[Previous entry: "Get Bent"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Warren Avenue"]

10/08/2005 Archived Entry: "Webdentity"

Webdentity
Yesterday, Collin posted about Identity 2.0, a plan to standardize identity-security for a variety of transactions across the Web. The idea of uniting all of our identies in one place is comforting for certain reasons (business transactions, identity theft), but also scary (see the meme going around the Web about a guy ordering pizza and having his whole life, consuming habits, health, credit being reviewed by the pizza order person). Another part of this is: why would I want one identity when so many of me floats around by my choice or by another's choice. I am the Other, right? Or as Whitman told us: I am bad/I am good/I am the free/I am the opressed, and so on.

This spam I received today is revealing for how it shifts the literary obsession with identity to the cyber in terms of multiple I(s):

Good day to you,

My name is Jeffrey Rice, I am the credit manager with a bank here in the
United Kingdom. I am contacting you in respect of the transfer of a
huge sum of money from the account of a deceased client. Though I know that
a transaction of this nature and magnitude will make any one
apprehensive and worried, I
am assuring you that everything has been taken care of, and you have
nothing to fear at all and i would be very glad if you would allow
me bring you to a clearer picture of what is on ground, what we
intend to do and how we intend to do it.

Aha! Another me. He signs his name two ways: the email the spam comes from - jeffryrice@msn.com - and another email he concludes with - jeffreyrice1950@myway.com. Neither comes up on Google, which is odd in some way because am I the only "Jeffrey Rice" who has received this spam? I am not the only one in the world (and odd enough, another has since started the PhD program at UF where I did my PhD! There will be two Jeff Rice(s) with PhDs in English from UF! A mutiny of academic excllence is on the way!). The person who writes to me here exists/does not exist.

This enquiry involves a client who shares your surname.
It was brought to my knowledge that the aforementioned
client died intestate and nominated no next of kin to the title
over the investments made with the Bank. We came to know of you via
the London. Global. Database.Center (L.G.D.C.)

Aha! Not only does the person making the query have my name, but the person who this person works for (and now that he is dead there are obviously all kinds of big bucks for me) has my name! Has the whole world adopted my name?

Or is webdentity the endless inheritance of one's name? Like Alan Berliner googling his name as prelude to a documentary on himself and the name, we inherit ourselves each time we type to the Web (I am I am I am I is I are I was I were - kind of Moby Dick grammar for the Web). The true gift economy. I give myself away each time I type. I give myself away and come back different. <I href="">

Spam is just the repeatability of all our previous gestures: futile and productive as they may be. I may eventually standardize my identity on Identity 2.0 or some other platform - but the irrationality of identity, which spam foregrounds, will always make such efforts somewhat incomplete.

Posted by joanna @ 10/10/2005 01:01 PM EST