Technology & Identity

The cyber world is a free space. It is flexible beyond measure and virtually anyone has access to it. When I am in the cyber world, I am allowed to be anyone I want to be, after all what is true hardly will matter to the person viewing my profile, if there was even a way to find the truth out at all. I can be everything I dont want to be in the real world, or want to be in the real world but am not. Wait, which is the real world?

Technology has brought the rise to such identity crises. Many dont know who they really are anymore. You could say "Nah thats not me your'e talking about" But think carefully. How much of an impression do other people form of you from your facebook profile alone? Now compare it to the impression you give them on a face to face meeting. Im guessing many of us form impressions of other people from their facebook page alone. What they comment on, what they "like", the photos that they have, the songs they listen to…I can find out so much of a person, just by looking at his online profile. But how much of it actually is true? The person himself, probably does not even know the answer to that question.

Lets take this analogy. There are many Starbucks outlets in China. Along every street, in every mall, its not hard to find one. There was a case of a conman, that replicated to precise accuracy, a Starbucks outlet. It sold the same products, displayed the same famous logo, and no one could tell it was not an actual authorized Starbucks. It was impossible to tell, and any Starbucks patronizer would walk in unknowingly to buy a coffee. It finally took someone in the Starbucks top management team to enter that fake outlet and realize that he had never started a Starbucks in that location for it to be shut down. 

China, due to its size and vastness, was the right place for the conman to carry out his plot. If the physical presence of something as big as a Starbucks outlet could be so blatantly faked, how much more the identity of a web user. Furthermore, a web user can hide behind a screen, he does not need to face or answer to anybody. I can, like in the case of this fake Starbucks, assume another's identity and no one would know. Think about how many companies outsource the management of their online presence. You might be talking to someone that is not the person you think you are talking to. Such is the danger technology has brought with the internet.

Well this is just my point of view…wait… Who am I? Am I necessarily the person that attends the TWC class every week? You'll just have to trust I am. And in turn, I have to trust the identity of the reader. A time where robots will take over the human race? Wait no more. We might already be losing a lot of who we are to technology.