Joho the Blog
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May 30, 2003
AKMA wonders what we can learn from millennia of thought about what constitutes identity. He asks: What does a digital blessing stick to? What is the who of the Web? And how does that affect the proposal for digital identities, e.g., Passport, Liberty Alliance,... Biometric makers push the idea that physical characteristics mark you as a particular human. But that doesn't account for pod people. Blessings adhere not to the physical marks but to "something more" that AKMA's tradition calls "soul." " Now AKMA brings it back to the digital world. Our digital identity is created by our digits — our fingers typing digits. (He later connects "fictive identities" with the Latin root for fiction: fingere. Cool.) Our fingers enact identity through the words we type. Our acts further substantiates our digital identity. Someone whose physicality is limited may find his/her online identity to be more real. We make ourselves online. But what are the characteristics and limitations of our online identities? The key point: Our identities are already constituted nonsubstantially. Our online identies don't represent a new space and type of identity but is instead a recognition and embracing of what has always been at the heart of identity. It thrusts role-playing and authorial voice to the fore in the question of "true" identity. So, "perhaps blessings stick precisely to our identity as we play them, blog them, confect them, mold, share and make these fictive selves physically and online..." Wow. Terrific lead-off presentation. [Great point. But it leaves me back worrying about ignoring the body as inessential to the identity. AKMA, am I missing your point?] Posted
by D. Weinberger at May 30, 2003 11:35 AM
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Comments
Not “missing my point,” exactly, David, but I’m pushing a two-front response to replacement-panic (the fear that online interaction eclipses “real” physical identity). First, I’m suggesting that what we think of as identity has always been non-substantial (hence, not determined by physical bodies). Second, the electronic manifestation of identity supplements physical identity markers in a way comparable to the way that “intellectual” or “spiritual” identity supplements physical identity. So it’s not a threat or a replacement — it’s more and different.
Posted by: AKMA | May 30, 2003 12:02 PM
Thanks for the clarification. But...
How can my online ID supplement my physical ID if my physics aren't on the Web? Isn't my online Web identity bodiless? And doesn't this tell us that the physical in a secondary characteristic of ID, thus denigrating the body?
Posted by: dweinberger | May 30, 2003 12:19 PM
fascinating-looking posts, btw.
This reminds me of the Google Cookie, which worries me when I remember it.
Each user's accreted search activity--including not just search terms and topics, but also the timestamping, even the syntax-- could constitute an identity, or at least a pretty good approximation of it.
How differentiatable are these over time? Even if you periodically deleted your cookie, it'd only be a matter of time before you generated another activity trail that correlated to previous cookies.
Posted by: greg.org | May 30, 2003 07:47 PM
Current online interaction, and hence personae, are primarily textual, and favour those like yourselves who are lucid and fluent with words and good at rapid typing.
This counterbalances the real-world tendency to favour those whose bodies are attractive.
As we bring richer physical representations online, from photos to voice to video, we revert to triggering these atavistic default reactions.
Consider Friendster, with its focus on the image. The quality of interactionpossibel there was largely superficial, yet when I met some of the same people through other online media, different aspects of their personalities came out.
The DG paper I didn't get round to writing was an evaluation of the inherent tendencies of differnt forms of online discourse to fall into certain modes:
http://epeus.blogspot.com/2003_04_01_epeus_archive.html#200218765
Posted by: Kevin Marks | May 30, 2003 11:52 PM