NegotiatingMultiple

ENTITIES

on the SocialWeb

ID

Many voices, one stream

Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D @Corinnew

presenting a character to an

audience- Erwin Goffman

actorsWe are

??

????

?

How are we supposed to know we will be performing for?who

In Goffman’s terms, we can now perform different plays to different audiences at the same time.

Are we performing for a or for an audience of search engines?

human audience

Our online identities are fragmented

Our online identities are fragmented

What if an audience could piece all the fragments back

together?

What if an audience could piece all the fragments back

together?

Google Portrait of Marc L.

- MIT, Personas Project

Engines see identity aggregatesWe see identity fragments

- MIT, Personas Project

Engines see identity aggregatesWe see identity fragments

RANDINGPersonal

& strategic self-presentation

RANDINGPersonal

& strategic self-presentation

Personal Brand

Jobs refused to be branded. He was not Apple. He was not Next, or Pixar. He was a unique self, full of contradictions and that’s what humanized him.

Being too concerned with branding restricts the self

The problem is that we think of a brand in the classical way of thinking of the cosmos: it’s either this or that. It can’t be both. It’s all about getting the positioning right.

We used to think of a particle the same way: it is either here or there. It can’t be both places at once. It can only have one position. Or can it? Quantum mechanics suggests it can.

According to the Heisenberg principle, once we observe the particle and try to measure it, we disturb the way it behaves. This in turn changes what we see. Maybe that’s the problem with online identity. If you look in one place you see one aspect of a person’s identity. If you look in another place you find another aspect. What you’re looking for, where you’re looking for it and the instruments you use to do so will determine what you see.

The Internet literally chops our identities into packets and hurls us piecemeal around the globe. Our digital identities, reduced to subatomic particles or electrons, fly at near light speed through semiconductors, wires, and cables strung across the ocean floor. We mount to the air as waves from satellites, cell phone towers, and wi-fi hotspots. We shoot out as streams of photons from our screens, as waves of sound from our speakers, and glide across the surface of our tablets with the brush of a finger.

Crab Nebula

Maybe the idea of the multiverse with its multiplicity of possible universes could somehow inform our concept of identity

Crab Nebula

Maybe the idea of the multiverse with its multiplicity of possible universes could somehow inform our concept of identity

Map of the Internet

Our very identities have become the indeterminate particles and waves of quantum theory. We do in essence exist in millions of places at once, being observed by a million others who interpret us in a myriad different ways. The Internet defies position, embraces fluidity, and fosters multiphrenia.

CREDITSCorinne Weisgerber, Ph.D.Associate Prof. of Communication

St. Edward’s UniversityTwitter: @corinnew