The conflicting tensions of my digital identity & the impact of my digital footprint in cyberspace – a reflection

Posted by: Sue Hickton | January 20, 2009 | 10 Comments |

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I have been musing on this topic for a while now but never can seem to find the time to actually research it further or write about it (or more to the point, sit still long enough to research and write it).

In an attempt to dump these thoughts out of my head I decided I would video myself with my brand new Flip MinoHD as a sort of videoblog. Now I found this rather daunting, as i loathe having my picture taken so this is massive degrees worse.

Anyway here is my collection of thoughts on this matter, and will attempt to distill the information out into some kind of shape below.

The Question of My Digital Identity – feeling a bit schizophrenic tbh

Wikipedia refers to one’s digital identity as an aspect of digital technology that is concerned with the mediation of people’s experiences of their own identity and the identity of other people and things.

Now this Wikipedia site goes on to discuss all kinds of things like identity taxonomies / ontologies (is that even a word?), XRI and other stuff I don’t really understand at 8.30pm on a Tuesday night and don’t really care to attempt to understand.

The bottom line of my interpretation of this is one’s digital identity is what represents us to other users in the virtual community; hence my questions & concerns expressed albeit incoherently in the video above.

Given I will be increasingly working with Web2.0 in developing our workforce capability, it will be an interesting tightrope i am choosing to walk on and which side I fall into. Am I suehickton or am EvilSue (or possibly fishgirl or fishgirl7 )? Who am I really and am I more than one person?

The Question of My Digital Footprint

Ok – as I mentioned on the video (a fine example of my digital footprint and yet another iteration of my somewhat schizophrenic digital identity), Googling my name (isn’t there actually a word for that type of narcissistic behaviour?) renders a rather largish number of hits, given I am not a mover and shaker out there in cyber space.

The number of hits gives a potential employer (and students, and colleagues and friends) a somewhat rich feast of “sue hickton”-ess to explore. Now from my trawls of these pages, there is nothing there that concerns me unduly, but I do confess to having ’skin crawl’ moments when I see some of the types of footprints others leave across cyberspace. I wonder what large virtual monster is going to come back and bite them in the arse in the future?

What a mucky (redback-like) web we (I ) weave

So my thoughts tonight are not much clearer or structured or rigorous than those of my wee pensieve brain dump up there, but I think it is a foundation post that I can build on and explore over the next few years.

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I’ve gone through the same “agony” about my own digital identity. I have a natural tendency to think (and write) out loud overshare, and make silly, sarcastic comments. However, if you were to get to know me in real life, I’d display the same behavior. I’ve read enough articles to know that it’s probably a problem for a professional-type and I’m sure it has or will “bite me the arse.” But I probably won’t change much. So, if someone doesn’t like that then it’s pretty easy to unsubscribe/don’t read what I write, don’t ‘friend’ me…and to those that can’t deal with that I say, ‘bite me.’

[Reply]

Sue Hickton Reply:
January 20th, 2009 at 10:22 pm

@Janet i am the same – i am online what i am in RL. I really think this is the side of the tightrope that I am going to fall on – ie be me when and where i choose and the rest can go hang.

I think it is important to at least go through the reflection though, and understand the potential future conequences of our choices. I do wonder about teenagers these days (OMG i sound SO old) and the kind of content they put out there on MySpace etc. Some of them just seem to have no sense of self-moderation. Ahh well – tis the future – bring it on!

[Reply]

By: Janet Clarey on January 20, 2009
at 8:39 pm

Tis funny, because good Sue said to me well over a year ago that she must introduce me to Evil Sue. I had no idea what that meant at the time. I always figured it was like Chris Locke’s alter ego, Rage Boy.

Anywho, very interesting questions. I’ve been asking myself the same thing a lot recently.

[Reply]

Sue Hickton Reply:
January 20th, 2009 at 10:27 pm

MUWHAHAHA and i am Evil! the students named us thus. Well, technically they named me Bad Sue to start with, but I was upgraded fairly quickly .

re: alter ego LOL. Actually in the early days a number of peeps actually believed I was her alter ego. I was dragged across a conference foyer at about 18 months ago, as “proof” of my existence. We are an interesting duality tbh. Very similar and very diff. It’s prob scarier than the green head.

Glad to hear that between you and Janet I am not the only one who thinks this stuff. The video thing wasnt nearly as painful as I thought and way easier to synthesise my thoughts – or at least act as a repository. Need to think about that…stupid brain. Need to turn it off!

[Reply]

Sue Hickton Reply:
January 20th, 2009 at 10:30 pm

oh btw – LOVE that Rage Boy site – its quite brilliant in its way. eccentric

[Reply]

By: Richard Giles on January 20, 2009
at 8:49 pm