Brains working towards machine consciousness

Several people in the CCK08 massively online course on Connectivism and Connected knowledge have been discussing online identity, self and reputation. One of the interesting points is about how engaged you can feel when dealing with an avatar (graphical or textual) which has obviously been designed as an ephemeral presence purely for a particular purpose. If there is no back history available, can you feel a sense of trust?

This Is Me is an Eduserv funded project to design learning materials to help with education about forming, maintaining and securing your personal identity on the web, otherwise known as their Digital Identity (DI). The initial stages involve collecting people's stories about DI, whether cautionary, advisory, entertaining or just plain educational.

We had several very useful conversations yesterday, ranging from issues of Digital Identity - who are you, what image do you portray on the web - through Learner Agents and trying to produce systems which are adaptive in their support of learners, to games based learning of various different types.

I have just been reading Wellman's Little boxes, Glocalization and Networked Individualism. I particularly like the discussion of specialized roles. In this section, Wellman uses scholarly academics as an example of how some people like to maintain contact through the written word (specifically email in this case) in order to be able to live their lives according to their own rhythm whilst still being able to communicate within a network of individuals.

DI Tim your friendly neighbourhood copper… or is he? In this case, no. DI.TiM is the tag I have chosen to use for matters relating to our This Is Me project, which is all about Digital Identity (DI).

MacArthur Foundation Submission
By kevin prentiss
The student's experience timeline would serve as the core of their education digital identity, providing students with a transferable digital portfolio of their growth experiences. This system design would equally apply to high schools ...

What's your digital identity?
By Uwe Hook(Uwe Hook)
Your digital footprint gives you an idea about your digital identity. I wonder if your digital identity is in line with your real life identity. In my case, my digital identity reflects 50% of my real life. ...