Download - How WE Create I
How WE create I
H+ Summit * June 2010Heather Schlegel * heathervescent
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My Interest
• We don’t pro-actively create identities• Structures encourage behaviors• Exploration of my personal brand
June 2010 | Humanity Plus
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The Mass Age
• Marshall McLuhan• Douglas Hofstadter• Jaron Lanier• NY Times
June 2010 | Humanity Plus
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How I think about this
• The way we create, experience and respond to technology
• Value-sets: And the underlying values encoded in a system
June 2010 | Humanity PlusPhoto Credit: Machine Project
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Who are you?
Always the same person?
June 2010 | Humanity Plus
I’m not.
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Fragmented (Online) Identities
• Anonymity• Pseudonyms
• When your Identity takes on a life of it’s own?– Success as stagnation– Pigeon-holed– Strange Loops: Living in another’s mind
June 2010 | Humanity PlusPhoto Credit: Viss
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Extending our Identities
• Identify Externally– Brands, Cars, Devices, Objects– Groups: Institutions, Communities, Movements– Music
• Multiple Identities– Private– Anonymous– Alternates: Avatars, Game Role-playing
• Physical modifications – Plastic surgery– Tattooing, Beauty enhancements
• Cognitive enhancers– Attention, focus, “energy”– Research, Training and Drugs
June 2010 | Humanity PlusPhoto Credit: Brazil
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The Doors of Expression
• Second Life• Gaming Worlds• Blogging, Twitter & MySpace• Personal Brands• Facebook ID Lockdown• ID Theft: Single White Female
June 2010 | Humanity Plus
June 2010 | Humanity PlusPhoto Credit: Evonne Amoration
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Do we get lost? (I get lost)
• Avatars: Embodiment = Immersion• Caught in streams of influence• The Audience Effect• Participation & Motivation• Privacy
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11June 2010 | Humanity PlusPhoto Credit: Evonne Amoration
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Self-Value
• What do we end up valuing?• What types of identities are valued?• How does one value self?
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?
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Ownership of our Souls
• Who owns your identity?– Projected– Perception– Remembered
• Which parts are (truly) ours?• Betrayal
“I don’t even see you, I see the mental image of you in my mind.”
“I have conversations with the person you are in my mind.”
June 2010 | Humanity PlusPhoto Credit: Evonne Amoration
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The Truth is Easier
• Real time life tracking & Public Diaries– Blogging (& Life Streaming)– Twitter – Flickr
• Physically – 23 & me– Zeo
• Collective History
June 2010 | Humanity Plus
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And the point…
• Identity is not created in a vacuum• Iterative, Evolves• The medium is the mæssage is the
distraction.• In the end, I may create WE
June 2010 | Humanity Plus
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Finally: Who are you?
I – I hardly know, sir,
just at present – at least
I know who I was when
I got up this morning,
but I think I must have
been changed several
times since then.- Lewis Carroll m
June 2010 | Humanity PlusPhoto Credit: Jeff Christiansen
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Thank You
Heather Schlegel
aka heathervescent, The Purple Tornado
www.heathervescent.com
June 2010 | Humanity Plus
