Rethinking my Personal Identity Online (PIO)

Posted on by

I have a confession to make: I have never tweeted. There you have it. Shocking, I know. I’m concerned enough about this to have gone and got myself a Twitter account the other day. Within hours two other users were “following” me. This despite the fact that I had never tweeted (and still haven’t). I wondered what they were expecting, with no history of tweets to judge that following me would be worth their while. I suppose my name, or more likely my email address, was sufficient within Twitter to attract them to my empty account (yes, I know them both outside of twitterdom). But that didn’t lessen my communications anxiety. What would it be worthwhile me saying (or, rather, tweeting)? Mark that. Before I have input a single 140-character utterance, I am thinking about the wider ramifications/implications/considerations of what I might place in the infosphere.

Recently, on an email list to which I subscribe I got notice of a call for papers for a special issue of the journal Minds and Machines (I haven’t bothered with a link because it is not an open access journal). The issue would be on the construction of Personal Identities Online (PIO). It caught my eye because some years ago this was a subject that concerned me somewhat. Seems like a long time ago now, but I remember struggling with the possible implications of fully embracing openness, which at the time meant mostly free and open source software to me. I concluded that the way to live openly would be to avoid a radical disjunct between my online identity and, for want of a better term, my “real” identity. As much as possible I wanted them to be seamless. That is the reason the URL for this blog has my real name in it. If I join an online community, or an open source community, again, I tend to use my real name. If I put a comment on your blog or elsewhere, I won’t hide the fact that it was me. I’m not naive; I know that some individuals have exceedingly good reasons for obfuscating their online identities. But I wasn’t in that situation and I wanted to take up the challenge of living in the open.

For the past month I have been helping a friend build an online presence for herself in a new career. At first we talked a lot about her goals. We also talked about what a personal website or blog, or a business website, says about you and how you can influence that impression in small ways. This prompted me to undertake an audit of my own online presence and begin to think through what I was saying with it. On which, more anon.

I know that a number of my friends are on Twitter. I know this because I see their tweets appear on my Facebook (FB) page. I had wondered why they were using an external micro-blogging site in order to post FB updates. Later I learned that through yet another tool you could post to numerous online communities at the same time, for example to FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn. (TweetDeck is an example of one of these tools.) Why would I want to do that? Why do they? I suspect I must have fallen behind the times on this.

The good news is that I’m back thinking about such things. As such, I thought an initial post that I am so doing would be a good way to solicit input from others on aspects of their PIO and how they manage same. In a series of posts (you noted the “I” in the title, right?) I want to turn my attention to blogs, rss feeds of various kinds, websites, online communities like FB and LinkedIn, and, of course, Twitter. I may even find something worth tweeting about.

Writing club

Posted on by

For about a year now I have been a participant in the Kitchener Public Library (KPL) Writers’ Collective. I was delighted to discover the collective in the run up to Kitchener’s Word on the Street 2009 event and gladly committed myself to the monthly meetings where members share and discuss each other’s work. The collective isn’t well-publicised, so there isn’t much point in searching for it online. But I assure you that it does in fact exist.

The members of the collective range from beginners to published authors. Most participants seem to have been with the collective since its inception, a small but dedicated group. There are enough members at the moment for 3 groups of up to 8 participants. A group will stay together throughout the year with new members able to join in the autumn. Ideally each member will submit up to 5 pages from a work in progress, a short story or novel, or a set of poems. Discussion is mixed, often impressionistic, sometimes insightful, but always a bit awkward. It’s not exactly what I envisioned, having previously only heard about the writers circles that met in England, but it suffices. What you imagine, perhaps, is a small group of like minded individuals gathering over a glass or wine and a nibble of cheese with light classical music in the background. This collective is a bit more institutional.  Meetings are held in whatever board rooms can be appropriated at various branch libraries. Glaring fluorescent lighting and hard backed chairs keep us focused on the task at hand. There is no wine.

There are good reasons, I take it, for the setting. Disclosure of personal information, even such details as one’s surname, is kept to a minimum. The collective members tend to stay on a first name basis, exchanging their monthly submissions through an intermediary within the KPL. Thus avoiding the need even to exchange email addresses. Yet there is a perhaps unlooked-for benefit of such a design. The critiquing of one’s work remains superficially objective, or at least not personal. There is plenty of scope for learning in such an environment, and little need to take all criticism to heart.

Still, I sometimes wonder what my ideal writing club would be like. It would need a frisson of disagreement, a pinch of daring, a serious attitude to the hard work of craft, maybe softer chairs, and, yes, perhaps a post-meeting glass of wine. But for now I’ll be happy to stick with the KPL Writers’ Collective and see how things go.

BookTech

Posted on by

Recently I have been thinking about eBooks and eReaders – not something to which I gave serious thought in the past. That might be surprising given my predilection for electronic gadgets and books. Two passions which have not found the opportunity to merge in any plausible fashion. However, at a meeting of a book club that I frequent a few of the members were enthusing about their eReaders, a Kobo and a Sony Touch eReader. There are also others on the market, including the much-promoted Kindle from Amazon. One of the book club members had her Kobo with her and passed it around so that we could get a look and feel. I was intrigued.

I have never been convinced by the line that eReaders enable you to carry hundreds of books with you when you travel. Whether on business or pleasure I have never been able to read even half a hundred books while I travel. If I manage one, two at the most, I feel reasonably satisfied. Then there is the pleasure in leaving behind in some distant cottage a novel that some other traveller some day may pick up and enjoy.

So, the portability of mass quantities is not particularly motivating.

