http://disqus.com/by/paviglok/enMon, 26 Jan 2009 04:15:10 -0000http://phasinggrace.blogspot.com/2009/01/do-you-manage-your-virtual-identity.html#comment-5546939<p>The only way to act online with any ethical integrity is to act as if there was a recognized reputation economy. Online identity is the only thing we have. It doesn't need to be a perfect mirror of our offline selves, but needs to be consistent enough to be trustworthy.</p><p>"Personal branding" and other such market speak stuff really get's my goat though. Those kind of labels come from folk who believe so heavily in intellectual property that they can't see where it's appropriate to stop applying it. Everyday people shouldn't need to become lawyers in order to establish their trustworthiness or to trust each other - that's domain confusion.</p><p>I have no problem with the reality crossover - there are folk who have known me as Pav for twenty years now, and call me by that name rather than my legal name. Your online identity is a symbol of yourself and inherits the properties you allow others to ascribe to it. For those that trust your online identity, the physicality of it, be it male, female or a fig tree, matters less than consistency and trust. </p>Pavig LokMon, 26 Jan 2009 04:15:10 -0000