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[Similar stories shared under ‘excommunicated’ on the “Friendster Sucks” Tribe at Tribe.net]

Oh, goodie! Earlier this month, “Weblogs, Inc.” created a blog on “Software and Technology for Group Interaction” (a.k.a. social software). They appear to be keeping completely up-to-date on the business elements behind this phenomenon (and folks seem to be checking their facts).

[This is *great* news for me and for any of the readers of this blog, as i prefer to deal with the more research-y issues anyhow. Check there for all industry gossip, press bits and whatnot and i’ll focus far more on the challenges in this space, particularly around the “social” part of the phrase.]

[From Many-to-Many]

At FooCamp, i realized that many people have been misreading my pleas for contextualization of identity presentation. I have regularly argued that people facet their identity and present different aspects given the context. Although i’ve argued against the multiple personality approach that emerged in the 1980s’ cyberculture research, my statements keep getting re-read as promoting multiple personas.

The easiest way to talk about how people facet their identity is by talking about dualisms. Unfortunately, this segmentation creates confusion. It also creates the assumption that people are always hiding one aspect of their identity from groups of people. Additionally, this approach seems to indicate that only a small fraction of the population reads context into their identity presentation.

In fact, we all read context into our presentation of self. The vocabulary choices you make are dependent on the audience you are speaking with. You speak to your child differently than you speak to your lover; you use different vocabulary when talking to someone with shared expertise than you do to someone whose doesn’t know the terms common in your field. Depending on shared history, you provide a different level of background information. Depending on perceived shared interests, you magnify your favorite interests differently. We constantly alter what we are presenting depending on to whom and in what context. This is not about deception; this is about contextualization.

When i speak of faceting one’s identity, i am not speaking of the ability to explicitly segment a manageable number of identity components; i’m talking about the ability to constantly adjust what is being presented, to whom, and in what context. Without this ability, people rely on the least common denominator. (This is why the majority of personal webpages out there read like a resume – the aspect of one’s identity that one is most readily comfortable sharing with everyone.)

From a suicide note: “I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.” The guy jumped.

There’s something utterly intriguing about leaving one’s fate to the probability of society outperforming its stereotype.

It’s been a long time since i had the opportunity to hang out with a large collection of geeks. I used to love the ridiculous shit that emerged in hacker culture. This weekend, i went and played at FooCamp – Tim O’Reilly’s collection of geeks. It was such silly fun (think water-bottle rockets).

Basically, it was an opportunity for geeks to gather and share thoughts and ideas. There was a fire on Friday nite where we stood drinking and talking, playing with good geek toys (like the Seque and this cute little robot). On Saturday, groups of folk met to discuss different topics of interest. Of course, i went to the discussion on social software. I can’t say anything was (re)solved, but it was really fascinating for me to hear the geek perspective on social issues. ::sigh:: Such a disconnect between average folks and geeks, which is utterly frustrating.

One great thing came out of that meeting – i got to meet Scott McCloud. My dear friend Henry adores Scott so i was quite delighted to get to sit down and talk with him for a few hours. He is such a lovable guy and reminds me of Henry in that he’s brilliant, but quiet, geeky, but fascinated by social culture.

Unfortunately, i had to leave after only a day (to go to Ubicomp), but i’m still quite delighted that i got to spend a day amidst the geek culture that framed my collegiate years.