BE: Composing the Digital Self

Among the many benefits of learning to write the world wide web, one may be of particular interest to YOU – what an online presence can do to enhance your employment opportunities. You’ve begun to read about “globalization 3.0″ from Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat, about the possibilites open to individuals in today’s “wired” world for composing themselves as part of the increasingly global community.

See your Blogger blog (as well as your developing webpage) as a place to make a statement about yourself to that community: professors, future employers, public service organizations, interested friends.

To that end, spend some time today “dressing up” your Blogger site: upload an image to your profile and flesh out some of those information fields. By now you can begin to see that “privacy” issues may be less in your control than you thought. Good counter measure is to take the responsibility for proactively composing your “digital self.”

“Who are you?” is the one question for which there will always be more to the answer. Composing the digital self gives you a hand in constituting a point of view for those looking in on the becoming.

Update your blogs! Be sure to include a purposefully selected image in the profile and an email link on the front page. If you have not done so already, remove the empty “edit me” links that may still be there. If you need ideas, take a look around the read/write web for examples of how others are (present)ing themselves. Discuss your exploration in a post where you link to examples of “online identities” you believe solidly composed, and take that work as a model.

I’ll look in on your progress again soon.

technorati tags: PurdueEnglish106, composition