The Issues around Personal Websites:

This genre is highlighting some very important issues about self expression and the creation of identity. In particular, issues of identity, privacy, prestige, and personality are being redefined with these new tools. These effects are not just occuring online but throughout the various media used for personal expression.

Identity

The most important issue with personal sites is one of identity. As Sherry Turkle explained in her book, Life on the Screen, everyone is a combination of different personas. There are many sides to ourselves, and we are actually different people to our family, friends, colleagues, co-workers, strangers, etc. You would never tell each of these groups the same story. In real conversation, you would respond to their different interests, your level of comfort, and the context between you. However, on the Internet, building an identity for yourself makes this difficult. This medium, has a flattening affect that we don't have easy ways to counteract. Unless you build separate sites and can control who can get to which one, your site will server everyone equally. This constuction and evolution of identity is probably the most important issue for the coming decade.

In a medium that gives us the ability to disguise issues or gender, age, culture, sexuality, nationality, beliefs, language, etc., it may be more important to go out of our way to express them. Likewise, the representation of the body is an important part of our identity development in realspace--it helps make us more real. The question remains, how important will this be online?

Identity is traditionally defined more from behavior than details or backstory. Who you are is never expressed as powerfully, as completely, or as verifiably in words as in actions. Most personal sites are nothing but backstory at the moment, but the ones that seem most successful are those that are beginning to offer interaction that defines behavior. Some of these do so merely with primitive forms of communication (such as guestbooks) but others are forging ahead with more sophisticated forms.

Some artists are going as far as creating digital persona that are self-contained characters existing only online. One such persona is the_living who interacts with others mainly over CUSeeMe. She is the creation of Debra Solomon but lives online whether she is netcasting from underwater in a pool, from an apartment in Amsterdam, or traveling around the world. Her website is a complete separation from her real identity represented by another website.

Sometimes the very URL helps identify who you are and what you're interested in. Aside from the prestige associated with some URLs, there are times when the URL you choose is based on what your interests are or what defines you. This is the case at GeoCities, an online suburbia of neighborhoods where people set-up house (create their websites) in neighborhoods based on topics from philosophy to UFOs to sexuality.

 

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