You Are Your Social Graph(s)

Let's, for a moment, oversimplify the philosophical basis of identity and just say you are your social graph, that is, your identity can be found at the nexus of your personal connections.

But, really, do you have just a single identity?

The Google engineers who build Buzz seem to think so. Wouldn't it be neat, they thought, if we could prepopulate your social graph with your contacts? It's save all that darned typing, bootstrap you into Buzz, and buzzing away you go.

Didn't anyone in the room where they made that decision have, say, secrets? An affair? A job overture from Microsoft? Something? Or were they all Ozzie and Harriet, when much of the world has gone Mad Men. Don't they remember this?

The truth is that few of us have but one identity. And, many times, we really want those identities siloed. And our reasons for wanting those silos, and the technological choices we make to implement those silos are my own to make. Or, to put it another way, just because those silos merge in my Gmail inbox doesn't mean I want them to know anything about each other. And, sometimes, the reason for secrets is so beyond reproach that all you can do is nod and hope that the Google folks who made these choices are really living life in all its messiness.


Google, to their credit, seem to have realized