Why is it that home pages seem to invariably list name, rank and serial number, and then carry a rather nondescript photograph? Is this the way that we want people to know who we are? Is this the way that we think that they can actually get to know something about us?
Can a single home page act as an introduction to a whole person? Should it be able to? Do you know anything significant about me because I've listed my name and given you a picture? Do links to interesting web sites give you any more information that might be considered useful?
If it's not for the sake of the virtual reader, who to my mind inevitably feels unsatisfied after browsing through an all too factual home page, that we prepare these pages, then do we do it for ourselves? Is this a case of:
I HTML therefore I am?
Since if our page actually finds its way to someone else out there in cyberspace chances are good that that person has no real way of verifying the information we write about ourselves, wouldn't it make more sense to make our own pages fantasy pages in which we present ourselves in the way that we'd really like others to see us?
Or maybe the only feasible way of giving someone else a picture of ourselves that can make even a slight claim to accuracy is through mirroring ourselves from different angles, from different sites. Perhaps we should tell about ourselves on one page, and then contradict ourselves on another. After all, in cyberspace there's no first or last, before or after. There's no reason to assume that someone has found the real you before he or she finds the alternate you.
Maybe what makes most sense is a virtual game of hide and go seek in which just when the seeker seems to think that he or she has finally caught you a different persona pops up somewhere else.
Another possibility is to put the entire topic of who the real you is up to a vote. I'll try to do this in a future update of these pages, but I admit that I still haven't figured out fully how to do so. In the meantime, try reading:
Lorrie Cranor's home pages andThey give a good picture of the possibilities of voting via the internet and show that it's a very real possibility.a review of a Princeton University student election
The actual process still isn't clear to me, but I've at least been able to steal the basic idea. It would work something like this.
I don't claim to have the anwers yet, only the nagging question that arises from having met one too many run of the mill home pages that seemed to suggest that the writer prefered that the reader not know him/her at all. Any thoughts on these matters will be cordially accepted and considered. Send them to: the real/virtual/fantasized me (circle the relevant answer).
and for another perspective on the me of these pages, go back to a persona or two and click on another link
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