Mike English's blog

I am considering using this blog for topics other than technology – namely theology and music.

Should I create separate blogs? Separate categories?

I’d like to keep writing, but my interests are rather diverse.
Perhaps if I write consistently enough, a gestalt of the whole will emerge.

Watch this space…

Online, our identity is a composite representation of who we are. If we google our names or screen names, we are presented with a wealth of publicly available information about ourselves.  The tracks we leave online are indelible, so the quantity of this information will only grow as we continue to interact with various web services. What do all these bits and pieces of data say about us?

Google‘s great success was in pinpointing the value of organizing information. Organization, especially providing context, adds a great deal of value to information. (The data is out there already, and if it isn’t, it will be soon. The trick is in finding it, and making sense of it.) In a similar way, we need to provide value-added information about ourselves; we need to look at what’s out there and organize it for people in a way that makes sense. In doing so, we become the recognized as the rightful authority about our identity online.

If we want to have any sense of identity online, we need to put all of the data about us in context. If we don’t provide this context and tell the world who we are, we risk being a lost statistic,  being defined by someone else, or only being partially defined by any random cross section of data coming up in a search which could skew perspectives of who we are or what we’re about. This is where having control of our data is important, because it’s essential that we become the primary source for information about ourselves. How do we do that?

This is where things get a little strange. The democratization of information on the web creates quite a bit of noise. Somehow, we have to make ourselves heard above all the noise. We need to find ways to connect with the right people. (The right people are the ones with which we stand to form meaningful relationships.) We need to set ourselves apart from the crowd and highlight what makes us unique, interesting, and worth someone’s attention. Making the most of what the Internet can offer becomes then, a sort of fame-game, where all the players are minor celebrities doing their best to manage their image while still being authentic. A variety of techniques for doing this have been suggested; Chris Brogan for example, offers a Free eBook on Personal Branding. I think Hugh Macleod sums it up best when he writes about the Global Microbrand as the “ticket off the treadmill.” But I would go further; the personal microbrand strategy doesn’t need to have a commercial payoff (book deal, speaking gigs, etc.) to be of value to bloggers. Having any degree of name recognition raises your chances of connecting with the right people. Visibility adds value.

Is it an egotistical excercise to think of identity in this way? Maybe it can be. But, at the same time, I think it’s a realistic first step if your goal is to maximize your chances of building meaningful relationships online.

Why am I starting this blog now? Why start a blog at all? Aren’t there enough already?

If my goal was to jump right to the top of the “A-list” heap, starting a blog like this would be the wrong way to do it. But that’s not my goal, not at this point. Right now my goal for this space is more personal than that. I’m exploring what online identity means to me, and I’m creating balance in my life.

Balance? What does tinkering around with blogging and computers have to do with balance?

Easy, it’s my perfect hobby. The last time I really got down to the nuts and bolts of tinkering with something technical was back in highschool when the coolest (geeky) thing I could think to do was dual-booting my self-built PC and compiling unstable gentoo linux kernels with patches for devices most people didn’t have working yet. It made me happy.

Now I’m a fourth year undergraduate student studying theology at a small Midwestern Catholic university who finds most of his free-time spent reading and pondering philosophical dilemmas. While I find this immensely interesting, most of these philosophical dilemmas are as old as time, so pondering them for very long isn’t very satisfying – in fact, it can be downright depressing.

Working on a website like this offers me an opportunity to redirect my excess brainpower toward an activity that will hopefully provide some mild sense of satisfaction.

So here I am, rediscovering my predilection for technogeekery, and exploring new dimensions of self. I couldn’t be happier.