Thursday, May 19, 2011

Transparency and Anonymity: What's your digital persona?

I've been learning how to use the Internet lately. Or, to be more specific, I'm learning how to use the Internet professionally.  How does one craft a professional persona online? And what is the value of doing so?  In part, these questions have much to do with the transparency vs. anonymity debate that is becoming increasing pressing in our digital age. To what extent do we want to claim our online activities?

As a college instructor who teaches a course in professional writing, I often tell my students to be aware of their digital presence. What shows up when I google your name?  What does your public Facebook profile look like?  To what extent do our digital profiles shape our perceived professional identity?  It seems to depend largely on the availability and access of your personal information. Raising the question, what do you choose to share in the digital realm, and in what name?

Personally, my Facebook profile is very limited publicly.  Only friends can see my personal information, photos, status updates, and shared content.  I have chosen this social media platform as a personal identity, one that allows me connect with friends and family.  But, as I work on developing myself as a writer, I must consider how I use my Facebook for professional ends.  For example, this blog post will be shared online and published in the newsfeeds of my friends. Increasingly, I must recognize my emerging dual persona, as Lana, friend, and Lana Cook, academic and writer. I am accountable for what I say because my name is attached to it.   Facebook requires individuals to validate their real identity by providing their personal information.  According to their policy, FB "requires a real date of birth to encourage authenticity." Facebook requires a certain transparency on their site, so even if you change your display name to a pseudonym, the content is still linked with your real name. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg believes
 "History tells us that systems are most fairly governed when there is an open and transparent dialogue between the people who make decisions and those who are affected by them. We believe history will one day show that this principle holds true for companies as well, and we're looking to moving in this direction with you" (Facebook Blog)

Facebook's own transparency issues aside, I believe in this statement. There is a real value in holding individuals accountable for their statements and actions. We become more responsible citizens, more careful friends, and more critical scholars when we know our statements are being known and judged by the public.
I've chosen the path of transparency on Twitter and Reddit as well, using my full name when communicating and sharing information. But in this choice, I am very aware of how I must manage the use of these accounts.  I must consider how what I say on Twitter and Reddit shapes my professional identity, one that is very much tied to my real name and my emering professional persona.
 
The debate about transparency and our use of real names online arises out of the predominance of anonymous discourse on the Internet.  On forums, discussion boards, wikis, chats, we are often anonymous, using pseudonyms for our log in names (if we log in at all).  This anonymity allows us to view, comment, and share information without personal association. If transparency is on the side of democracy and a free and open community, where does anonymity fall?  Anonymity does not require us to be held accountable for our statements and actions online, which seems to have a dual effect. Anonymity gives freedom to both Internet trolls and whistle blowing activists. When I can post anonymously, I feel free to say whatever I want, no matter how potentially offensive, racist, bigoted, inaccurate or misleading.  But anonymity also means, I am free to protest and criticize without personal consequences. This freedom is especially important in repressive states where citizens are unable to criticize the government (or corporations in the global capitalist state) because of fear of persecution. Anonymity can be as crucial to the functioning of democracy as transparency. Consider collectives like WikiLeaks and Anonymous, they would be unable to promote state and corporate transparency without a necessary amount of anonymity. In the debate of transparency vs. anonymity, we need to consider these less as an either/or, but see the necessity of both.  Returning to the case of my professional identity, I'm beginning to increasingly see the ways I can use anonymity to share content and information that I may not necessarily want linked to my professional digital imprint, like my health, sexuality, religious or even political beliefs.  Whether posted in the name of Lana Cook or anonymous, I hold myself personally accountable for what I say (I don't want to be a troll).  As we increasingly share content online, we will need to address how our identities are marked online and the role transparency and anonymity has in shaping our knowledge and governing our communities.
 
For a quick (but too simple) breakdown on the transparency / anonymity debate, check out this graph by Namesake:
Namesake.com/blog
Transparency? Anonymity?  What's your digital presence like? Share your thoughts!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Coming out as a Digital Academic

The object of the book is changing. This has happened before.  Bounded manuscripts replaced the papyrus scroll. From stacks of bounded paper, we turn to the e-book. In this digital age, we are experiencing the written word in new mediums: online, on phones, via Kindles and IPads.  As the technological medium changes, we should consider, how might this shift affect the content of books and our human relationship with these forms?
I come at this question from an academic’s perspective. My job over the next couple years is to write and publish a scholarly book. As I prepare for this task, I must pause to consider what it means to write and publish a book in an age when many of my generation read and engage predominantly online.  When I imagine my dream book, it is a multimedia project that includes images and streaming video in addition to text. This is not possible in the print form. Yet, the emerging forms of e-books suggest that this multimedia form is not only plausible, but welcomed by a large reading community online.  But, would my imagined e-book receive credit in the academic community?  Would it help or hinder my academic career?  The answers to these questions will inevitably change and it is my hope that by the time my book is ready for the press, the academic atmosphere has warmed to digital mediums of publication.

