The core node.

The core node of the internet changes, over time.

It used to be a specific machine, a specific email address, a specific website, a specific profile.

Lately, the core node online is a person. And the tools that tie other outposts, other data, to the idea of a core, identity-based node, are the ones that are winning.

Which is why I don’t feel like many deeply interesting things emerging online will last. Not because they are broken, or inaccurate, but because they’re using the wrong anchor point.

The story is the root element of human differentiation. The ability to create, share, embellish and pass on stories is the root of our myriad cultures. But I don’t believe the story will ever be the core node online, because every story has perspective, and that perspective is inherently glued to the core node - a story from the Guardian has a different perspective than one on the same subject from the New York Times. A story from me has different meaning than the same one from you.

When I see people trying to avoid the core node question, or tie it to something ephemeral and open to broad interpretation, I wonder how their ideas will grow and survive.

People interact using their identity as the core node that ties everything else together. This is true online or offline. And I don’t think this is a step on the path to something else, I think it’s an inherent element of how our species works.

internet privilege.

[I’m always uncomfortable writing about privilege as a concept, in large part because I’m a straight, middle class male, and therefore likely have a blind spot to some of the role privilege plays in my own life. But, I do feel that this needs to be said.]

I’ve been getting angry as I listen to the debate about anonymity, pseudonyms, and multiple identities online.

One of the things that derails tech-utopianism, is the face that it definitely seems like most of the platforms we’re using have been created by groups that are majority white, western, middle class male.

I’m pointing this out because it’s simple to see that most of the people weighing in and saying that people who want to use a fake name, or an obvious pseudonym, or multiple identities, have something to hide, or are being dishonest, or are being immature.

Identity isn’t as simple as you’re making it out to be.

Identity, online or off, is like a prism. The same beam of light can hit it, but if the angle changes, different colours are thrown off. A person is not the same with one peer group, as they are with another. They are not the same with their family, as they are with friends. They are not the same at work, as they are at home.

They are the same person, yes. But identity is fluid.

The thing is, when you (and I’m including myself in this) live in a society where the top line points of your identity (gender, sexuality, race, political affiliations / beliefs, etc) are not going to be persecuted, or when you are not in a situation where you could be ostracised from your family and friends due to revelations about your identity (I’m thinking specifically of sexual orientation or gender presentation, but this could also relate to politics and beliefs) it makes sense to think like Mark Zuckerberg, who has stated that anyone who wants more than one facebook identity is sketchy (paraphrasing).

But that’s because you, and most of the people making these arguments, have the (rather fantastic) privilege of not NEEDing to separate the different elements of their personas into different identities.

Not everyone has this benefit.

So, before I read another justification from Google or Facebook that tries to argue their stance is about anything beyond maintaining the purity of the data set they sell to advertisers, and before I read another pundit saying that the new reality of technology is that all actions will be aggregated and attached to your identity, I ask one very simple thing.

Consider people who don’t have all of the benefits you do, when you think about the impact of technologies on society, identity, and self-conception.

Because the people who benefit from things like multiple online identities, or pseudonyms, are rarely the people who are in a position to steer a globally popular platform, or criticize it to a massive audience.

The Panoptic Dilemma: 3

False boundaries are the next major battleground in the effects of social media on human social patterning and communication. They aren’t false in terms of being based on deceit, they’re just accepted boundaries that were created in support of flawed behavioral systems. Much in the way online documentation will force a redefinition of how indiscretions should be addressed, the boundary between personal / private, professional / social, and friends / acquaintances are blurring heavily, and the assumption these worlds can and will remain separated needs to come into question.

No genuine social interaction can exist without persistent identity. This doesn’t mean literal identity, but a consistent username or handle is essential to build connections. As real names are becoming more common, persistent identity is making it difficult to separate personal and professional identities. To maintain a full-featured online presence for a separate work and home self is a double shift, in something that is already a full-time proposition. At best, this separation reduces the impact of unnecessary prejudices on work or social life. At worst, it reduces context and understanding; you don’t work with or hire a resume, you work with people. People are full featured, and deeper understanding leads to deeper synchronicity.

Boundaries are best managed by different levels of access to the same data set. Not separating identities, but separating types of access. This can happen by channel, by permission level, or by technological literacy. Maintaining separate data sets on one platform related to your identity and actions online is essentially the definition of duplicitous. Assigning levels of information to levels of trust, however, is an adaptation of an established and justifiable human behavior to the online space.

As social capital becomes a key component of so many tasks, the idea that social and professional have a hard boundary becomes problematic. The actions in either space have an impact on overall identity, which in turn defines interpretation in both social and professional life. Again, this comes to a point where we need to decide if we will redefine acceptable behavior, or police ourselves into falsified behaviors.

