tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-09-15:446148shadowsparopen sky / shooting star / nothing else but who we areshadowspar2011-08-15T20:24:04Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2009-09-15:446148:51285Identity, contact info, business cards, online vs offline ppl2011-08-15T20:21:05Z2011-08-15T20:24:04ZPerfume - 微かなカオリcontemplativepublic9<p>
Noticed a conversation on twitter right now where two acquaintances of
mine were talking about exchanging business cards at conferences, both
of the dead-tree and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vCard">vcf</a>
varieties. It came as rather a surprise to me that people
at tech conferences are still exchanging business cards.
<em>Who really does that any more?</em>
</p>
<p>
When I meet
someone interesting in the tech scene for the first time, we
essentially exchange URLs, because the vast majority of us seem to
have some flavour of website/blog/profile/activity stream that links
to most of the other personal information we care to publish.
People I'm meeting in a "strictly professional" context get
<a href="http://twitter.com/shadowspar">my twitter account</a>.
From there they can find
<a href="http://rickscott.dreamwidth.org">my "professional" blog</a>,
which directly or indirectly links to
<a href="http://github.com/rickscott">GitHub</a>,
<a href="http://shadowspar.dyndns.org/rick/about/rscott-resume.pdf">my résumé</a>,
a general idea of where I live (city & country) and my mobile #.
Folks I'm more comfortable with probably get a link to this DW account,
from whence they can also find
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/philosophergeek/">flickr</a>,
<a href="http://www.last.fm/user/shadowspar/">last.fm</a>,
and so forth. Details like home phone number and exact physical address
get given out on an as-needed basis.
</p>
<p>
How exactly does this tie in with how we see our own identity?
I can't help but wonder if there's some kind of
online-persona/offline-persona spectrum going on here,
and what kind of identifiers we give people has to do with where we
feel we mainly reside. There's a tie-in with wallet names and
online handles here too. I think "shadowspar" is a rather puerile
and somewhat meaningless handle, but back when I picked it
(1999-2000-ish) it was essentially unique. If I tell someone that
my nick is "shadowspar", and they feed that into a search engine,
pages referencing me are largely what come out.
</p>
<p>
Dunno where I'm going with all this, it's just...business cards
(at least the "traditional" variety, for some value of "traditional")
seem to be a link to an offline identity, and just...that's not the
world I live in any more.
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