If you look at the time stamp of my last post, you’ll see that it’s been a while. The Open Bracket is something that I originally started just over two years ago to review a lot of the cool technology that I was coming into contact with at the time, and was regularly updated. I recently decided to re-generate the blog, give it a new look, and diversify it to be a bit more of a view-from-the-trenches of the various things I do and have a heavy interest in. There’s more about the various pies (mmm, pie) that I have fingers in on the about me page.

Pulling all of the various things I do and social networks I belong to onto one site proved a lot more difficult than I first anticipated – I’ve been an active internet user for over 12 years, and I’ve been pretty noisy. Combine that with the fact that I have a fairly unique name (the only other Ben Nunney I could find on the internet is an experimental film director), and I realised that I could find quite a lot of ‘me’ online with reasonably minimal effort. A scary thought!

A while ago, I was teaching ICT in a secondary school in south east London. A lot of the students made use of social networks like MySpace and Bebo, and most were on Windows Live Messenger to each other. With the plethora of websites, gadgets and devices aimed at young people, it’s no wonder that young people tend to have a digital identity before they’ve got any qualifications.

So, who am I?

What shocked a group of them was telling them that once something is on the internet, it’s there in one way shape or form forever. Nothing about their age would protect them – publishing things in an un-protected manner on the internet is about as public as it gets. In a world where even our Prime Minister’s wife is Tweeting, more and more people are signing up to various internet bandwagons without first answering one simple question: who am I?

I’ve worked hard to manage my digital identity. I’m known as bennuk pretty much everywhere online, or by my real name. I took a conscious decision some time ago to use my real name against the things I do online – using the internet as a digital extension of my real identity. This has worked out well for me, and I give a lot of thanks to Twitter for some of the people it’s helped me to connect with over the past few years.

Some people, however, want to be able to use the internet without having their identity revealed for the world to see. Facebook is a great example of this – mine is set to private, so that I have a place on the internet where I can connect with old friends away from the professional networking that I do. People can search for me on Facebook and it’ll tell them that I’m registered on there, but that’s it unless I give them permission to see my profile.

All well and good – but there are sites on which you can ‘uncover’ information about people. 321people.co.uk, for which you can see my results here, crawls the web and picks up information about whoever you search for. For mine it’s picked up this blog, many of my social network profiles, various images, and an email address. If I was trying to protect my privacy online, this would be very unwelcome news indeed. Some things aren’t even my doing – even if it’s someone who’s referenced you, and not something you’ve posted yourself, it still has your name to it.

It also leaves me feeling a little bit like Jean Valjean, the bread stealing protagonist from Les Miserables. While I’ve chosen bennuk because it’s a representation of my name (I’m Ben N from the UK), the indelible nature of the world wide web means that, to an extent, I’m stuck with it. I may as well have it engraved on my chest.

But what about everyone else?

I’ve made conscious choices about how I want my digital identity to be perceived – buy many people either aren’t well enough informed or don’t know the pitfalls before they jump into the world of the internet – and find it very difficult to change once they’re in there. What we really need to do is educate people, like the kids I used to teach, about how to use the internet safely in that respect, and to ‘plan’ their digital identity a little more.

While schools have recognised this, the vast majority have taken a very draconian, knee-jerk view of banning all social networking within a school’s walls, and letting the children fend for themselves. Let’s disregard for a minute that historically, when you ban things they just go underground (often with disastrous consequences), and look at the real reasons for the decision. Young people are typically miles ahead of their teachers in digesting an area that moves quicker than any other taught subject in the world.

An Answer?

There are some teachers out there doing fantastic things with new media, social networks, and who really embrace the digital age. Others need some help. I recently became aware of the ThisIsMe project from the University of Reading. While not specifically aimed at schools, it’s a fantastic project aimed to show people a little more about how digital identity works, and what their options are for managing their online presence.

Tools like this can only be good for raising levels of awareness within teachers, young people, and the populace in general. The problem here is not the internet itself. Sure, it can be a scary place – but it needn’t be dangerous or full of terror if we keep a clear, well-informed head. Of course, that’s far easier said than done. I’ve no doubt it’s going to be a slow process… but I feel positive that with projects like this and others starting to emerge, we might just get there.

I encourage anyone who is digitally active to take a look at their digital identity and get in touch with who you are. You might be surprised what you can find about yourself online!