The Panoptic Dilemma: 2

We’ve entered a period of democratized panopticism. Where big brother is the collective action of everyone. With smartphones, blogging, YouTube and social networks, everyone has means of production, means of distribution, and some form of an audience. On a basic level, this means that there’s a nearly limitless number of potential agendas at play, but no overarching framework. Practically, this is a world of micro-authorities, where those who have social influence, or those with a sufficient audience, and extend panoptic principles to their own benefit, enforcing certain public codes of behavior based on fear of excommunication in the event violations are broadcast.

In a political sense, this is massively powerful: the idea that the media supports and defends democracy is becoming irrelevant, barring rare cases of investigative journalism. Anything that would take down a politician, a government, or a program is just as likely to be found and spread by an individual as by a professional journalist.

On a personal level, this means strong social ties have their own reputation / publishing infrastructure, which accounts for both viral effects, and for redefinitions of friendship and acquaintanceship. Information, and regularity of updates, used to be a major defining factor of whether or not you were ‘friends’, but that distribution of knowledge is now automated (via networks like facebook) and detailed / scalable (via personal blogs). Definitions are now becoming much more situational - which is interpreted as arbitrary by those not participating.

Influence in these networks remains strong, but much more fluid; a person who acts as a trusted friend in one circle can be a pseudo celebrity in many others. Targeting network effects in one circle only is unnecessarily reductionist, and ignores the benefit of leveraging both the weak social ties of individuals online (connection with an audience) and the strong social ties of the same (friends and influencers within a tighter social group).

Strategies need to incorporate how people connect with multiple social circles: the democratized panopticon is based heavily on individuals operating in multiple roles in various social spaces.

Authenticity vs Transparency.

A common error I see online is the conflation of authenticity and transparency. In general, if I see someone using the two terms interchangeably, I assume they don’t understand either concept.

Transparency is a lack of obfuscation. To be transparent is to make information publicly available, to a significant (but not complete) degree.

Authenticity, as I define it, is predictability mixed with honesty. “Authentic” actions are those which wouldn’t surprise a fairly familiar observer, while “inauthentic” ones fall outside of the persona projected on the actor by outsiders.

Authenticity is a judgement based on assumptions without complete information, regardless of how popular a buzzword it has become. Transparency is an attempt to avoid mistaken assumptions, by providing enough information that people will understand your actions and motives.

This post owes a debt of inspiration to The Authenticity Hoax, which I finally hunkered down and read this weekend while cottaging. Highly recommended.

Facebook: calling the identity bluff.

The interesting thing about the current facebook backlash has nothing to do with privacy, and everything to do with identity. The Zuckerberg quote relating the desire to maintain two (or more) distinct personas to a lack of integrity got me thinking about this.

Ignoring, for a moment, the very real risks caused by facebook moving from a system with user control and privacy baked in, to the current, open by default system; Zuckerberg almost, sort of, has a poorly expressed point.

The people who are responding indignantly to their social actions being public by default, are often the same people who have been arguing passionately that such things shouldn’t need to be hidden. If everyone makes decisions or takes actions that aren’t reflective of their best judgement, why are we all living in the online equivalent of a small town - knowing everyone’s dirty laundry, but being afraid to discuss it?

Even if it’s being done specifically because a unified persona is more useful as both a demographic data point, and as a target for ads, facebook is one of the few companies that can actually call the massive bluff attached to this argument.

With 400 million users, clinging to old social norms regarding public shaming and shunning for common actions is an issue of mutually assured destruction.

I’m far from sure how it will play out, but I think it’s slightly hypocritical to intimate facebook is declaring war on privacy. Facebook, whether or not it is a business decision, is potenially forcing the social shift the internet has been begging for since social media became a buzzword.

The way we deal with watching and judging a person might actually have to change, without the half-joke of waiting for the boomers to die actually coming to pass.

Reputation Management in a Transparent Age

Tiger Woods damaged his career by cheating on his wife to an alarming degree.

Tiger Woods damaged his career by building a personal brand he couldn’t support.

Both of these statements are true, but I’d say there is a hell of a lot more to think about in regards to the second, especially given the changes to reputation that our panoptic society is going to go through.

The short version is: be awesome, not perfect.

Tiger built a brand based on not only being the most dominant player in the history of sport, but also on being the All American Guy.  Hardworking, polite, humble, family man, always remembering to thank and honour his parents.  Which is fabulous, if it’s you.  But if you aren’t that robotically perfect, it is officially a ticking timebomb to seem too perfect, especially if your life is lived in public.

