How accurately do we represent ourselves online?

Social networking is not just a way to keep in touch with people you already know; it's a way to get to know new people. Sometimes this meeting is entirely electronic and sometimes it might mean looking someone up on Facebook who you recently met in real life.

This has consequences as employers and educators look at Internet profiles to learn more about potential employees and students.

Many might argue that their Facebook profile does not accurately represent them and shouldn't be used by a potential employer to judge character or personality.

So how well do these profiles express who we are?

That's the question the research project called "You just get me" asks.

It is a social networking experiment that assesses how similar or different our opinions of our personalities are from strangers viewing a self-generated profile on the Internet.

This is an interesting question. In Crossing Boundaries: Identity Management and Student/Faculty Relationships on the Facebook Georgia Institute of Technology researchers Hewitt and Forte found many students didn't think professors should be on Facebook:

One student noted that the Facebook “can unfairly skew a
professor's perception of a student in a student environment,”
which indicates that she perceives the Facebook as a place that is “owned” by students as a group.

Offhand, I might agree with her. The majority of photos of me on the website were posted by my peers; photos which are usually unflattering and demonstrate a far higher amount of inebriation than is representative of my time in college.

Youjustgetme.com doesn't test for the influence of a community photo album, but it does demonstrate that for the most part, our Internet profiles pretty accurately describe the way we view ourselves.

You must create a profile to view the results or you can view a summary in Joe McCarthy's blog, Gumption.

I may be misrepresenting myself or possess an inaccurate view of my personality, because my profile is receiving evaluations with consistently low accuracy. It would seem people think I am far more organized and conservative than I believe myself to be.

According to the study, it might be because I'm a guy. Women consistently scored higher both in ability to evaluate others' profiles accurately and creating profiles that are evaluated accurately.

Or maybe I just don't want to admit I'm a dirty hippie.

-Robot Crusoe

Wall E non-sequitor

I went to see Wall E with my girlfriend yesterday, and I couldn't help but think that someone at Pixar has been playing Portal; a game included in Valve's Orange Box.

The companion feature, Presto!, revolves around a set of magician's hats that mimic the function of Portal's proprietary "portal gun." Anyone who spent a lot of time playing the game (read: me) probably discovered half of the gags used in the film: throwing an object through a portal to have it hit you when gravity sends it back, using a portal to "catch" a falling player, etc.

I think Portal is one of the most innovative games I've played in a long time and it pleases me to know someone at Pixar probably thinks so too.

-Robot Crusoe

Data Portability

Previously, I discussed the next step in social networking; portable network identities that travel the web. This kind of networking depends on "data portability" and an infrastructure that allows it.

OpenID addresses the problems inherent in current social networking trends online and providing a foundation for data portability.

This video talks about data portability and developing technologies.

The accompanying article addresses hurdles to data portability, namely social sites like Facebook that claim ownership of all information that appears on their websites.

Data portability is the first step in establishing universal network identities. For example, if I logged into Open Social as Robot Crusoe; any website that I interacted with and anyone I interacted with on those websites would know me as Robot Crusoe and all the associated information I provided about myself. My on-line experience would be streamlined and I could take advantage of any networks without the need to create a new identity.

A side-effect of this experience is a degree of social accountability; which I discussed a few posts ago. If I rip someone off as Robot Crusoe on EBay then it would not only negatively impact my reputation there, but potentially other sites where someone might be interested in that information. Griefing someone in one on-line game could mean players in another might ostracise me. I would also be subject to social pressures; with a universal Internet identity comes a reputation that I may attempt to control by censoring the content that I share.

This will undoubtedly raise privacy concerns; Internet users are used to anonymity and may not take to greater social accountability.

I believe it will take an initiative as large as Google's Open Social to break the consolidated social networking paradigm. Whether Facebook will adapt and survive the transition remains to be seen.

-Robot Crusoe

Footprints in Cyberspace

All eyes are on Google as a court order to hand over personal information on its users has many concerned about privacy infringement.

Viacom claims that the data is necessary to the 1 billion dollar copyright infringement case against Youtube (a company owned by Google.)

This begs the question as to why Google was holding on to the data in the first place; which couldn't be compromised via court order if it wasn't stored.

Orin Huirvitz discusses and criticizes Google's privacy policy here.

As we streamline media use and integrate it with social networking; we leave a larger and more precise footprint in cyberspace.

One of the inherent advantages of the Internet; being able to track and quantify everything; becomes an issue of privacy.

Everything we look at and even how long we look at it can be tracked to the second. A company called Tacoda even tracks where your mouse goes on a given website. (If you want to opt-out of their data collection you can choose to do so here.)

User privacy is a big deal; I remember when AOL made user data available to the public...for no reason.

As legislators, judges, and lawyers sort through everything, it is probably worth your time to carefully read the statement of user privacy the next time you sign up for anything online.

