and painful moments, the things you have learned, the mistakes you have made and the victories. Like so many things in life, we pay attention to things of value only after they are threatened. It is only after a more direct encounter with online identity infiltration, fortunately with a successful resolution, that I see this issue in a new light.
keywords? Some businesses work hard to improve their meta-iden-tities, but in the great leveling ground of the Web, individuals may sooner or later want to consider these issues for themselves. In a media-saturated culture, it seems like the word “brand” is far more fitting than “identity.” This is true for celebrities, but in a world of Web-enabled micro-celebrity, will brand attributes become a greater concern than character traits for some people?
Perhaps one analogy to help in thinking about our online identities is open source software development. It has unlocked floodgates of creative participation and, for the most part, brings out the best in people. However, there are also a few bad actors who will do a malicious hack of a program for pure sport. Put another way, imagine your online presence as a wiki entry—the “Wiki You.” Perhaps you are the main author, but the content is malleable and only partially controllable. The content of a wiki entry is subject to the vicissitudes of inaccuracies, inconsistencies, agendas, and sometimes zealous partiality or malice.
If safeguarding our strings of numerical identifiers is important, what is the value of managing our online identities—the information, stories, and images that portray us, on the Web? Just as computing power has enabled a massive trade in our numeric identifiers, so will evolving technology make possible the traffic in more personal forms of information, the uses of which we cannot yet fully imagine. The idea of trying to manage a swirling cloud of digital data seems impossible. Perhaps it is. But that
does not mean there’s no chance to put some stakes in the ground for ourselves and others.
People in the user experience field, in one way or another, have been in the thick of it. They have helped create the entrances into the online arena for people who would not have otherwise ventured there. This has enabled them to project themselves on a stage with the capacity for a massive audience. Working in front of a computer can feel like such a personal and intimate experience that it is difficult to remember it is more like a great stage with crowds milling in and out of the auditorium. Like an actor on a stage who can barely see the spectators, our glowing screens show us a limited view of our audience. Some of our view-ers are visible and some are not, many invited but many others not. User experience professionals have empowered people to step onto a vast stage and tell their story, both factual and otherwise, to the world. The audience often has to decipher fact, fiction, or some combination of the two. As we help them ascend the stage, what role can, or should, we play in this unfolding drama—set designer, stagehand, fellow actor, audience member, all of the above?
There is a new opportunity to think about what identity means to ourselves and everyone else. Perhaps a first step is increasing our understanding of the meaning, value, and potential vulner-abilities of our cyber-identities. It is, after all, a hard-won and unique collection of information, experience, and perspective. The life you have lived shaped this collected knowledge and set it apart from any other—the happy
Finally, after a long time in the waiting room, a nurse calls your name. As you walk over to her, you notice another person also approaching. Both announce yourselves to the nurse by the same name. The quizzical look on the nurse’s face soon turns to irritation as you and your counterfeit debate who should get the exam. While that scenario may seem fanciful, in fact there are instances of people who are taking on stolen identities to get medical treatments covered by the legitimate person’s health care plan. This situation points to one consequence of commodify-ing our identities. If the fraudster were dealing with a longtime family doctor, it would be unimaginable to assume a false identity to get medical treatment. However, in a less personalized environment, in which the physician has never before and will likely not see you again, ID theft is all too plausible. In the midst of depersonalizing health care and other services, we are becoming more like numbers and less like individuals. People may be hard to manage; numbers are all too easy to rig.
While the discussion of identity theft is often framed in the
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