
But maybe I have it wrong. Are there venues in virtual worlds outside of maybe a corporate setting where it’s a requirement to connect the real name to the avatar? What risks am I overlooking by having ‘anonymous avatars’ helping to explore and brainstorm and contribute to the advocacy of virtual worlds?
The Importance Of Identity When Doing Business in Virtual Worlds
Repost of my SL Revolution blog of February 4, 2009
I want to thank Dusan Writer for the inspiration for this blog post. I read Dusan’s Blog on a regular basis and the text of this blog post is actually my reply to his …post entitled: “I Am Not Really Me and I Probably Never Will Be: Avatars and Actual Identity.”
I share my real name/identity via my LinkedIn profile, with those I want to do business with. This type of disclosure is likely more important to people/businesses that are new to virtual worlds, as it allows them to quickly establish their “brands” value.
Doing business without the benefit of legal identities, has the potential to leave you vulnerable to a whole host of problems such as:
* Contract Enforcement
* Insufficient Tax Documentation
* Copyright/IP Prosecution/Defense
* Non-disclosure Exposure
With respect to contracts; Benjamin Franklin said “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In business, a single business dispute can ruin you. Written contracts are the “ounce of prevention” that can eliminate costly disputes. Although it may happen in the future, I know of no legal precedents for avatars to execute or defend enforceable contracts.
The tax issue is the growing 300lb (soon to be 800lb) gorilla in the room. It won’t be long before taxing authorities compel the reporting of Virtual World income. I consider it to already be an ethical requirement. If you want to deduct Virtual World expenses, you had better be prepared to identify the recipient, be it a business or individual, of your payments.
Copyright and IP issues are another area of growing concern. What if someone doing work for you “unintentionally” “borrows” IP from another company, goes MIA and the IP owner sues you? How do you subpoena someone you don’t know for your defense?
Protecting your ideas via non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) is another area where real identities are required. If you don’t require NDAs of people who do work for you, you are asking to have your ideas & Trade Secrets stolen.
I realize many of these arguments are philosophically distasteful. I regret that “business can no longer be run on a handshake and a gentleman’s agreement.” Whether we like it or not the reality is that knowing people’s real identities is important in today’s business world, even when that world is “Virtual.”
I recently attended a ThinkBalm event and wore a Group Title of my PW (Physical World) given name … aka Valiant Westland the entire time. I didn’t feel pressured to do this and it was great to connect via LinkedIn to many of my fellow presenters and other attendees.
If Flaubert hadn’t been Madame Bovary we never would have known Madame Bovary. I don’t know what we would have gotten in *her* place, perhaps *his* contact list.
Insofar as I have no interest in virtuality beyond (or beneath) its potential for aesthetic autonomy I can happily report “ichabod Antfarm, c’est moi.” It genuinely saddened me to read that you, Dusan, have somewhat, if not wholly, lost the ability to report the same of yourself.
Thank you Ichabod. That isn’t something that I’ve posted about before and it really deserves a far longer post rather than an off-handed mention. I’ve been struggling to find a way to articulate it without veering into the debate about augmentationism vs. immersionism, which I don’t think does justice to what I’ve discovered through my own personal journeys with avatar identity.
I was struck by a comment that followed Erica’s post by another participant:
“It is an interesting area as this plays to each individuals needs in communication and their personal neuro linguistic programming stack.”
Which echoes “Create Your Own Economy”, a book that I highly recommend, and which explores the influence and nature of the Internet against the backdrop of understanding neurodiversity and autism. It proposes that in an era of rapid information and dispersed community, that we would be well advised to look to neurodiversity and autistics as a way of understanding how we order information and express identity.
The author proposes that by looking at autism not as a disability but rather as an expression of neurodiversity that we might learn more about how we as people and a culture might thrive in this ‘information era’ and understand how we can more effectively frame our understanding of the change going on around us. He very specifically mentions Second Life and discusses on-line identity as an important means by which we overcome our neurological prejudices.
Perhaps at the end of the day, my avatar identity was an important vehicle by which I have been able to understand the many ways in which I frame my perspective in the world, often without realizing it, because it provides the opportunity to unshackle my social persona from how I think and feel and through that decoupling allows me to take a fresh look at the ways in which I order knowledge and experience.
I understand what Valiant is saying, but on the other hand we’re not talking here about contracts or IP rights or any of the rest of it….we’re talking about building interesecting areas of interest and exploration towards creating a more robust vision of what virtual worlds can do, where they’re headed, and how they can be ’sold’.
Sometimes, the best ideas will come from someone who has ‘gotten out of their skin’ and is able to think and create in ways which are only possible because their avatars have become a repository not just for forms of on-line identity, but for creative viewpoints that might be more difficult to express otherwise.
