Update: Tuesday 11th - Jeneane's writings on a related, similarish subject.
AKMA posted a great piece the other day about online and real world identity and the complex issues therein. It is a complex issue but a also very interesting one. I like many others, I suspect, maintain an online idenity which is pretty close to the real me. But in my case there's nothing (or very little) about my job or who I work for. What you get on here is my out of office hours identity, the identity I use when I'm with my family or friends. My other identity is the one which is printed on my business cards, the details of which I control to the extent that it has only marginally seeped onto this page and even then only as much I've allowed it to. There's a self-patrolling, Berlin Wall effect going on here. When I started this thing a couple of years ago it was at a time when our company had just been taken over by a doomed dotcom whose entire philosophy and business plan was in a word, wank, in my opinion. Of course, had I said so publicly then I may well have been fired, or at least that's what I decided and therefore the orginal site I put up in 2000 was a comedy spoof rather than direct and accountable criticism. My friends were in no doubt about my real feelings, my work colleagues not.
Conversely not many people I work with, probably a maximum of two or three, know about this weblog and therefore they could know something of my non-work identity. I suppose that's either because I don't feel the need to share my personal life details with people I work with or there's a risk that something I say on here is taken out of context and pops up as an agenda item all of it's own at the next board meeting.
So, this is not an unfettered free-for-all bottom line according to Gary Turner weblog and since I've decided to be open about my personal identity and I am therefore accountable for what I say here, I choose to censor what I say. Some people may be critical of that.
Perhaps had I chosen to keep a blog about "Making great strawberry jam ", "Modern Cheeses of switzerland - An interactive guide" or "Cardboard Review" then I could freely lock'n'load with all guns blazing. However, my blog and my job share some (not much, but enough) overlap and that makes a difference, for me anyway. In my simple mind I see a linear scale of identity on the web, starting with complete anonymity with a completely untraceable email address, site and name at one end of the scale, through to real name but censored output and ending up at people who use their real name and deliver full-fat, hi-octane, tell-it-like-it-is output, whether controversial or dangerous or not.
I guess it's too easy to confuse the issues of privacy and identity but I wonder how many people online fully open the kimono?
AKMA posted a great piece the other day about online and real world identity and the complex issues therein. It is a complex issue but a also very interesting one. I like many others, I suspect, maintain an online idenity which is pretty close to the real me. But in my case there's nothing (or very little) about my job or who I work for. What you get on here is my out of office hours identity, the identity I use when I'm with my family or friends. My other identity is the one which is printed on my business cards, the details of which I control to the extent that it has only marginally seeped onto this page and even then only as much I've allowed it to. There's a self-patrolling, Berlin Wall effect going on here. When I started this thing a couple of years ago it was at a time when our company had just been taken over by a doomed dotcom whose entire philosophy and business plan was in a word, wank, in my opinion. Of course, had I said so publicly then I may well have been fired, or at least that's what I decided and therefore the orginal site I put up in 2000 was a comedy spoof rather than direct and accountable criticism. My friends were in no doubt about my real feelings, my work colleagues not.
Conversely not many people I work with, probably a maximum of two or three, know about this weblog and therefore they could know something of my non-work identity. I suppose that's either because I don't feel the need to share my personal life details with people I work with or there's a risk that something I say on here is taken out of context and pops up as an agenda item all of it's own at the next board meeting.
So, this is not an unfettered free-for-all bottom line according to Gary Turner weblog and since I've decided to be open about my personal identity and I am therefore accountable for what I say here, I choose to censor what I say. Some people may be critical of that.
Perhaps had I chosen to keep a blog about "Making great strawberry jam ", "Modern Cheeses of switzerland - An interactive guide" or "Cardboard Review" then I could freely lock'n'load with all guns blazing. However, my blog and my job share some (not much, but enough) overlap and that makes a difference, for me anyway. In my simple mind I see a linear scale of identity on the web, starting with complete anonymity with a completely untraceable email address, site and name at one end of the scale, through to real name but censored output and ending up at people who use their real name and deliver full-fat, hi-octane, tell-it-like-it-is output, whether controversial or dangerous or not.
I guess it's too easy to confuse the issues of privacy and identity but I wonder how many people online fully open the kimono?