How Socially Defined is my Identity? » Community

For the last several months, people have caught me spouting off on Twitter (and elsewhere, like DevLearn’s General Session) that identity — my identity, in particular — is socially defined. Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road.

I’ve created a Wiki page (using Wikispaces, because they make use of OpenID) to be defined by the collective with this goal in-mind: if this experiment works, this will become my profile page on this fancy new blog, perhaps LinkedIn and the bio I use for various events I do. I’m not asking anyone to do this out of vanity, although I get that asking you to write about “me” sounds pretty damn presumptuous.

My thinking is this: I craft my own profile entry all the time and perhaps I get it somewhat skewed. Perhaps I focus less on things that people might actually care about; I’d like to try us doing it together and then posting it up on the blog as my “about” page. There are several people I’ve talked about this with during and after #lrnchat and I’m game to be the first to experiment with doing this. I’m also open to suggestions on how to improve this experiment.

Here is the link to the Wikispaces page.

There are a few caveats I’ll throw in which are pretty common sense. First, which will be pretty obvious, anonymous contribution is discouraged, so while everyone can see the link, you’re going to “join” if you’re interested in editing/authoring/contributing.

I reserve the right to correct inaccuracies and to edit the content for flow as well as share outtakes from this process that I find are wildly humorous. I don’t know what’s going to happen necessarily by doing this — if people just start inventing stuff it’s going to get interesting.

Please leave personally intrusive information (details like, but not limited to, phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, ages, birthdays, names and ages of kids) out of this. I will end up deleting that stuff right away and if it keeps happening, I’ll call the experiment off.

Also… I also reserve the right to call this experiment off.

“I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves…” – Albert Einstein

I believe the universe is a friendly place, and that’s why I keep experimenting.