{"id":378,"date":"2011-07-17T12:36:06","date_gmt":"2011-07-17T19:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/?p=378"},"modified":"2015-08-16T15:25:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-16T22:25:06","slug":"how-many-identites-does-a-single-person-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/17\/how-many-identites-does-a-single-person-have\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Identities Does a Single Person Have?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This was originally posted on Google+ itself<\/a>. I’m also keeping it here, for easy reference.)<\/p>\n

A friend of mine notes that one of the problems of the current Google+ “real names policy” is that “Google is attempting to deal with (I’m assuming) manufacturing a community of 1-to-1 RL presence-to-online presence” — in particular, he says that while he does have questions about how<\/em> Google is attempting to do this, he also has a lot of respect for the fact that they are trying<\/em> to.<\/p>\n

I’m not so sure that I do. Partly because I’m not convinced that there’s any value in creating a community of 1-to-1 real-life presence to online presence.<\/p>\n

That’s partly because I’m not convinced that there’s any such thing<\/em> as a 1-to-1 correspondence between real-life presence and real-life presence<\/strong>. I mean, seriously, are you the same person at work as you are when you’re down at the bar with friends? As when you’re having dinner in a nice restaurant with your lover? As when you’re in bed with him or her?<\/p>\n

The idea of a 1-to-1 correspondence between real life presence and online presence is based on the idea that there’s a 1-to-1 correspondence between identities (personalities) and physical bodies. That idea is wrong.<\/em><\/strong> We all shift identities based on who we’re interacting with and what situation we’re in. That’s part of why we even shift our names based on that:<\/p>\n