Jean: Kaliya, we left off our last chat talking about digital bodies and the importance of context with identifiers. Can you say more about digital bodies?

Kaliya: Well lets start with physical bodies – we have just one of these. So when we walk around in physical space people recognize us because we are in the same body we were last time. We only get one and over time is ages but basically it doesn’t fundamentally change and we can’t “get another one.” Last time we talked about identifiers and having the ability to have a globally unique one that you could take with you around the web. This gives you a freedom to move between websites and take your “digital body” with you. The difference is that in digital space you could make yourself several different “digital bodies or identifiers” that were globally unique that you would use in different contexts.

Jean: I am already a second body by creating the first digital body, right? Since it isn’t my physical body?

Kaliya: 🙂

Jean: So having many bodies is even more to keep track of and create?

Kaliya: The digital identifier you create that points at you – is like another digital body. Maybe you want to just be http://www.jeanrussell.com everywhere on the web. Maybe you want to have a professional life “identifier” and a personal life “identifier” that separates those two aspects.

Jean: You mean I can manage those bodies instead of having each platform define them for me?

Kaliya: Yes. An example that was brought up yesterday here at Super Nova by danah boyd was that of a teacher. That a teacher is working in front of children – they can’t be seen to be sexual (having a normal dating life) or drinking alcohol (as a normal social adult). So this is an example where someone in that profession would create an identifier they use to connect to their students on social networks and comment on blogs etc.

Jean: Right. That makes sense. Even in my physical body in the analog world, I am showing different facets of myself in different contexts.

Kaliya: They need to have a different identifier they use for their social connections to other adults – in their dating/social life. That same teacher might be politically active – as they have a right as a private citizen to be and those political views well within the spectrum of points of view that are acceptable might not be “the same” as those in their particular town or neighborhood – say a strong environmentalist in a very coal producing town. So they want to take action and voice opinions and share with others who are other active citizens. They would need a different digital identifier for that.

Jean: So, it feels like an advantage to have the ability to manage these digital bodies based on the context they show up in? And thus the community they mesh with in that context?

Kaliya: Back to our first conversation it would be great if they didn’t have to get a new identifier each time they went to a different environmental site – a portable one for them within that context of environmental activists. Yes, contextual management is important. The tools to support individuals doing this are just beginning to be conceptualized and developed.

Jean: So what I hear you saying Kaliya, is that we need our digital bodies to be a reflection of the facets of ourselves and the intersection of those facets with the communities we participate in. This is not defined by platform as much as it is our practices online.

Kaliya: Yes – an we need open standards that give us the freedom to move around the web with identifiers (digital bodies) from one website to another. This has to do with the underlying architecture of the social web that platforms build on. How we use these platforms and tools is complex. To have good practices, we need development of “web” (which had internet below it) and then on top of that is a layer where identifiers are – and applications that use them. then there is an emerging set of standards to move information we generate in social contexts around between sites these are called activity streams. So a website is a context, a group within a site is a context too. Each google group you are in is different – its own cluster of people.

Jean: Right, although there might be some overlaps, that can’t be assumed that I want to show the same facet of myself to all of my google groups.

Kaliya: There are sort of meta contexts – so a network of environmental activist sites would be an example of that.

Jean: Right, a site like Zanby does that for One Sky. Or Ning, or is that more of a tech context and not a purpose context. [Kaliya: and neither uses OpenID]

Kaliya: I guess you can think of it as topic contexts and platform contexts. One of the issues is that most platform contexts do not support being able to switch between different login/handles/identifiers very easily at all. You might have a personal yahoo account and a professional one, on ning too, same deal.

Jean: Right, like on twitter, I was working around that by using api clients or using different browsers!

Kaliya: Right, or logging in and logging out. Mozilla is working on a project to help people manage their ID’s within the browser. The platforms would like us all to “just have one identity” and not switch between but this is not realistic.

Jean: Right, getting back to that teacher example – she may want to be in touch with students on facebook… and want to keep her personal life in a different name there. So we have a social practice for doing that, but the tools don’t yet adequately reflect that.