Friday, May 6, 2011

On Design

As some of you may know, I am working on a new online journal.  Myself, and the members of this project, have been sharing our favorite online journals and blogs.  Sharing these sites, we’ve been considering their content, style, and design, and trying to get a sense of what rhetorical and design strategies work in the online sphere.  It’s been an interesting process as I try to apply the critical eye to my favorite online spaces.  What do I value in a website?  What do I like to read online? How do I feel about a site’s design?
 
Design is perhaps the most unfamiliar terrain for me. I have always enjoyed the visual arts, have taken my fair share of art courses, and like to dabble in the world o’ crafts.  Yet, I find my ability to critically assess design is not quite up to speed with my ability to tear apart a student’s paper or a scholar’s book. The sticky part about assessing design, for me, is the way good design can seem both highly present and nearly invisible.  Consider the many objects around you, how often do you notice the design?  Typically, it seems we notice design when either:  1) it goes wrong and the design is flawed enough to disturb your use of the object, or 2) when the design is visually impressive or presents something ‘new.’   There seems a duality here. Design should be visually present and invisible at the same time. How is this possible, and how do we use this understanding to assess and create design in our own world?

Yesterday, I watched the documentary Helvetica on Netflix Instant, which considers the history of the font Helvetica and its impact on our contemporary sense of design. 
http://www.helveticafilm.com/images/sm.frankfurt.jpg
The film features interviews with several typographers and designers who each talk about the ways they perceive the design of Helvetica and its effect on our collective imagination.  The film features a range of responses, from designers praising the font’s “neutral,” “modern,” “efficient,” “streamlined and fresh” appearance, to others who criticize that same “slickness” and suggest that its ubiquity in the corporate world creates a conformist atmosphere in our design culture.  But, despite these contending views on Helvetica, the documentary illustrates how design “invites open interpretation,” “allowing us to attach meaning to it.”  This point shows both the possibilities and challenges of design.  How do we design for a vast range of human subjects?  How will we tailor our design to suit the meaning and purpose of our journal?  These are challenging, but exciting, questions for me as I begin to enter this new realm of digital design.

Share your thoughts on visual design. What websites do you admire for their design? Share the links! 

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Review: Cindy Sherman: A Retrospective

Sherman, Cindy. Cindy Sherman: A Retrospective. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997. Print.

Amazon.com
Looking through a retrospective of Cindy Sherman’s work is a strange journey through the photographic history of American identity and perception.  Cindy Sherman:  A Retrospective (1997) begins with Sherman’s series of Untitled Film Stills, images she produced throughout the late 1970s.  In this series, Sherman dresses up in different outfits, makeup and wigs, and photographs herself in a variety of locales and situations.  Nearly all the photographs depict only Sherman, but seem to imply a human presence just outside the frame of the photograph.  In this unseen, but palpable, presence, there is an implied narrative action to the images.  In each image, Sherman performs the role of a film heroine, and we, as spectators, are invited to fill in the film’s narrative around the image. 

Untitled Film Still #3
moma.org
As many scholars have noted, her performances recall a cinematic history of black and white early Hollywood, film noir and B horror movies.  If a film still serves as an advertisement for the full length film, what does Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills advertise?  As art critic Arthur Danto points out, “the still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told” (4).  In Untitled Film Still #3 and #50 seen here, Sherman’s gaze toward a presence out of frame suggests such a story, but leaves the viewer to construct that narrative.  Sherman plays with the viewer’s relationship to the represented female identity in each image. We are implicated by how we construct narratives around represented images of the female subject. 

Untitled Film Still #50
moma.org
In the 1980’s, Sherman continues her performance work, but along with her turn to color photography, Sherman’s images become increasingly grotesque and disquieting. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Review: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

I recently reread Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451  and was immediately struck by the parallels to our contemporary moment.  Bradbury's novel, first published in 1953, follows the personal  transformation of Guy Montag, a fireman whose job is to set fire to houses that contain books. Set in the not-so-distant American future, the novel depicts a society that "dreads the unfamiliar" and so bans books and makes "the word 'intellectual'" into "the swear word it deserved to be" (58).  Books were not initially banned because of state censorship, but by the effects of advancements in media technology and a waning public interest in critical thinking.  As the Fire Captain Beatty explains, the decline of a book reading public coincided with mass population booms, an accelerated sense of time, and the popularization of television and film.
"Picture it. Nineteenth century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your cameras. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.