There are some of us (late generation-X / early millennial) who saw this coming and still maintain a variety of separate identities across many domains.
I don't know why someone would want to have the same identity in the workplace as on internet forums, for example.
Social media appears to have given many people the idea that they ought to cultivate their public identity from an early age as preparation for internet fame / personal branding.
If you keep them distinct unification is a weapon to be used against you. You're writing your own blackmail someone just has to call you on it.
With prose fingerprinting, sophisticated tracking, now your identities are only separate by rapidly eroding social convention. Intentionally merging them allows you to have control over the process, and helps you maintain discipline about what you reveal where. If you don't do it it will be done to you.
Unfortunately that isn't a solution. When you keep separate identities, the only thing that can exist across platforms is your own participation. Everything you say and do is isolated to whichever identity and platform you are using in that moment. You still don't have the opportunity to exist completely, because your self has been fragmented. Even if you did manage to create a cross-platform identity, the product of your participation is fragmented, and every story you tell is objective to that platform's context. Even if you tell a story that links across platforms, you are still isolated to that specific cross-platform context.
"How do informational norms change when we’re all living in the same universal room?"
I different interesting question: why would we want to inhabit this universal room in the first place? The post mentions the idea of being "bigger than yourself" but to me the context collapse achieves the opposite - a sort of carboard caricature of oneself.
From what I’ve observed, people are increasingly checking out of social media (or turning their profiles private), because it’s just unappealing unless you’re actively promoting something.
This is social media unless you change your nick often, but even then people run stylometric analysis all over this site. Nobody is truly anonymous on the internet.
They cite "context collapse" and say this "uni-context" is deeper, but I still don't see how this "uni-context" is all that different than "context collapse", extensively studied since the 2000s. And which Goffman in the 1960s was writing about in the context of big mixed social gatherings like weddings, that bring together people who know you in quite different contexts.
I’m in month 5 of not having access to any social network, and although the first weeks I felt tempted to reinstall X and Reddit, I’m at a point where I don’t think I’m ever coming back. There are still great spaces like HN where you can consume content and participate in debates. I do miss some of the fun stuff, but it wasn’t worth being exposed to all the other crap for a few laughs a day.
I think much of this might apply to Callard: her high public visibility in social media, the attention grabbing colorful attire, her as I recall public advocacy and openness about her own polyamorous lifestyle. I don’t think that’s typical. Certainly it’s not for me. I’d rather be Zelig. But I think most people code shift, and present different personas in private life compared to work. Probably much less so for the average substack author, so it surprises me little the idea might resonate with Derek Thompson, the blog’s author.
Like most of these things, one can bemoan it and say “oh it’s terrible that this is how it is” but I think it’s pretty easy to self-test this to see its adaptive for a reason.
Brendan Eich was fired from Mozilla as CTO because of a small donation in favour of Prop 8. Fine?
I think most people here would say yes. In fact people did say that.
I think many people would say they don’t want to have a plumber who opposes (say) trans rights. Or read an author who is anti-gay. Pick some view heretical to your world-view and see if you can stand to encounter people who hold it.
If you require all purity you probably prefer the uni-context.
It also works both ways. Yes a plumber can be more easily outed as anti-gay and fired, but the same uni-context makes the plumber more likely to be anti-gay and more strongly anti-gay in the first place. Being exposed to anti-gay propaganda all the time will do that. Otherwise you just have people who are like, their church told them it was bad to be gay, but they don't really care about it.
But people can never be "pure" enough and what is acceptable in the uni-context will change over time. If you documented your life within it you will find you will be branded a heretic sooner or later.
I'm having immense problems digesting this interview to understand the concept of the uni-context.
It does sound very interesting and right up my alley.
I also don't seem to be able to use internet search anymore (probably a user error) so if anyone has a link to a document, soundfile or video of Agnes Callard explaining the concept without the interuptions from a interviewer that is more interested in contributing than to let her explain the concept I would very much appreciate it.
