Distributed Idenity and stickiness
I really enjoy reading Sheila Webber’s Information Literacy blog, but I must admit I enjoy her Second Life blog even more. In the SL blog, writing as Sheila Yokishawa, she writes as her alter ego – her second life avatar. I love the way the blogs are separate but that they work together in some way, sometimes referring to each other. Sheila weaves her way between the spaces and somehow this has an effect on a kind of distributed identity across the spaces. (More of Distributed Identity later; I want to explore this idea when on study Leave over the next few months). Other peoples web spaces also interact in interesting ways – e.g from blog, to Flickr, to professional sites.
Anyhow, catching up with Sheila Yoshikawa’s blog today, I noticed how in the 12th January post she mentions chocolate.
As is quite customary on Sheila’ blog she begins with a series of ratings:
No of meetings attended: 2 (good); No. of trees felled: 8 (good); No of trees planted: 7 (good); No. of times have tagged a blog entry with the word “chocolate”: 0 until today (surprising: in RL would probably have to tag every day “chocolate”)
I am assuming that in Real Life Sheila is trying not to eat chocolate at the moment. This has made me think about the idea of stickiness…. . Here I am not talking about chocolate smears, but about the way there are certain aspects of our offline selves that show through our online selves. There are aspects that we decide to show and tell about; it is all about display (Guy and I wrote about this in our chapter on academic blogging). Then there is stuff which we betray about ourselves which comes through no matter what – aspects of our identity that stick like burrs. Maybe it is our anglo-centrism; maybe it is our love of chocolate.
Guy Merchant has written about identity in terms of anchored and transient identities – with the transient aspects appearing and disappearing at different times of our lives. But anchored aspects – perhaps gender – stay with most of us all our lives.
I think there are some choices we make about identity online, and what aspects we decide to ‘bring with us’. I am going to think about these aspects as ’sticky’; they stay with an individual across spaces. Other aspects, we might choose to disconnect ourselves from. This is why some people find the Internet liberating (the disabled, for example); others may find the Internet frustrating and so for example, things like learning difficulties may have a stickiness that limit our ability to participate online.
Finally … the snow took me by surprise when I came to walk home this evening. It was quite beautiful as massive flakes of snow fell and quickly created a carpet everywhere:
Thank you for the mention
Actually I am not trying to give up chocolate, it is my official addiction. I eat chocolate every day, and if I go anywhere I generally pack a bit of chocolate (I remember with horror a country visit 20 years ago where I found myself with NO PROSPECT OF CHOCOLATE FOR 24 HOURS). However I don’t eat a LOT of chocolate every day, I never want to snaffle the whole box or anything, I just relish a few choice pieces. As my figure, in these later years, has gently expanded, I am reluctantly thinking that I will have to start eating less. But chocolate would probably be about the last thing to go.
I was trying to think of the stickiest things SL/”Real Life”/ blogs and the most obvious thing is “landscape and trees”; then “information literacy” (or, information generally); clothing (though that is mostly absent in the blog, even in photos); “colourful stuff” (is that too vague? the SL island, my house and pictures on the blog feature quite a lot of objects with intersting patterns or shapes) … hmm, those are the things that come to mind first
Sheila Webber
10 Feb 10 at 11:43 am
Realise that I talked, above, about the *positively* sticky things i.e. things I’m happy to bring across and not so much about personal capabilities or attitudes or characteristics, where there are undoubtedly both “good” and “unwelcome” things that permeate all the spaces (by “information literacy” I meant – in the last comment – interest in the subject, not my own IL).
Sheila Webber
10 Feb 10 at 11:52 am