I very much believe that “augmentation versus immersion” is just another binary straight jacket that only some mighty act of Hegelianism will overcome so I very much look forward to your next post on the subject
Then again, perhaps we overcome it by simply living it since life (second, or otherwise) rarely pays heed to the intellectual categories that supposedly organize it, or where it does, it does so in ways far subtler than our simple oppositions can express. Nevertheless, it is still fun to read and write about such weighty things.
As such, I’ve often thought about autism and “neuro-diversity” in the context of Second Life because I have encountered it often enough both in the world and *cough* on some other blogs and would appreciate a book on the subject that rises above *any* ideological position (assuming such a thing is possible!) It seems that Asperger’s Syndrome is the new schizophrenia; in a sense, the voice we created by refusing to listen to it. I suppose if you want to listen to Gould’s Goldberg’s you also have to put up with the humming. Mind you, I happen to enjoy the Sing Along to Bach thing
btw, I don’t think I own a “personal neuro linguistic programming stack”; if I did, I’m sure I wouldn’t know how to plug it in, let alone how to turn the contraption on.
Hmm, I was so busy responding to your post that I didn’t bother to read it. So,
“Sometimes, the best ideas will come from someone who has ‘gotten out of their skin’ and is able to think and create in ways which are only possible because their avatars have become a repository not just for forms of on-line identity, but for creative viewpoints that might be more difficult to express otherwise.”
Hammer, meet nail on the head.
Let me clarify, I would never propose that avatar identity be restricted to one’s physical identity, much like I would never insist that an artist or author use something other than a stage/pen name for their work. I also share the belief that a certain level of anonymity can be “liberating.”
My own first-hand experience as an “avatar” began when I was 15 and working as a bus-boy at a place called The Red Lion. The “duty” I looked forward to the most, was dressing up in a Red Lion costume, standing out by a busy road and attracting the attention of potential customers. It was completely liberating! I danced, cavorted and swung my tail, all in complete and joyous anonymity.
Who I was in the Red Lion costume was an honest express of “me.” However, when I went to apply for my first “real” job as an electronics salesman a year later, I didn’t go dressed as a lion. I wore the most professional clothing I had, and introduced myself with my given name.
The “Madame Bovarys” of the Virtual world certainly have a place, just as mimes, mascots, masquerade balls and Marilyn Monroes (Norma Jean Bakers) do in the PW (Physical World). I will continue to applaud their creative expression and even slip on the SL version the old “lion suit” (an 8′ tall winged knight)when I want to play.” But when it’s time to get work done, you’ll see me in SL as I am behind the keyboard, with shoes polished, shirt pressed and a LinkedIn profile and identity that shows I mean business.
Ichabod – if I can, I’ll try to ramble on about it this weekend, this issue certainly has me thinking (again!). Wish I had more time now to respond – maybe more later.
Valiant – you press your shirt and polish your shoes to log in to a virtual world? I think you’re missing 95% of the value proposition. HAHAHAHA.
I’m going to add another comment here that I made on the ThinkBalm thread which was in response to the idea that these issues arise primarily from virtual worlds. This is slightly edited:
I have to argue with the claim that these issues arise from virtual worlds. Perhaps it’s my perspective – a large portion of my clients are in the health field. Issues of identity and transparency are critical issues in this field, and we grapple with this frequently.
Supporting a community of individuals with HIV for example, or patients who have breast cancer and want to participate in on-line forums, or asking physicians to participate in collaborative efforts to ‘fix’ the healthcare system – we approach these challenges with a knowledge that proxy identities are often not only preferred but are often legally required in the absence of HIPAA or other compliance statutes.
So, the concept of identity proxies is, first, not unique to virtual worlds.
Second, I would propose that one of the biggest challenges facing enterprise today, especially in light of the new push by the FCC Consumer Protection Branch to regulate the ability of companies to collect real life identity information and to collate that against other data pools, is the challenge of understanding the new concepts of identity portfolios and how consumers and employees are expressing themselves in different forums, including on-line.
I’m really surprised when I hear people claiming that we’re moving towards a more transparent world in which our real life identities are fully portable across the various identity ‘repositories’ that we create on-line. It may be true that more information about us is being put on-line, but this is coupled with a trend towards more ways in which we can partition parts of our identity portfolios.
I may use Facebook with friends, and LinkedIn for business and there may be overlap between the information, but more and more individuals are constructing separate personas for themselves in order to feel enabled against the onslaught of corporate control of our data.
THIS, in fact, is the natural evolution:
- As more data about ourselves is put online, corporations have more of an incentive to use that data for commercial purposes
- In the face of light regulation, this data can be misused or, at the least, make people feel uncomfortable
- As a consequence, individuals increasingly turn to ways in which they can mask or partition parts of their identity so that they maintain some level (however illusory) of control over what is known about them and by whom.
