last friday the journal question at TIC had to do with identity -- one's real identity vis-a-vis the online one. (here's Tom's weblog essay, for those who haven't read it yet. if it's no longer there, click on the July 13th link.)

the question Who am I? or Who are you? is an existential conundrum probably as old as humankind itself. the modern twist is, of course, what this means in the context of cyberspace and the Internet, where we are all increasingly placing (and perhaps finding) our identities.

a good example, the one in front of you right now, is this weblog. for those who have taken to weblogging with great enthusiasm (Kass, Quad, Spark, Fletcher, Fed, Aaron, Ozzie, among others) it's clear that they've imbued the medium with the stamp of their personae. some of it is exceedingly personal and no-holds-barred... but even for those who just use the log as a recounting of their daily experiences, a sense of who the weblogger is easily emerges for any discerning reader.

Tania Gonzalez, one of my students in TIC, has taken to signing her e-mails and journals in a totally charming way. there's a pattern to it, some details constant, some different. here are a couple typical .sigs:

--Tania L. Gonzalez, Group 4, The internet classroom, in San Francisco, with a sunburn, bummed out because all the 4th Harry Potter books got sold out, at her computer, online, with an E-mail address: SilverLightSun@aol.com, wondering whether her signature is too long, deciding it is since it's longer than the letter.

--Tania Livania Gonzalez, with individual middle name, with a first name that means fairy queen, with brown hair, with a screen name that is Silver Light Sun, another one that's SilverMoon00, in San Francisco, in the Internet Classroom 2000, a kid from the other millennium, the oldest of my siblings, waiting for the bookstore to get more Harry Potter books, likes to read fantasy, with a sunburn that looks more like a tan now, me.

now if that ain't charming, i don't know what is! ;-) anyway, her group TA Trev, decided he'd follow suit, and this is the result (click on the image to see the larger pic; sorry, it's 384k!):

it's a meta-image of sorts. i chose to "paint" a digital snapshot made at Friday's Capture-the-Flag session at the 3 pm break, as a way of signifying the evolution, modulation, morphing, or whatever you might want to call it, of real to online identities. the movement of the trees' branches and leaves as i captured the moment resulted in a blurry, kinetic image. i also chose to "paint" Trev in particular, as i've had this ongoing friendly running battle with him about capturing his image on camera, ever since his first TIC years ago. as usual, last Friday i failed again, as he scrambled out of the tree branch quicker than i could compose the frame and photograph him perched on it. Trev feels that his soul is entrapped if captured on film, sorta like Native Americans believed. finally, that same day, Trev wrote a response to Tania's journal on online and real-world identity, with his own attempt at a "Tania-like" signature. so, for me, the image works on many levels. it reminds me of the layers of personality and identity we take on, or discard, once we log on to cyberspace.

since the text on the image above is not as clear as it can be (i only spent a few rushed minutes making it), and for those who don't want to click on the link to get to the large pic, here's Trev's .sig response to Tania:

--Trevor H. Ridinger, with a name that means nothing (i think?), TA'ing a class at Berkeley, paying for my OWN bart tickets, listening to mp3s, living in San Francisco, *think i saw you yesterday gettin off at 24th/Mission stop?*, the oldest of my siblings, with a screen name thats Error Type 404 or Group Four TA in class, with brown hair (bleached a lil) and green eyes.

online, are we who we say we are? often, we're not even our very names. like an impressionist painting, we are who we colour ourselves to be -- through our web pages or weblogs, the fleet atoms of instant messaged conversations, or the made-up avatars of any given website out there which we choose to join. we can be pixelated or anti-aliased, compressed or not. but what, then, is the sum of our online being? is there a whole thing, or is it just a temporary collection of fragments? are we melting online like Trev and the trees in the painting above, or coalescing, an image coming together as paint dries and fixes a picture on canvas?

stay tuned to this weblog, and others'. perhaps answers will bubble to the surface, and at a moment in c-space least expected.

-- Lloyd R. Nebres, whose middle name stands for Roble (my mom's maiden name), with black hair and who often wears a fishhook necklace aumakua (Hawaiian family totem), with the humdrum screen names LloydinBerkeley when in Cali, and LloydinMaui when in Hawaii, who teaches the Internet Classroom at which you're a student, the oldest of my siblings (like you and Trev), waiting for the 3rd book in The Golden Compass series, who never needs a suntan, and listens to Rammstein's Alter Mann a lot.

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