[tmbchr]™

Personally-Identifying Marks



Having both a persistent online presence as well as a physical presence has made me wonder, if only conceptually: how would you know it’s really me. Say you only knew me online and then someone came up to you saying they were me. They might or might not look like the photo posted of (or the actor paid to play) me, and they might be well-versed in the things I’ve written, along with personal history information. How would you know it was or wasn’t me? What would you ask to make sure?







5 Reader Responses

  1. Dale Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 9:48 am

    i’d have them come up with a few new blog posts on the spot, and use my intuition to decide if they were sufficiently Boucherian or just lame derivative hackery. sort of like a personal Turing test. dunno if it’d work, though

  2. Big Elk Says:
    April 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    Yeah, I mean I don’t even know when I’m just being a hack of my own self though. I figure anybody who can copy me closely enough to create a reasonable facsimile, well then they basically are me. There’s not much difference in my mind I guess!

  3. Jacob Says:
    April 4th, 2008 at 12:25 am

    your tattoo?

  4. kake boucher Says:
    April 4th, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    I think I’d win this just on being your sister- but I think there’s a certain air of anti-smugness that surrounds you that would easily differentiate you from most Americans. At least American actors.

  5. Big Elk Says:
    April 5th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    That’s exactly what’s interesting about this question to me: is that people who know me and have known me only at one phase of my life would know of different characteristics and distinguishing marks.

    I was writing about this a lot less directly during my “spambot” phase, using the terms securacy and proximity. The idea that another perceptual center (a person’s awareness continuum?) would have more robust security/privacy access to yours based on “proximity” which could be determined in a variety of ways, including permissions and user roles, etc….



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