The curious thing about digital information and online information is that it is a novel mix of standardized, fixed, literate text and fluid, flexible oral communication.* We want to use online writing to facilitate a pseudo-oral, lateral, community discussion without being bonded to our words in the way an author published in institutionalized, traditional mediums like an academic journal, newspaper, or even radio and television would. Words you speak almost never pin you down in the same way written text makes you beholden. But communicating online bestows that written permanence on texts that were meant to be more oral, more speculative, more flexible in nature. In an offline discussion, it’s unlikely someone will quote you verbatim, things you said a year ago (and use those words against you).

Sometimes we treat online information as written texts, sometimes like oral texts. Unsurprisingly, many older users skew towards the former - for them, an email is like a digital letter executed with proper punctuation and signed with a name even though that’s usually redundant information.

Younger users generally skew towards the latter - emails are conversational like cellphone texts, IMs, Facebook wall posts, twitter posts, in which case, why bother with email?

On one hand, we enjoy the speed and flexibility of online communication, on the other hand, we sometimes would like someone to be accountable to online content so you will still find attitudes like anonymity being cowardly etc. As a former moderator of some highly trafficked discussion boards, I’ll say that this discrepancy between communication styles and expectations still causes serious confusion/conflict.

What’s the solution(s)? Well the easiest way to negotiate textual rigidity is to create an impermanent handle completely removed from your offline life. One is (or was…) relatively safe to spew incriminating verbiage, flaming bullshit or what have you anywhere in cyberspace while hiding under a pseudonym.

But 2.0 has changed that. People build identities online that are more intricately bound to their offline selves, even if their online presence presents false information. In addition, an online presence for many people crosses communities; there is a lot of overlap in contacts one accrues on different social networking sites. This 2.0 shift requires different tactics to evade authorial responsibility. Younger users search for spaces where information they produce is not laden with accountability and consequences.

Our old attitudes regarding accountability and language don’t always apply well to internet communication and younger users are creating new strategies to circumvent this. I think this is partly why internet culture has become what it is: ljdrama, ytmnd, camwhores, pr0n, lolcats, furries and whatever else you can find trawling Encyclopedia Dramatica. They’re spaces where it’s acceptable to scan a text rather than read it. They’re spaces where you don’t have to choose your words with care.

And while this works great online, it’s the impact this shift has on offline communication and interaction that brings out the value judgments in me. Because there are certain things that can’t or shouldn’t be expressed through online modes and styles of communication. At least I’d like to believe that there are many things worth expressing face to face or through literary, languorous texts. But then again, I’m a user who still signs her Facebook messages with her name.

Epistolarily yours,
E

*I’m taking these definitions and their associated qualities from economist and communications theorist Harold Innis and his book The Bias of Communication.

In 1997 Tom Peters, in an early call to personal branding wrote, “You’re every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop.” Lately, I have been thinking a lot about branding, its current collusion with the term identity, and how the internet has facilitated the current ubiquitousness of branding. The role the internet has played in integrating the logic of branding not only into our culture, but into the very construction of our subjectivities. In the meantime, I’d like to remind readers of what the core of branding actually is. It’s not a concise narrative you tell about yourself, a product or a service. It’s not building a reputation. These are superficial qualities of branding. These are behaviours that have existed long before the idea of branding. No, the defining characteristic of branding is the actions one takes in representing oneself or others as a recognizable commodity. Branding may speak the language of icons, mythologies, memories, experiences, emotions, etc. but ultimately, it is about the violent act of commodification. And if you ever forget what branding is really about, I would suggest you remember the etymology of the word, which shares the same root for the word burn.

This calf is now brand new. Are you?

* * *

post scriptum: curious readers can read my review of the Branding AIDS Conference which touches on related issues.

The first time I chatted online, it was sometime in the mid-nineties, at school. I asked where everyone was from and when they replied from various different countries, it completely blew my mind. It wasn’t the technology itself that amazed me, nor its ability to shrink geographic distance - qualities that were so heavily emphasized during the early days of chatrooms and webcrawler - after all, the world had been connected via telecommunications long before I was born. What thrilled me (and to an extent still does) was what seemed to me, the complete randomness of online social connectivity.

Of course, internet usage is hardly random, embedded as it is in a political and socioeconomic context. But it was the first time that I was able to conceive of the possibility that my everyday, quotidian social world, a world restricted by my immediate homogeneous high school environment and my own identity, could be blown wide open. I could (and did) correspond with individuals who did not share my age, ethnicity, social class, citizenship, political views etc. Random! Or at least, randomer than what I’ve achieved with my offline socializing.

Since those days in the mid-nineties, the internet has increasingly integrated itself into people’s lives. Cyberspace has become quotidian, a part of one’s daily schedule. Now you have a choice to land anywhere on the spectrum of being completely socially random or to have the internet function solely within the order of your offline social life. To be sure, when things are more random, it’s more miss than hit. And although I’d have to do more research on this, I think there is a trend towards order. It happened with ICQ/IM, with Facebook, to a lesser extent, with blogging (e.g. friends only posts, password accessible blogs).

Is there a strong correlative relationship between your willingness to be socially random online and the strength of connection between your offline/online presence? (e.g. If you are more anonymous, how strong a factor does that play into your willingness to be random?) Do users now prefer to access open online communities, or are they using the internet to augment offline socializing? Does identity politics play a factor in use preferences? Are there regional differences?

In a way, the tendency towards order really redefines my original conception of the internet. Instead of imagining people connecting globally and an unrestricted, disorganized diffusion of information, I now visualize little islands of social networking, friction, clots and complete barriers in the circulation of online knowledge building itself into the system.

learn about Pink for October or grab a p4o wordpress theme. It’s getting late so I’ll keep my news short: New Message on Breast Cancer (Toronto Star)