Was watching a colleague login to a wiki the other day, trying various combinations of 3-4 usernames and passwords-- a situation you're probably pretty familiar with. We have multiple, yet limited, online identities, each with their own digital breadcrumbs, associations, and goals.
Even the earliest theorists of self (e.g. James, Meade, Cooley) saw this coming -- our online memberships automatically embed us in different networks; it's only natural to shift your identity based on context. Blogger, mother, NY-er, Texan, etc...
It made me think about our tacit strategies to manage our online identities and attitudes toward portability. Danah Boyd, of course, talks about related issues frequently (and early on).
My Links are fairly distinct from my Friends and who I Follow -- not 100% -- but I don't really use segmentation strategies within networks to adjust who sees what/ what I see.
With single digital identities and proliferating technology top of mind, the effect of maintaining distinctions across networks vs. merging, and porting identities are weighing down on me. A pretty extensive literature in social psych shows that when primed with a given identity, we adopt a certain awareness that guides our attention and evaluations, and influences our subsequent behaviors. This is natural... I'm curious about the opposite effect-- blending boundaries into a melting pot identity and the behavior that would result from a potentially merged self.
