Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Psychology of Cyberspace

In this article author John Suler takes a very scientific approach to online identities and what they can tell us about their creators true identity. He begins by talking about each persons different roles within their life and how "cyberspace offers a niche for each of these specific facets of self hood."(1) This concept was like an alarm clock for me; it's quite simple, but a profound observation that will help me get started on the concept for my personal web page. He moves on to talk about the negative and positive points of one's identity, either cyber or real, and how having a cyber-identity can effect each of them in a positive way. In the next section he relates back to the Wikipedia reading by discussing the degree at which one's real identity could be revealed through an online identity. However, "how we decide to present ourselves...isn't always a purely conscious choice," (4) he warns, and there is a large degree of variance. Lastly Suler talks about how the medium in which one chooses to create an online identity says a lot about that persons true identity. As I mentioned before, this article has really helped ground me in the beginning of my web page. I am going to start my outline by laying out my different roles, then I'll choose which ones I want my site to appeal to. From there I will further develop my original outline to encompass subcategories of the roles I have chosen, and that will give me the layout of my site!

Suler, John. "Identity Management in Cyberspace." The Psychology of Cyberspace." April 2000. 24 Jan. 2007. -http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/identitymanage.html-

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