Do you know what your digital presence is?  Have you ever Googled yourself?  If you have, AND if you didn’t giggle while you did so, you are probably fairly aware of your presence on the web.  It’s a surprisingly divisive issue, and not as clearly split as it used to be.

When I first ventured with wobbly legs out onto the Internet, I was intensely secretive.  My nicknames or “handles” on discussion boards or in chat rooms were never very revealing, avatars never, ever included my whole face, and hometown, place of employ and email address was never shared.

In those early days of building cyber communities, caution was the by-word, and we responded to the culture of fear we were living in.  As the Internet became less about Porn and more about communication, citizens of the Web started to open up, and blur the lines between who they were online and who they were in real time. Being 89% extrovert (according to my last Meyers-Briggs), I found it really difficult being secretive online.  Now, people post their phone numbers in their Twitter profiles and do 365-photo challenges on their kids and put YouTube videos up from their work place.  Nothing is too private, now, and that line between on and off line seems ever-more ambiguous.

As much as I embrace the New Openness, and have long since stopped worrying about Internet Stalkers, I am reminded that there are certain advantages to only being able to connect through text. When all you have to put out there are your ideas and how you string words together.  It always reminds me of one of my favourite memories of my Dad.

Towards the last years of his life, my dad was sightless. On one visit, we were sitting around in the shade watching the kids play on the beach.  Another family joined us, and my dad got to talking to the other fellow, and they soon fell into a deep conversation ranging in topic from what was wrong with the government to how to grill the perfect steak. As we got ready to leave, Dad thanked the fellow for the conversation, and we headed off.  In the car Dad quizzed me a little about his new friend. I described the man in general terms–Dad could tell from his voice he was younger, and sensed from the way he breathed he was a bit heavy, but beyond that he had no picture in his head of what the man was like. And this was fortunate, because a decade earlier, when his vision was clear, Dad would no sooner have sat down beside a mullet-wearing, gold-chain encrusted Guido than he would have asked Stephen Harper for an autograph.  But because the man was on the other side of the “screen”, Dad made no presuppositions, and the conversation thrived–or died–of its own accord.

Sometimes I think my digital presence is augmented by the lack of my physical presence.