> I also don't seem to be able to use internet search anymore
A bit off topic, but you're not the only one. I've grown up with the internet and yet I'm now completely unable to find things on demand.
I sometimes resort to claude, not because I want to, but because it's so difficult to search the real internet now. Asking claude, then asking claude for sources, can uncover hidden gems. ( It can also reveal claude talking out of its arse. )
I believe this is often because things fall off the internet. Back in the early days, things were added more frequently than they were removed, because there wasn't much to remove. Now, it's reached equilibrium - things are also frequently removed.
This actually fits quite nicely with the idea that the graph network of humanity has meaningful emergent properties/challenges/phenomena at various densities or subnetwork connectedness thresholds.
It's the same fundamental network problem: the infrastructure that allows unprecedented levels of commerce and ideas and travel will also allow disinformation, plagues, and homogeneity. The double-edged sword of graph density.
That's a cool idea. I'm no longer the right age for such things, but I'm glad people are trying to create unsurveilled spaces.
It feels doomed, though. Smart glasses wearers are being shamed today, but the tech will only get more inconspicuous. And HD cameras are so small and cheap that phone cameras are only one of many potential sources of surveillance.
With ubiquitous tiny cameras, quality networks (even in remote areas thanks to Starlink), cheap storage, and increased analysis capabilities thanks to AI, it feels like planet panopticon is here.
I think many social sites have tried to solve it, but in a world where anything is easily saved or screenshotted, it's still effectively a "universal room". Not to mention that properly implementing a form of role-based access control is a big ask for a lot users.
Not tying your IRL identity to online communications only solves one side of the problem. You can't use your anon accounts to communicate as yourself to family, friends, and colleagues and maintain your anonymity.
Not having accounts tied to IRL identity also allows AI bots to operate as equals to human users, which dilutes the quality of conversation in those spaces.
We've built an incredibly effective communications apparatus. It's a shame its only users are money-obsessed primates and the robots we've built in our image.
In Europe the operator of a website that is not purely personal is required to write their full name and address on the website. This is also bad in the opposite direction.
I've been watching both the corporate media, and social media, rot completely over the past 30 years.
A large part of that was that early adopters tended to be more educated, played nicely, and were not involved in attention-seeking, sychophancy, and often, escapism.
Another factor is the bright colors, moving videos and other eye candy, and psychological hacks like the emojis for "liking" and gaining "followers" which produce addictive feedback loops.
Of course, this interview touches on valid points, but is not the whole picture. "Bad news travels fast" and gets more clicks. That helps explain the rot of the news media.
Maybe I am oversimplifying too, however. Factors like sophisticated persuasion campaigns by various organizations, for example, cannot be discarded. Likewise with the advertisers.
It's a shame the title doesn't just include the word: "uni-context". It's a really useful and interesting perspective.
The other relevant word is "objectivity". There so many systems in our society whose context we surround ourselves with, it starts to feel like every subject is objective. The reality is that every subject is subjective.
I think one of the big drivers for this dynamic is that our social systems are facilitated with software, and we always make software as a uni-context. An application is a fixed context.
If we can figure out how to introduce subjectivity into software, that would be extremely useful for both computing and society.
This is an interesting perspective on the concept of "atomization of the individual", which the interview interestingly does not refer to. Both atomization and the "uni-context" arise from the destruction of an individual's local contexts, like family and community, leaving them an individual in a global, maximally-large pool of individuals, the so-called uni-context.
Atomization has clear motivations: increasing the individual consumer base (no, you shouldn't share your car or lawnmower with your block, you need your own), suppressing democracy, and generally making a population more predictable and easy to manage.
It also helps companies to exploit people easily. Example if you have are a fit person, then you should have an apple watch and now perhaps and oura ring as well.
Large companies and organisations are able to tap into our core emotions and needs of the human body and able to shape our day to day in a way we feel that we have the freedom to choose but in reality we are acting within hidden boundaries.
Yup. Get outside. Screens are increasingly addictive by design. I am going outside now. Enjoy your days. Use the internet and your phone as tools, not separate realities.
