Made out of people

More on identity

One important reason for maintaining identity is beacuse it affects your behavior. Paul Resnick's work shows that reputation really makes a financial difference. People can remember how you've acted, and respond accordingly. Indeed, as a rational actor, I would expect that, in a space where no person is anonymous, where every word is logged and saved, there would be nothing but exemplary behavior.

This may be true of some email (some!), but certainly not other media. There we were, hanging out in the much-discussed, and maligned, backchannel. I'm sitting next to Joi Ito, who is sitting next to Clay Shirky. In public, we are polite, well-mannered. I'm looking for a job, possibly from one of Joi's connections.

In other words, this is a poor place to act up. And you woulnd't expect it.

The IRC is there, and we've announced that it will be logged. What ends up winning is, perhaps, the historical use of IRC--the puckish jokes that come out of it, the meaningless noise, the too-honest confessions.

"Joi Ito 0wnz0rs this channel!"

The text would scroll away, into oblivion, and disappear. Out of sight, out of mind.

Turkle suggests that even if we know that there's ways we should behave, we often don't. We should behave with email like it's written on a postcard. We should act like we're at a conference when we log into a conference IRC, but we don't. The medium is seductive; it gives us its rules to follow; and we follow them, far more seductively than we might have had we said the words aloud. At this conference, one organizer popped into the backchannel to write,

thats why I"m here... bit bored

I suppose this is Life On the Screen (see the last post) backfiring entirely. Here we have a medium that screams, "use me for entertainment! enjoy yourself! play pretend!" and, not-so-secretly, is recording everything. The conventions and social affordances of the space are deeply at odds with how the space will be used over time.

Indeed, I was not the only one startled to see bits of the back-channel on screen during the closing talk. Hey! Where did that come from?

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-- Omar Khayyam