RDVP's web site has an internal collaboration space for fellows. When we started to use it, one of the most burning issues around it was privacy. People felt uneasy to enter blogs and messages until they understood where the line went between public and private (read only by fellows).

Recently, Erik Sundelöf invited me to use an experimental social software and asked me for feedback about it. I think it is great tool. But I noticed that I was not able to give any feedback until I found benefits I would get from this software. First, I had to understand how this internet platform would support my relationships and my life.

While reading Jose Arocha’s comment on my earlier blog entry it occurred to me, what might be the common element in all the cases where we have contradictory feelings about using World Wide Web: we are struggling with issues around identity. I liked the metaphor of hats that Jose used. He wrote that using modern communication technologies we “plug and unplug and plug again our identities for every condition of our daily routine” and called it „ a (different) identity for every hat”.

These are the three keywords come to mind:

Communication
We communicate our thoughts through language and words. Most of us need a dialogue to clarify what we think. This dialogue allows us to establish our core identity. Each of us has many facets of our personality and we want to use them to talk to different people. Modern communication technologies enable us to have very intensive dialogs in many more different contexts then ever before.  

Identity
Virtual communication on a broad scale gives us a chance to express our core identity in different ways by establishing multiple identities for different audiences. We can literally be anyone or anything. We can even build up a virtual identity of an imaginary person. Traditionally, people used to wear a set of hats for family, friends and boss.  Today, we can have a shelf full of many more different hats.  Every time we log into a communication space of a new community, we put on a new hat.

At the same time, every Internet text entry has the potential to remove a piece of the author’s anonymity. What happens if our distinct identities become mixed in cyber space? Our message that we have addressed to one particular community might arrive in a totally wrong context. My “financial identity” would be in danger, if my online bank codes are not protected. My “professional identity” would be damaged, if a frivolous joke between colleagues plops down in my client’s e-mail box.  If I published my private blog on the front page of RDVP, it would not contribute to corporate identity of the program.

Privacy
In the virtual world, where a person has a chance to live innumerable roles, the term “privacy” has acquired a new meaning. Privacy does not any more just mean distinguishing one’s private space from a space that is accessible for everybody. The term Privacy now draws parting lines between the different identities that a person maintains in the cyber space.  One can simultaneously be online in his bank account, internet dating site and community collaboration site, but these three identities are separated with scrupulous accuracy. In the context of communication I would define “privacy” as a set of criteria that identify and protect a person’s specific identity.

All in all, I feel excited about the long shelf of hats of my identities. Isn’t this the charm of extensive virtual communication? At the same time it seems somewhat controversial that while technology empowers and diversifies our identity, we need more and more privacy to maintain the right hat for the right occasion.