I don't know why someone would want to have the same identity in the workplace as on internet forums, for example.
Social media appears to have given many people the idea that they ought to cultivate their public identity from an early age as preparation for internet fame / personal branding.
With prose fingerprinting, sophisticated tracking, now your identities are only separate by rapidly eroding social convention. Intentionally merging them allows you to have control over the process, and helps you maintain discipline about what you reveal where. If you don't do it it will be done to you.
I different interesting question: why would we want to inhabit this universal room in the first place? The post mentions the idea of being "bigger than yourself" but to me the context collapse achieves the opposite - a sort of carboard caricature of oneself.
Brendan Eich was fired from Mozilla as CTO because of a small donation in favour of Prop 8. Fine?
I think most people here would say yes. In fact people did say that.
I think many people would say they don’t want to have a plumber who opposes (say) trans rights. Or read an author who is anti-gay. Pick some view heretical to your world-view and see if you can stand to encounter people who hold it.
If you require all purity you probably prefer the uni-context.
It does sound very interesting and right up my alley.
I also don't seem to be able to use internet search anymore (probably a user error) so if anyone has a link to a document, soundfile or video of Agnes Callard explaining the concept without the interuptions from a interviewer that is more interested in contributing than to let her explain the concept I would very much appreciate it.
A bit off topic, but you're not the only one. I've grown up with the internet and yet I'm now completely unable to find things on demand.
I sometimes resort to claude, not because I want to, but because it's so difficult to search the real internet now. Asking claude, then asking claude for sources, can uncover hidden gems. ( It can also reveal claude talking out of its arse. )
It's the same fundamental network problem: the infrastructure that allows unprecedented levels of commerce and ideas and travel will also allow disinformation, plagues, and homogeneity. The double-edged sword of graph density.
It feels doomed, though. Smart glasses wearers are being shamed today, but the tech will only get more inconspicuous. And HD cameras are so small and cheap that phone cameras are only one of many potential sources of surveillance.
With ubiquitous tiny cameras, quality networks (even in remote areas thanks to Starlink), cheap storage, and increased analysis capabilities thanks to AI, it feels like planet panopticon is here.
Isn't that what G Wave/ G+ trying to solve?
I think a better option would be: don't tie your IRL identity for online communications.
Not tying your IRL identity to online communications only solves one side of the problem. You can't use your anon accounts to communicate as yourself to family, friends, and colleagues and maintain your anonymity.
Not having accounts tied to IRL identity also allows AI bots to operate as equals to human users, which dilutes the quality of conversation in those spaces.
We've built an incredibly effective communications apparatus. It's a shame its only users are money-obsessed primates and the robots we've built in our image.
If course it being Google, it got cancelled before it had a chance to catch on.
A large part of that was that early adopters tended to be more educated, played nicely, and were not involved in attention-seeking, sychophancy, and often, escapism.
Another factor is the bright colors, moving videos and other eye candy, and psychological hacks like the emojis for "liking" and gaining "followers" which produce addictive feedback loops.
Of course, this interview touches on valid points, but is not the whole picture. "Bad news travels fast" and gets more clicks. That helps explain the rot of the news media.
Maybe I am oversimplifying too, however. Factors like sophisticated persuasion campaigns by various organizations, for example, cannot be discarded. Likewise with the advertisers.
The other relevant word is "objectivity". There so many systems in our society whose context we surround ourselves with, it starts to feel like every subject is objective. The reality is that every subject is subjective.
I think one of the big drivers for this dynamic is that our social systems are facilitated with software, and we always make software as a uni-context. An application is a fixed context.
If we can figure out how to introduce subjectivity into software, that would be extremely useful for both computing and society.
Atomization has clear motivations: increasing the individual consumer base (no, you shouldn't share your car or lawnmower with your block, you need your own), suppressing democracy, and generally making a population more predictable and easy to manage.
Large companies and organisations are able to tap into our core emotions and needs of the human body and able to shape our day to day in a way we feel that we have the freedom to choose but in reality we are acting within hidden boundaries.