Web 2.0 and Virtual Identities: I Am Linda

(Today's guest blogger is Linda Cureton, CIO of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.)

I ran into an old colleague at a holiday party recently. I hadn’t really seen him for a while. Having just successfully lost about 1/3 of my body weight, I’m always a little taken aback by how different I look to people. He grabbed my hand tenderly, looked me in the eye with a straight face and said … Somewhere in your attic, there’s a portrait of you that is simply hideous because you are simply gorgeous.

Linda Y. Cureton

My first thought went to one of my favorite childhood TV show

Dark Shadows where Quentin Collins had one of those portraits in his attic. But, then I quickly thought of something not so campy and that was of Oscar Wilde and his Picture of Dorian Gray .

And finally, I couldn’t really reconcile that how I “look” to myself hasn’t really changed at all. I’m still the same chubby girl inside.

This leads me to one of my current science experiments as CIO of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. I wanted to learn, kinesthetically, about the efficacy and effectiveness of Web 2.0 tools. I started by authoring the Goddard CIO Blog .

My intent was to use it as: a leadership tool, a communication media, and a way to build trust with the people I lead by allowing them to get to know “me” better.

But, who is me? Am I the chubby portrait in that attic? Or am I this man’s perception of a gorgeous woman in red, after obviously too much wine? Or neither? Am I CIO, senior executive, wife, sister, aunt, friend, daughter, leader, teacher, role model? All of the above? Or a portrait of neither?

I thought of a rather unpleasant incident at my old Church where we had an “anonymous” forum for asking questions and getting answers. The mean-spirited attacks from a minority of my Church brothers and sisters shook me. I realized that it was the “mask” of anonymity that brought out the “true nature” of a few folks who appeared otherwise. Consider this Oscar Wilde observation:

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

I thought of some things that a virtual friend of mine shared from his experiences in Second Life. There, he told me, people feel free to do things that they can’t or shouldn’t do in Real Life. Now, I realize that I am such a rookie in Second Life, that I have barely mastered walking, so maybe I don‘t really get it. Yet, he shared with me a touching story of some of his friends who displayed what, on the surface, looked like a bizarre behavior of jumping, but in “reality” it was something they could NOT do in real life. But, in their reality, “They Walked” .

Sometimes, in this “reality”, things go wrong. There could be times that we don’t like what we’ve become or can’t reconcile the real and the virtual. An interesting post is reprinted here where some are pushed to digital suicide .

George Benson must have understood, when he sang the painful lyrics to “This Masquerade”:

Are we really happy here

With this  lonely

game we play
Looking for words to say
Searching but not finding
understanding anywhere
We're lost in a masquerade

I DECIDED that my Virtual Identity would be my REAL Identity. But, who am I really? The gorgeous woman in red? Or the chubby portrait of a girl in the attic? A profound side effect of Web 2.0 that I have discovered is that I am both AND neither. And along with that, is my learning of the true ATOMIC effect of Web 2.0 -- and how it is helping me make that discovery.

--- Linda Y. Cureton

Comments

[Dr. P. Vernon Crowell Bey]

Nice post
A wise man once said; "We will never see ourselves the way others do". Personally, I know that I am many things to many different people. Though Web 2.0 is not something that I have to consider; it is still in our best interest to take what pleasures and pleasantries that come with living. We would do well to take a tip from one of natures creatures: the gunnera.

[Chris Dorobek]

Fascinating points here -- and I think we are coming to a time where people increasingly look at people in a more holistic way. And, in a way, I think Web 2.0 helps you do that. You can learn more about people's likes -- and dislikes -- in a more safe way (I hope).

And I agree with Lewis Shepherd that the trust relationship is so important.

In the end, transparency is a fundamental part of trust -- and Web 2.0.

What an exciting time we live in, isn't it?

[lewis shepherd]

Very thoughtful post. I think a lot about the 2-way relationship between government and citizen and the ability of technologies (especially but not exclusively Web 2.0 techniques) to enable better relationships. Identity plays a big part there, I think, because of the technical trust/authority issues but also because our American political history and psyche nurtures distrust of government, unfortunately. So there's a dilemma indeed. I'm glad to see that you're thinking about/working on such profound issues!