When I talk to clients, I talk to them about how it will become increasingly difficult to find their “true customers” – that they need to look at identity proxies as an important component to how they think about who their customer is.
…..I’d like to be on the side of looking back from the future and being able to say: “Yes, we saw this coming, but I tried to lend some small voice to our individual right to who we are, and how we wish to express that, and in what ways that expression is formulated, and that while corporations continued their push to maintain the status quo approach to understanding identity, I was willing to both push back a little, but also to point out that in many ways, they are missing the point, that they closed off an avenue to the future which the rest of us were already living.”
And not to get toooo far out there – but these issues will become even more complicated when our on-line identities are fueled by both our individual self-expression and automated intelligence. The ‘avatars of the future’, whether in virtual worlds or on-line generally, will perform through a combination of both “live” control and artificial intelligence.
The identity questions will only get more confusing, in other words, as time goes on. I personally think that attempts to create this tight coupling of “identity” with “online persona” is mistaken in that it neglects how this stuff will REALLY turn out.
Finally – I admit that maybe I’m crazy. Or maybe my clients are. I don’t negate the challenges people have advocating for or selling virtual worlds, and I realize that the easiest thing to do is say “yeah, of course you see the ‘real person’”…but I find that answering those questions in another way actually opens up more opportunities for me, but maybe that’s just the kind of discussion I manage to get with my customers, either that or they all think I’m crazy and just don’t want to tell me, um, in person.
How ironic: I’m reading Madame Bovary for my local women’s book club this month. So far: excellent book.
Ugh.
fake ID in realife interactions is all for the fakers benefit.its a POWER play. nothing shiny here.
identity revelation is about trust and cosequenses… and if you havent noticed, linden lab/SL and its TAO and all its “fanz” and mechanisms, really DONT show much trust or giving a damn about the others affects. You read Malabys outsider view of the mirror maze that the tech culture or any “no overview-no consequenses” system brings.
bring on the white holopod machines to stop (1909)..:),
the DELUSION that humans havent mediated their environment for 50k years, and that a 3d pixelated “mask” can provide any lessons beyond those of a “wooden mask” is a true sign of MIPS.. media induced pyschosis.
Dusan,where did this posts ideology come from? Are you reading too much fake press. too much half truths blogged as half a reality ? do your examples have fact checking- any evidence, behind them.
I doubt a “thinkbalm” is needed or will truly provide any “new” answers..lol but in this case. they dont have to be “new” and “shiny”.. they are just making good assumptions using 10k years of human interactions as a path to balance.
the irony of the “virtual worlds-engage” conferneces in NY in 2006-7? being at the jewish museum never ceases to amaze me.
Cube – um, not sure what you mean by “where did this post’s ideology come from” and half truths and whatnot. Think of it simply as one approach to policy”
“We’re a professional group looking at virtual worlds and we believe all our members should reveal their real identities”.
They can do that. I have no issue with their right to do so. And it is guided by a business ideology I suppose.
But it opens up that fascinating tangent into issues of identity which have been going on, as you point out, for 1000s of years. I’ve never claimed these issues are new, I just think that on-line identity is bringing them to the fore again and in often new (in the sense of mediated in new ways) and fascinating ways.
howdy dusan,
1. as to “half truths” I point to the “avatars” actions/activities etc you claim offer “insight” or “something”– without real information the only “truth” is what you believe or perceive, and thats not a real foundation for interaction in any honest way. Online “avatars” doing this/that etc lay claims everday…and the reality behind the claims or how they got the “deal” are usaully grounding in very old ways that dont require any new media examination at all..:)
2.for you to “guess” in your writings that a business ideology equates with a civic ideology is the issue im getting at. if anything was shown by the LL experiment, it was that they dont mix most-”all?” of the time.
3. the “gamerz” ideologies that today gets, whitehouse validity via these folk at conferences:to equate game methods/goals to civic methods/goals is also the issue im getting at. it seems that the only choices in the blog culture your speaking to- and from is- CORPORATE or TOYS/GAMEZ for virtuality…nothing else can be valid..
Has television already mediated the tech socierty to that of only ENTERTAINMENT drones…Why cant anything but a VIDEO GAME be better if difficult to aquire.(last posts question to a post i made)
Can we accept “corporate ethics” as an oxymoron today as easily as “blogger journalist”.?
Im asking not about hammers seeing nails, but about hammers deluding themselves and others into seeing screws as the better target.
One thing that makes me think “I will never ever sign up to any programme of this sort” is this – that Linden Labs has a *very bad record* when it comes to disclosure of RL identity.
Their current procedure regarding the DMCA, for instance, is to automatically disclose the RL identity of the defendant to any DMCA claim filer. This is not at all required by law, they are doing that because they want to. Under what other circumstances might one expect one’s RL identity to be disclosed?
