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By Steve Spalding June 7th, 2007
Under: Featured
Recently I had a chance to speak at the Gainesville Technology Conference on Reputation 2.0 and the future of identity management. .
Video should be available at some point but until then I’ve decided to use this opportunity to show off Slideshare. Unfortunately, not only do you miss a pile of entertaining anecdotes but you also have to wade your way through my notes — reason number 756 that you should join us for the next conference (tentatively scheduled for July 11th). If you see a [text] it’s time to change slides.
Part One
Digital Disassociation
Part Two
The Learning Curve
Part Three
How I Learned To Stop Worrying
“Identity is important.” [Identity]
“Possibly the most important thing.”
“Back, way back, before the dawn of time” [cavemen]
“When the Earth was still young and man roamed the vast Savannah in search of truth and beauty” [1992]
“It was easy to know who you were.”
“I could look at myself and say self, you are an:”
[Entrepreneur]
[Engineer]
[Writer]
[Blogger]
“Pretty Decent Bowler” [bowling]
“If I was feeling particularly ambitious I’d open my wallet” [license]
“and find out a few more odds and ends:”
I was born in [September]
I am over 6 feet tall [basketball]
I live here [Orlando]
and sometimes [Gators]
“I was the only person I had to answer to. Except if for some reason I had a strong desire to flee the country” [worldmap]
“and I had to prove who I was to someone else, like:”
“Customs” [customs]
[Banks]
“Or the ocassional Federal Agents” [Federal Agents]
“Yet still, these transactions were easily arbitrated by a credit card and a picture ID.”
“Maybe, by chance, I wanted to know about someone who wasn’t me” [Rare].
“Not a problem, I would just ask around the community. If there is anything people love more than talking about themselves, it’s talking about other people” [Brittany Spears].
“Reputation was simple.” [Reputation was simple]
“If enough people believed something, it was true.” [If people believed it, it was true]
“If you didn’t like it, you defended yourself” [defense] .
“You were the gross sum of public opinion.” [You were the sum of public opinion]
“And you could look the public, right in the eyes” [Eyes].
“But then, on the 8th day, someone said, ‘let there be the Internet,’ and suddenly everything changed.” [gore].
“On that day, I looked in the mirror and asked, ‘Who am I?’” [Who am I?]
“A quick Google search gave me the answer” [google]
“President and CEO of Louisville Medical Center”
“Ph.D. Assistant Professor of French, University of Michigan”
“The Grape Guy”
“And about a dozen other characters who, while interesting, I was pretty sure I’d never met before in my life.”
“I knew what I needed to so, so began my search for myself…” [Mountain hike]
“And like anyone who is searching for anything these days, my next stop was of course…” [Ebay]
“A while back, I took to selling commemorative Elvis stamps.” [Elvis]
“Now, that is a lie…” [Lie]
“But it does serve to illustrate a point.”
“From Ebay I learned that everyone loved me!” [ebayscreen]
“Amazon, where I sell my prize beanie baby collection” [another lie]
“told me the same thing.”
“Of course, it’s always possible to game the system…” [Fraud]
“And really, who is Paulfier anyway?” [Ebayscreen]
“More importantly, none of this told me anything about myself!” [hands in the air]
What did I like?
Who did I know?
How did I feel about the world?
“That’s when I saw the light!” [stars]
“who better to tell me about me than…me.” [redundant?]
“That’s when I met Web 2.0.” [web2]
“And so the love affair began…” [loveaffair]
“On Facebook I taught people about my likes and dislikes.” [facebook]
“On Last.fm I learned about my tastes in music.” [last.fm]
“My LinkedIn profile told people my professional contacts” [linkedin].
“And my blog showed everyone how I felt about the world.” [blog]
“Of course, like all bad relationships…Things got a little out of hand. There were so many places…So many spaces!” [myspace]
“Yet still, there was an emptiness.”
“Where was the transaction?” [Where was the transaction?]
“I wasn’t only who believed I was.” [We're not just who we believe we are]
“That’s never been how reputation worked.” [That is not how reputation works]
“There was still something missing…” [puzzle]
“I was at a loss!”
“So I thought.” [thought]
“And thought…” [Thought]
“And thought….”.[THOUGHT]
“And when thinking failed I turned to the one undeniable source of truth in the Universe” [Wikipedia].
“There it was, the beacon of hope in the sea of turmoil that had become my existence.” [lighthouse]
“Here was a place where I could learn about myself!”
“The only problem was, no one had written anything yet…Which was depressing…” [depression]
“But at that moment I knew there was an answer here.” [The Answer]
“What I needed was to find a place that could recreate the transaction,” [Recreate the transaction]
“the our ancient forebearers once had” [hair band].
“Where I could speak about myself” [Lie].
“And people could talk about me”
“But where could I find such a place?” [?]
“Hadn’t I searched the internet for years and come across nothing? What I had failed to realize was that while I had been searching, so had others.”
“And those others were legion” [300].
“And from them had sprung new bastions of hope.”
“With The Gorb, I could learn what the world thought about me.” [gorb]
“With Orangeply, I could see everything I’ve ever had said about me, when it was said and how popular I was as a result.”
[orangeply]
“With Spock, I could learn about famous people and what they’re up to.” [spock]
“Of course, I had my own personal preferences…” [Orangeply]
“But the point was, I had finally found myself on the web!” [smily]
“These services filled the gaps that the old web left open.”
“I could speak about myself…”
“Others could speak about me…”
“There was a community interacting around my identity.”
“This community validated my reputation.”
“And most importantly, this reputation was” [objective].
“For me, the journey was over.” [me]
“But for you, it’s just beginning.” [hike]
“The question that remains is: Do you know,” [who you are?]
“And how much is this information worth to you?”
That’s right folks, not only do I spend my time writing about Web 2.0 — sometimes, I even get the opportunity to yell at folks about it. If you have an interesting engagement, feel free to make a request using the handy contact form.
If you enjoyed that why not find a job or read our guide to working in the 21st century. You can also join our Kiva team or hire me for your project.
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