#UOSM2008 – Topic 2: Reflective Summary
During the last two weeks, I have been interacting and discussing with my peeps regarding the topic 2 of the online course “Working and living on the web”. Supported by founded arguments, this topic reveals both the advantages and disadvantages of having one identity in the online word.
At first, I thought this subject is supposed to have a mere dispute regarding the both sides. The two positions seems to appear as having a simple solution, but after a deeper journey, strewn with reading and videos, I found that my intuition was pointing in the wrong direction. Initially, I was feeling that using just one identity thought the web environment, could be the best solution for the privacy problem. At that time, being a big fun of Faceebok, especially of the movie ‘Social Network’, I believed in the words of its creator. I thought that being an anonymous person on the internet, represents a ‘lack of integrity’ (as Mark Zuckerberg claimed). Moreover, thanks to the online messaging service offered by Yahoo, my opinion was strongly formatted that it rejected the existence of multiple identities in the online space. This mentality, which from a point could be seen as strange, is a result of allowing the user to have a hidden identity. This uncertainty regarding the person, which is concealed behind a username (or ID, used by Yahoo Messager), created for fun, made me to appreciate a service which identities a user only once.
However, after I read and analysed the materials for this modules, I find my way of thinking as being doubtful. The unique identity is not just giving on a tray our personal information to the companies, but the nature of human being is made to have different personas. Goffman metaphorically made me to understand that one person is using different masks everyday, thus it behaves differently. This argument is an important principal for me, because I felt this ideas,being either a student or a . Taking into account the words of Krotoski, A, I can affirm that our traces on the internet should be understood as being a part of our body, a way of expressing us. Leaving them in the online space could cost us more then some adds on some pages, but also, they can affect us in the real life. Equally, articles such as Kim-Mai Cutler, besides the critics for the model of Facebook privacy, it provides important evidences (for instance transparency) which support the idea of one identity.
To sum up, over the two weeks, I have significantly improved my knowledge regarding the privacy on the Internet. This topic made me to understood the importance of having online services which requires just one identity, but in the same way, the benefits of being anonymous, for expressing our personal ego. I believe that the Internet should bring together services which promotes the both ways of privacy. Finally, the user is the ultimate entity who should decide which product it is more useful.
Kim-Mai Cutler (2010) ‘Why Mark Zuckerberg needs to come clean about his views on privacy ?’,VB News, 13 May 2010 [Online]. Available at: http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-privacy/ [Accessed: 27 February 2014].
Krotoski, A. (2012) ‘Online identity: is authenticity or anonymity more important?’,The Guardian, 19 April [Online]. Available at:http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/19/online-identity-authenticity-anonymity [Accessed: 28 February 2014].