Identity Integrity

A recent tweet from @mashable led me to an article by Jeremiah Owyang entitled The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras.

Interesting stuff as always when analysts try to extend current technological and media developments into trends and then recommend future strategies, but the following quote about online identities didn't strike me as self evident:

Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising.

The concept of a single, integrated online identity is intriguing in concept, but I'm not sure that's what people want. If that means never having to re-enter basic data about themselves or being able to update all identities at once, then it would be a major improvement in efficiency.

But beyond that I think we want and need separate identities - or at least highly variable transparency of our complete identity - depending on the relationship and context.

Facebook recognized this and developed controls that allow us to control what is seen by personal friends vs. colleagues vs. family members. My LinkedIn profile isn't an exact mirror of my Facebook page because the audience and organizing purpose are different. And if I had an avatar in Second Life, it wouldn't be my virtual doppelgänger - I would definitely be a little taller and look better on the beach.

Another obstacle to a unified identity is business models: each social network has a strong incentive to maintain control over its data, which would argue against the creation of independent data stores that serve to multiple social networks. Look at job boards today: millions of man-hours could be saved and service could be improved with a centralized "job search identity" that would serve all of the job boards, but how would that benefit any of the operators of those boards?

So I'll wait and hope. And keep working on my avatar's abs.

It's True, Your Honor

Now we learn that Twitter could harm moral values. And it's science!
We may be approaching the end times that Bill Murray and the Ghostbusters foretold some twenty five years ago:

Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

Does Twitter make me déclassé?

In a recent New York Times Magazine article, Virginia Heffernan ruminates on a provocative talk about Twitter given at the recent South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas. Much of her article focuses on the social class implications of the address, but I'm more interested in how the growth of digital social networks may actually work to impoverish us and our relationships.

"Swampy, boggy, inescapable connectivity" is how Heffernan describes her current Twitter entanglement with over 250 people (which in her case is at least partly for professional reasons). She reflects further:

The connections that feel like wealth to many of us — call us the impoverished, we who treasure our smartphones and tally our Facebook friends — are in fact meager, more meager even than inflated dollars. What’s worse, these connections are liabilities that we pretend are assets. We live on the Web in these hideous conditions of overcrowding only because — it suddenly seems so obvious — we can’t afford privacy. And then, lest we confront our horror, we call this cramped ghetto our happy home!

(There is a sweet irony to this Chicagoan that this comes from the New York Times since the last sentence echoes my opinion about the source of the love New Yorkers - and particularly Manhattanites - express for their place of residence.)

Twitter is only the latest development in the relentless and seemingly inexorable march toward greater population density and more frequent interaction. I'm reminded of Henry Thoreau's contention that "too frequent society leaves us overly familiar and uninteresting to one another."

My abode is anything but an isolated shack in the woods, but I think Thoreau understood something about a basic human tendency to substitute quantity for quality in our interactions. As long as we are immersed in a stream of chatter we are less likely to recognize that what we are consuming and producing is vapid and empty and crowding out people and activities of more substance.

Can there any good thing come out of Twitter?

At least one. I don't know if it's the smiley face or what, but I feel protective just watching the video.

Tweenbots

Team of Rivals

Last night my book group discussed Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. My commitment to read the entire 750 pages between December 25th and January 8th flagged, but I still read over 400 pages, which put me squarely in the dark early days of the Civil War after the Union was routed in the Battle of Bull Run.

Much has been made of the title of the book and Lincoln's supposed genius in co-opting his rivals into his cabinet, but the deepest impressions on me were quite different.

• As James Oakes wrote in a NYT Op-Ed piece, the practice of offering cabinet appointments to party rivals was well established before Lincoln. Furthermore, the cabinet was often dysfunctional due to the rivalries referred to in the book's title.
  
  
• Defining fully the essence of Lincoln's genius is beyond my ken, but I was amazed at his innate goodness, his devotion to principles and causes beyond himself and his ability to get difficult people with their own agendas to do what was best for the country.
  
  
• Lincoln and his contemporaries were more educated (in my opinion) than are the vast majority of the best and brightest in our country today. By educated I mean that they were familiar with the big ideas of humanity and those that set them forth, not just stuffed with data, most of which is of trivial value. That should shame us who have so many more resources than they did, but it is a tribute to the devotion of these men to improve themselves, particularly when you consider that one of them was a penniless farmer born in a log cabin in Kentucky.
  
  
• Lincoln wanted the respect of those around him, but he focused on gaining the substance that would command true respect, not merely polishing the surface to attract fame, its counterfeit cousin. "...I can say for one that I have no other [ambition] so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem."
  
  
• The commitment to preserve the Union was a sacred duty for Lincoln and his team of rivals. They saw the success of the audacious experiment that was the United States of America as being absolutely indispensable for the betterment of all mankind, not just those subject to its rule.

We're now off to Victor Frankl but I plan to finish the book. Great read and great ideas. I'm glad our next president has read it.