Elizabeth Albycht is provokes us into thinking about the future of self.
Her perspective on participating in cyberspace is how it leads one to question identity, specifically identity as technologically mediated. With the growth of online social media (blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, forums, discussion boards, chat, photo and video sharing, social bookmarking, tagging, etc.) more and more people are actively creating digital identities (whether they realize it or not). And these identities are persistent slices of personality that others interact with and react to, which then can feed back into self. Managing identity therefore becomes a serious task and there are increasing numbers of tools for one to do so. So questioning identity in this environment becomes more critical.
Transposing this thinking from the personal to the organisational is a good mind game. The extent to which the 'real' organisation is disembodied from the 'online' organisation is interesting. Most people know organisations as a cyber organisation. That is what they see from the web site and the aura of digital comment. These are different entities.
The 'real organisations is a 'now' organisation. It is the organisation its people know now.
The online entity combines a view of its present state and its historical state which are presented as one.
Off line are real people and online are people who are cyborgs.
The Internet intrudes into organisations as well. Will this create a convergence of values? Between the other digital entities, such as customers, vendors, regulators? If not and to what extent can the corporate entity survive and prosper?
My view is that without convergent values organisations cannot prosper is this also true of individuals?
What does that mean for economic and social survival of populations.
There are economic and cultural issues attached to such issues. The people that do not have a 'joined up personal/digital persona will be disadvantaged.
Can mankind thinks this through.. can there be rational thinking about this? If not there is great and inherent danger that will affect us all.
Writing from Estonia, this is very pertinent where the population has very recent memories of both Nazi and Soviet occupation with the associated imposition of ideologies
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