-Robot Crusoe

The expanding metaverse: wild west of the future

One thing many utopiac visions of a technological singularity fail to consider are the mitigating social, ethical, cultural, and economic factors that influence the development of technology.

This article by Jamais Casco illustrates my point. I'm sure that two decades ago futurists pontificating about the glorious democratization of information on the Internet didn't anticipate spam e-mail. This is not to say the benefits of the Internet are nullified by spam, but it demonstrates the practical and unexpected ramifications of new technology.

Currently, there is very little accountability on the Internet. Almost every action I take is anonymous and largely unfiltered. There are measures in place to prevent cybercrime, but it goes largely unreported and unchecked.

It is interesting to consider social behavior on the Internet within the context of anonymity and the moral vacuum it can create. I am reminded of Plato's Republic where Glaucon proposes a character, Gyges, who becomes corrupt when he discovers a ring that makes him invisible. Plato spends a good deal of his work proving that an unjust man is unhappy even if there is no social pressure for him to be unhappy with his injustice (and the inverse.)

The Internet truly provides an opportunity to be anonymous and invisible, and without social and legal pressures to suppress "amoral" tendencies. The result is very nearly the Gyges hyptohesis incarnate.

One only has to look at the anonymous comments on a political blog to see that people are far less concerned with decorum or even harassment via the anonymous medium of the Internet. I should note that I am considering Internet "handles" to be anonymous identities as there is virtually no verification process for any self-reported information.

As the Internet begins to merge with the physical world, the so-called "metaverse," I believe greater accountability will be necessary and inevitable.

Actions on the Internet already have real world ramifications, but they aren't usually directly physical. As soon as people can be physically affected by actions on the Internet; your car windshield being hacked to display ads for example, accountability will follow Adam Smith's invisible hand.

Even as people become more immersed in digital networks and social contracts develop to promote trust in those networks; the information superhighway is still a little more Mad Max than Family Vacation.

Oh, and if you don't believe that hacking your windshield is possible; check out this humorous article about advertising in the future.

-Robot Crusoe

Redefining social Internet networks

Facebook and Myspace might be growing at an incredible rate, but I believe they represent a very early manifestation of the future for on-line social networking.

One limitation of most social networks, like Facebook, is that they only exist on Facebook. That is to say, if I want to do any social networking, I have to leave whatever website I'm currently viewing, and log into the Facebook server, or at least open a new tab or browser window.

This is counter-intuitive to the natural social experience where we interact while engaging in other behavior, be it work or entertainment.

Google is already addressing this aspect of social networking with OpenSocial. By integrating social networking into regular navigation, people can connect and share information via common interests and "web proximity", just like people might meet and socialize in real life when engaging in common-interest activity.

I think the next step is to integrate web navigation and networking with physical proximity. Imagine portable Google-type maps that know where you are, tell you how to get where you want, what you can buy or do there, and if any of your friends or people you might want to meet are there too. Much of this already exists for products like the Iphone, but it isn't fully integrated into a single easy to use navigation function.

I'm imagining navigating Internet "geography" concurrently with physical geography. My wireless device accesses and presents information regarding things around my physical location; menus, traffic reports, breaking news, retail, friends, etc.

Some incipient "proxemic" and mobile networking technology:

"Bluedating" services like Serendipity.
Nintendo DS wifi gaming.
The iPhone 3G's maps with GPS.
Twitter

-Robot Crusoe

Note: I admit I'm still playing catch-up with some of this technology; now that I'm keeping this blog, I try to stay abreast of the latest and greatest things going on in mass communication; but there's always stuff I don't know. Don't hesitate to call attention to anything that you think is relevant.

Free Broadband internet

Reuters reports that the FCC wants to auction a section of wireless airwaves for a buyer to provided free wireless broadband to Americans. Conditions would include coverage for at least half of the U.S. in four years and a filter to prevent access to pornographic content.

If successful, free wireless broadband would have far reaching social implications. Not only would a greater degree of the population have access to the Internet, but access anywhere.

This consistent wireless coverage would provide an infrastructure for all sorts of network devices, not the least of which would be portable wifi phones. If reliable, consumers could forgo expensive cell service and access the Internet and telephone service anywhere for free.

I can imagine phone companies won't just roll over and take it, as they certainly haven't taken domestic VoiP services competition lying down. One hopes that network neutrality will prevail and consumers will have access to the best and cheapest service.

Universal wireless Internet connectivity is the future of the Internet's evolution and a necessary step towards a truly hyper-connected society. As barriers to information access come down, more and more people will turn to the Internet as a resource for information sharing.

Not only does this lead to further democratization of information, but a reliance on the technology for more and more intra and interpersonal activities.

If we cannot fathom living without our Internet and cell phones, does that already make us transhuman?

-Robot Crusoe

FOOTNOTE: Here's the FCC's proposal