Anonymity

So, from the last post (not the comment post) I started thinking. Normally I twitter In this case I don't because well It's a bit longer of a thought or more of thoughts. 

One of the thoughts came about and leads from the first. 

Ghost writing has been around for ages ever since stories were conceived. Take for example one of the more famous ones Mark Twain. His actual name was Samuel Clemmens as I'm sure many of us all know. Somewhere in him he didn't want to go by his given name and instead write by a name put together by using river navigational terms. We're still doing the same thing. Only now we've got a larger vocabulary to use. Other people's names to web items and new things that have been invented since S.C.'s time. 

Has it been in us to loose our identity? Why are we always striving to be some one else and not some one else at the same time? We want to be the best for ourselves and our friends don't we?

At the same time it is comforting to know that as I write this I am not who I appear to be. So I wondered is this the next evolutionary step. For the masses to now have different identities instead of those select few? 

We now have an online presence one we have that we show to our employers and one we show to our friends and then there is one we show to the world yet no one knows who we truly are. Even second life holds personalities that don't truly exist anywhere else. 

All this brings me to the discussion that stemmed from class. If we are trying to keep our lives separated. Why is it that using an alias on twitter is such a bad thing? I understand that there may be some confusion on names especially if you're tracking new people and new things. At the same time though we are who we are and we like to keep parts of our lives separate. Especially a professor who is well versed in using avatar names and aliases should not mind that people use their branded names online and offline choose to do what they please. 

Any input on your thoughts?

Oops

so I was posting on a friend's site a comment and well I just had to add it here. I kinda went a bit overboard. 

speaking of no "I" in intelectual property do you think that has a bit of what influenced the EULA in google's new browser? Seeing as part of it says any content created in that browser belongs to Google.

http://gizmodo.com/5044871/google-chrome-eula-claims-ownership-of-everything-you-create-on-chrome-from-blog-posts-to-emails .

Granted as I was looking for that link google has updated their policy and now they're revising the EULA.

Seems to be an interesting trend to keep an eye on. Is this what we expect to see though a collective mind instead of the individual. More so now that it's the essential part of the ARG that there is a collective as one not as single.

How will this affect the generation that is creating this where it was taught that individuality is a good thing and a collective is a bad thing?

Character Development

So the other day I was posed with an interesting question. Is it possible to create some one out of thin existence with out having it traceable to you. Well, it is doable to a point but there are some technical things that are not avoidable. 

The technical:

your IP address is traceable.

your MAC address is traceable

ultimately unless well trained your habits on how you do things are easy to trace  back to a person (that would be you).

On the other hand if you know where and how some accounts work then it's possible to create someone. Eventually with use this person becomes an entity. How far you take it and meld it to your personality will lead it back to you or keep it separate. 

Well this post is I'm sure not making much sense mainly because I'm really not in the mood to write. I'll post more later I guess.