Is there any cost argument in favour of eBooks and eReaders? Of course nothing but the ingenuity of man hinders the vast reduplication of digital objects which, in theory, could reduce unit cost of eBooks effectively to zero. In theory, perhaps. In practice the ingenuity of man (dread phrase) seems to have been dedicated to sewing up the DRM on eBooks about as tight as you can sew a stitch. And though the unit cost of production of these digital objects must over time approach zero, I am willing to accept that in the shorter term there are costs that need recovery. Where, then, is the price point – the point at which consumers will click the purchase button – for eBooks? To my surprise the price point is rather high (for others). Not exactly the same as the versions of books transported on organic matter, but not so far distant as to be insignificant. But to be fair, I shouldn’t compare the cost to full price paper books because I am loathe to make such purchases except as gifts. When eBooks are compared against the kind of discounting that Amazon does on a continuous basis or, worse, compared to remaindered texts (for which there seem to be numerous outlets in my region), then the eBook suffers. After all, these would be superfluous purchases for me. My price point for such purchases is very low indeed.

Especially when you consider the further alternative – the library.

The public library, along with socialized healthcare, is, I think, a gauge of civilized society. We are blessed with a fabulous public library within walking distance, the Waterloo Public Library, and an equally impressive public library just down the road in the adjacent city, the Kitchener Public Library. Access to books that can be borrowed free of charge (to the end-user) is more than adequate.

My experience is that libraries are always near the forefront of technological advancement. That impression was confirmed when I discovered that our public libraries also make available eBooks for loan. The Waterloo Public Library, for example, offers some 1655 eBooks, a small but growing collection. Of course these are licensed digital objects. The DRM systems in place are able to limit downloads to a single library patron for a set period similar to the period of loan for paper books. (Set aside how counter-intuitive that seems for a digital object.)

So perhaps a cost argument could be constructed in favour of purchasing an eReader. (I notice that my  ‘cost arguments’ always seem to be hypothetical arguments I might have with my wife, or better self.) For an initial not insubstantial capital investment, I could have access to eBooks at no further cost (to me) on into the future. Isn’t that the way I justified buying a somewhat pricey digital camera a few years ago?

Perhaps. And yet, for me the price point still has not been reached (at least for the eReaders themselves).  I think I will stick with my paper bound volumes of text for the time being. Or wait to be convinced by someone else.

Turning a page

Posted on by

In the spring I did something that I haven’t done before. I bought an Apple computer. It is an iMac (the smaller one) and I confess I find it to be exactly what I hoped it would be. Beautiful, elegant, unobtrusive, simple.

A surprising amount of thinking and research went into that decision. Or rather, a lot of research went in to helping someone else arrive at the best possible decision for his next computer. And having convinced him that the right choice was an iMac, I found I had very little counter-argument when it came to purchasing a new home desktop machine.

My father-in-law turned 80 in April. For more than a year he had been struggling with a home computer that seemed to soak up all of his time, and my time whenever I visited, reclaiming lost files and resolving issues. In short, he was no longer having fun. Of course some people find their fun in constantly tinkering with the innards of their operating system. He is not that sort of person. He had attempted to upgrade a perfectly serviceable XP machine to Vista. That was a mistake. Despite adding extra RAM he was left with an extremely sluggish machine and a mess of documents, pictures and other files shifted to places he knew not where. His computer was now taking up increasing amounts of his time and he was becoming less and less productive. It was time for a change.

He decided that he would buy himself an 80th birthday present – a new computer that would liberate him from the morass his computing had fallen into. He began by exploring new Windows 7 machines and was, for a time, enchanted by the idea of a touch-screen HP desktop. However, before making a purchase he decided to ask my advice (which, regrettably, he had not done prior to his XP to Vista disaster). And so I set about exploring the options.

I decided to concentrate upon his computing experience. What did he most dislike? What did he most enjoy? One of the things he appreciates is elegant, functional design. A well-engineered machine can be in itself a beautiful object. Like a high-end BMW or Audi, a good computer (and operating system) should get out of the way of the experiences you hope to have using it. His computing needs, in effect, were simple: email, some Internet surfing, word processing, a handy collection of photos of his family, one or two solitary games, and possibly some VOIP (probably Skype) to keep in touch with distant family. There are lots of machines that could meet these computing needs. But what would transform his experience? What would, for him, make computing fun again?

I recommended the 21-inch Apple iMac.

He had not even considered a mac until then. He had successfully taught himself to use Windows computers from 3.1 to Vista and didn’t immediately see that he could step away from that paradigm at this point without a huge change cost. When he went to see his local Apple dealer, however, he fell in love with the iMac almost immediately.

And he has been delighted with it ever since.

Somewhat to my surprise I discovered that in convincing him that the iMac was right for his needs I also convinced myself that it was right for me. And I too have been delighted with it ever since we got it. So much so that it seems like it has always been here. Or maybe it is that, because it doesn’t require constant attention, I forget about the device and have simply got on with having fun again. And that seems like a good page to have turned.

In the garden

Posted on by

Here follows photographic evidence of what I have been up to in the garden. Thanks to a delightful spring and early summer this has not required a great deal of effort. It turns out that most plants just grow on their own accord without call for my intervention.

A Guernsey Cream clematis that we planted in the autumn survived the winter and produced its first flower by 23 May. Later it developed four flowers that lasted for some time.

We also had a lovely crop of tulips out front from bulbs we planted the previous autumn.

And here is proof positive that finally we have managed to harvest something from our square-foot garden.

For a much more comprehensive view of our developing garden, you might want to view the following sets of photos on Flickr: