Your Identity is Plural. #etmooc #ReflectivePractice

7 words · 1 min read by Ben Wilkoff

Your Identity is Plural. #etmooc #ReflectivePractice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym-luruu6kY&feature=autoshare
etmoocreflectivepractice

6 comments from the original blog. Comments are closed now; the conversation moved to Bluesky.

  1. Daniel Estrada

    // Left a comment on my share of your video, thought I’d leave it here too. Good work! =)

    Our identities are plural, but our contexts are also plural, and the two are deeply interdependent. I act one way around my family partly because I am around my family; I act another around the workplace when my environment has shifted. When I speak more softly in a library, it is the library’s imposition that accounts for the change in my behavior: I can’t be loud here. 

    For this reason, it is often the case that identity management is simply a matter of context management  Properly managing a context allows one to develop and maintain a proper, authentic identity. Similarly, contexts that are difficult or impossible to manage will cultivate difficult or impossible individuals. These virtues or vices tend to leak out to other contexts, because our identities and contexts are not only plural, they are also densely layered. 

    Social networks as an identity-context are often very simple and easy to manage, partly because they dramatically reduce the expressive capacity of individuals (‘liking’ as a one dimensional analysis of one’s emotional investment, for instance), and partly because they are insensitive to the larger contexts in which its users travel. Our “online identities” are just the trails left as we interact with these environments; we are identified by our prior engagements. 

    If managing identities is a matter of managing contexts, then authentic identities require contexts that encourage authentic expression. More importantly, it requires contexts that are sensitive to other contexts, and environments that can engage with other environments, so that they can appreciate the depth of layers from which our identities are built. 

  2. Daniel Estrada

    // Left a comment on my share of your video, thought I’d leave it here too. Good work! =)

    Our identities are plural, but our contexts are also plural, and the two are deeply interdependent. I act one way around my family partly because I am around my family; I act another around the workplace when my environment has shifted. When I speak more softly in a library, it is the library’s imposition that accounts for the change in my behavior: I can’t be loud here. 

    For this reason, it is often the case that identity management is simply a matter of context management  Properly managing a context allows one to develop and maintain a proper, authentic identity. Similarly, contexts that are difficult or impossible to manage will cultivate difficult or impossible individuals. These virtues or vices tend to leak out to other contexts, because our identities and contexts are not only plural, they are also densely layered. 

    Social networks as an identity-context are often very simple and easy to manage, partly because they dramatically reduce the expressive capacity of individuals (‘liking’ as a one dimensional analysis of one’s emotional investment, for instance), and partly because they are insensitive to the larger contexts in which its users travel. Our “online identities” are just the trails left as we interact with these environments; we are identified by our prior engagements. 

    If managing identities is a matter of managing contexts, then authentic identities require contexts that encourage authentic expression. More importantly, it requires contexts that are sensitive to other contexts, and environments that can engage with other environments, so that they can appreciate the depth of layers from which our identities are built. 

  3. Daniel Estrada

    // Left a comment on my share of your video, thought I’d leave it here too. Good work! =)

    Our identities are plural, but our contexts are also plural, and the two are deeply interdependent. I act one way around my family partly because I am around my family; I act another around the workplace when my environment has shifted. When I speak more softly in a library, it is the library’s imposition that accounts for the change in my behavior: I can’t be loud here. 

    For this reason, it is often the case that identity management is simply a matter of context management  Properly managing a context allows one to develop and maintain a proper, authentic identity. Similarly, contexts that are difficult or impossible to manage will cultivate difficult or impossible individuals. These virtues or vices tend to leak out to other contexts, because our identities and contexts are not only plural, they are also densely layered. 

    Social networks as an identity-context are often very simple and easy to manage, partly because they dramatically reduce the expressive capacity of individuals (‘liking’ as a one dimensional analysis of one’s emotional investment, for instance), and partly because they are insensitive to the larger contexts in which its users travel. Our “online identities” are just the trails left as we interact with these environments; we are identified by our prior engagements. 

    If managing identities is a matter of managing contexts, then authentic identities require contexts that encourage authentic expression. More importantly, it requires contexts that are sensitive to other contexts, and environments that can engage with other environments, so that they can appreciate the depth of layers from which our identities are built. 

  4. Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

    Awesome discussion question Ben. Unfortunately the Google Plus interface is one that requires that any discussion be split (fractured) – a very poor Social design – and I had to choose between commenting at length here or beginning my own thought stream…great topic…in short I believe there is a natural fragmentation of identity that occurs via the virtual, and that this makes up its engine…but the harmony of these tensions may be discoverable at the level of interface and tech, at least in part: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108802069053908824216/posts/Lpgw4xxST9N

  5. Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

    Awesome discussion question Ben. Unfortunately the Google Plus interface is one that requires that any discussion be split (fractured) – a very poor Social design – and I had to choose between commenting at length here or beginning my own thought stream…great topic…in short I believe there is a natural fragmentation of identity that occurs via the virtual, and that this makes up its engine…but the harmony of these tensions may be discoverable at the level of interface and tech, at least in part: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108802069053908824216/posts/Lpgw4xxST9N

  6. Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

    Awesome discussion question Ben. Unfortunately the Google Plus interface is one that requires that any discussion be split (fractured) – a very poor Social design – and I had to choose between commenting at length here or beginning my own thought stream…great topic…in short I believe there is a natural fragmentation of identity that occurs via the virtual, and that this makes up its engine…but the harmony of these tensions may be discoverable at the level of interface and tech, at least in part: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108802069053908824216/posts/Lpgw4xxST9N

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