bigideas

Our February event will be presented by Dr Andrew Edgar from Cardiff University on the subject of online identity.

PLEASE NOTE: This event will start at 7pm sharp, contrary to our usual practice.

Social networking sites create communities; blogs give us a platform to express thoughts, feelings and ideas; sites like Flickr give us a way to demonstrate our creative side and sites like Slashdot provide a forum for us to be argumentative, funny or belligerant. In the process we make friends, fall out and even, sometimes, fall in love.

Some people go to great lengths to create or acquire multiple identities, whether for the sake of privacy or for more malign purposes. Others seek to create a presence that’s a natural extension of their real-world identity. We customise our accounts with images, descriptions and signatures that, we hope, say something positive about us and help us to be perceived in the way we would like to be.

Yet it’s not clear who these online people are. Do we have coherent identities on the internet? Do some people have them while others don’t? What does identity-formation on the internet tell us, if anything, about the same process In Real Life? How is it similar and how does it differ? Do we even have “identities” at all?

This should be a fascinating session for everyone with an interest in where the internet has been and where it’s going.