And, you know, anybody who is not concerned about that – augmentationist or immersionist – is either impregnably defended by lawyers, ignorant or stupid. In other names I moderate bulletin boards, and even that can get one death threats and unwanted phone calls and visits.
“its always facinating until someone puts an eye out..;)” anon the avatr
Anyone who doesn’t see this as an important issue is probably so fixed in their personna that any deviation from the Myth of the Integrated Personality is just to frightening for them to contemplate.
Why can’t I do business under a variety of names? I certainly know how to socialise thus.
I am no more likely to rob or cheat someone under my real name… look at Bernard Madoff….that was his real name…20billion US.
uh, its been suggested he was a sociopathic personality.
so now sociopathic and autistic brainsets are to be the norm? ?
the myth of the intergrated personality?– you mean the average normal socially functioning folk?
and when corporations do alot of business, under many names, thats usally to hide something–
So can we now also think of corey as just another programmer?;) can we leave the myth of the integrated game god and move on?;)
Cube is right, that this issue surfaces periodically and everybody gets into a terrible clutch about it.
I realize that certain church ladies get into a dither about whose identity is what and want to force everybody to where those HELLO MY NAME IS BUD tags.
I walk around them. It’s not true that suppression of RL names is only related to entertainment. I have done business for years on this basis. There are people I pay to build things whose real names I have no idea about, nor could I find their locations. Sometimes I pay in Lindens, sometimes a PayPal that may only be a gmail name that’s made up.
I’ve had two building companies rip me off, one by building a mall on commission and then copying and plunking it down for another rentals agent and charging him as if he had developed it from scratch, too. I happened to stumble on to it flying around. Done all the time. Had another pair of guys take a down payment and flake. Happens all the time. I got better and feeling for the iffy ones and walking around them. It works the other way too, people ordering builds and not paying. Done all the time. Yet we have built this world. It isn’t the trauma everyone expects.
I’ve had a guy script an invention I conceived once and he turned out to be 16 or 17 and eventually got booted over to the teen grid. I’ve had people sign up to volunteer and do beautiful things and then I find they likely died in RL. And so on. It’s just how it is. Deal with it. It’s *how it is*. Don’t like it? Then, build in real life, I guess? Like Donald Trump.
Some of the nastiest people I’ve dealt with in SL are the people whose RL names are available even on their profile, or on their blogs. Unlike the skittish Andrew Keen who freaks at anonymity online, and believes abuse only comes with anonymity, I have to say that those assholes who had RL names were even worse than the anonymous nice people I met in SL who were sweetie pies. Some of the most solid, best people in SL with great reputations are those types of avataric personas you never get behind, because you don’t need to. Of course, you may wake up some day and discover they have gone Ginko, but of course, that happens in RL, too. I had a friend whose husband of 25 years just ran off with a barely 20 year old. No Second Life involved lol.
Humanity has been putting on masks through its entire existence.
Rememer the Duke, in Measure for Measure, when he disguises himself and returns to spy:
“Now shall we see/if power change purpoes/what our seemers be.”
indeed.
there is no CORE idea of SL systems as virtuality. thats should be apparent by what LL is and what they done for a decade.
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.
I am intrigued by Valiant’s account of his experience of being in the Lion suit. The following description of putting on the ironed shirt and polished shoes sounds to me like adoption of a ‘fake’ identity for business purposes. Does the ‘real name’ (for what they are worth) make any difference if the individual is masking their identity to make a good impression by wearing, say, a suit?
In many countries it is relatively trivial to change one’s name. Why would there be any greater or lesser transparency if I used my legal name after changing it?
Transparency and trust *must* run hand in hand with working environments of any kind.
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.
@Ordinal – As an addendum to your comment about DMCAs disclosing RL info to DMCA filers, I have filed three DMCAs in as many weeks as well as numerous times in the past. Not once ever – much less recently – have I ever received RL info about the people I filed against.
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.
i should clarify – RL info of the filer was supposedly revealed upon counter-claim.
This is a long and interesting discussion. I am careful about my identity because we have yet to invent a proper way to handle identity in the realm of the internet.
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.
so if you are not your experiences and what you do based on them.? Who are you? Probably not someone worth knowing..;)
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:)
Haha – I’ll try Cube….can I teleport?
nope- takes some work.. some effort.;) – but remember the “real” DisneyWorld isnt the Main Street Level, its the beige corridors below street level.
[...] and anonymity online August 12, 2009 There is a vigourous debate going on at the moment on Dusan Writer’s blog and elsewhere, related to ThinkBalm’s policy on the use of real life name versus anonymous [...]
[...] Mindful Infotention, to ThinkBalm in particular, was a reference to of one of Erica Driver’s comments in my never ending RSS stream about the convention of using real names when interacting in business [...]
[...] dichotomy between ‘real-life names’ and ‘virtual identity’. I’ve posted about this before, and I suppose I’ll post about it [...]