If you exist in social media, or spend time around people you do, your behaviour will be documented.  Your option is to either live a life in fear of being caught slipping up, or to be frank and honest about who you are, honest about what you do, and accepting of how you will be seen.

But none of this has anything to do with your work, which is what SHOULD matter.

Would Tiger Woods be as well paid if he’d been less seemingly perfect?  Of course not.  But it would have been sustainable, and relatively scandal proof.  And he still would have gotten endorsements, because he’s THE BEST, by a large margin. People argue that part of the problem is the sport in question, and it’s reputation, but I can only think of John McEnroe, a star of a similarly mannered sport who was well known for his outbursts and attitude.  If you insist your reputation and accolades be based on your work, they can only be invalidated by your work.

I’m not arguing it’s okay to be a bad person.  I’m just suggesting that basing your value on something as subjective as your persona, especially one that doesn’t actually reflect your real-life actions, is a dangerous risk, and one that is becoming less likely to pan out.

I’m not going to fight to delete every picture of me drinking a shot at a bar with my friends.  I’m not going to censor myself if I happen to feel a little hungover from time to time.

When it comes to my career, I’d rather people think my work is awesome, than have them think I’m perfect.  I’d rather what I do justify accepting perceived flaws in who I am.

At the end of the day, the truth never really comes crashing down on you.  And in the social media panopticon, every fabrication comes with a countdown clock.

A Consumerist Manifesto; or Why I Love What I Do.

Why wouldn’t we define ourselves by our possessions? They are a reflection of our tastes, our personalities, our vanities, our obsessions and desires.  They are earned through our labour, shared with our aquaintances, shaped and scarred and stained by our experiences.

I won’t apologize for conscious, careful consumerism, they way I would for wasteful, destructive consumption.  Surrounding myself with things that speak to me, that speak for me, is only logical - truth is expressed in subtext, explanations are what we need to spell out word for word, after we’ve already been misunderstood.

It’s the ultimate vanity, the chief arrogance of the artist, that you can only express yourself by that which you create with your own talents, your own two hands.  The belief that expression is somehow limited to those with the skills, the talents, the words and images and passion that they can somehow force into life.

We all craft a life out of experience and object.  Whether the art of your life is the conversations you have, or the actions you take, you create as surely as the painter, the dancer or the writer.

I don’t have a story for you.  I don’t have art in any standard sense.  But this is my art - the idea, the shift, the hope that my words can shape actions.

Don’t lecture me about the destructive nature of buying, or wanting and desiring and associating ourselves with the things that speak to and at time for us.

We attach meaning to things, so people can use things to attach meanings to themselves, so that people can tell their story in a passive meaningful way.  In the real world, not behind the guise of fiction, behind the protective mask of art that saves us from needing to dissect, address and consider ourselves, the ugliness we can bring.

My things tell a story as surely as my words.  And I don’t just write it, I live it, as do you.  As do we all.

Notifications and Pattern Recognition.

I’m obsessed with narrative, so it’s unlikely anyone else thinks this way - but as location based social tools, and mobile status updates become more and more common, my sense of pattern recognition comes into play more and more often.

A simple example: a few weeks ago, a co-worker left the office for lunch.  My phone vibrated twice while he was gone, with push notifications from Foursquare letting me know he checked in at a local indian restaurant, and then a high end local sandwich place.  I wondered if the lineup had been too long at the first restaurant, or if he’d decided to pick up a sandwich because he was still hungry, etc.

It turned out that the sandwich shop sells excellent hot chocolate, something I was not aware of.

This is a silly little example, but thing about the tendency that will comes into play here - the human need to turn incomplete information into some kind of clear picture, something that supports our worldview, despite the lack of certainty inherent in these assumptions.  When we aren’t around, we exist in the digital ephemera, tweets and posts and status updates and notifications.  This collected information is always an incomplete picture, and yet it offers enough that assumptions are made.  The next meaningful step in marketing might not be analysis and interpretation of this information, but instead hijacking the tendency to interpret, and using it to lead people toward assumptions that drive desired behaviour.

Imagine ‘renting’ the presence of a person online.  Not sponsored tweets or posts, but acutally paying someone to ‘drive’ their established profiles, checking in at locations, mentioning behaviours (but not specific brands) and generally establishing the lifestyle and brand associations of potential customers, waiting for them to make the final connection to the product themselves.  Would this work around government rules regarding disclosure?  Would it be feasible for government regulators to prove otherwise?

This sound sinister, but it’s not much more than using game mechanics to drive behaviour (and a slight hint of the hyperreal).  And because it’s based on incomplete intepretation, the argument can be made than anyone influenced is doing it to themselves.  So do we worry about trusting each other, or about trusting ourselves to only identify valid patterns?