Up until now, I’ve tried to keep a low virtual profile. I’ve never had a MySpace or Facebook. I don’t show up on Google. There are no videos of me dancing around my bedroom on YouTube (as far as I know). So before this blog, there was really no trace of Emily on the internet. I liked it that way.

I’ve had friends jokingly threaten to create Facebook profiles for me. So far, they haven’t done it, but maybe they won’t have to. Like this Valleywag writer found out, there are plenty of services that encourage users to make profiles for other people. Check out Gleamd, which lets you “add someone” anytime. Someone? Anyone. After that you might want to head over to Spock so you can “Get alerts on your web activity.” Once someone else has created a profile for you, Spock is gracious enough to allow you to “claim it” and add your own content about yourself.

I know I’ve been spouting a lot of conspiracy theories lately, but I can’t help linking to this video about Facebook having potential links to the CIA. Again, my point is not so much that it is true (I have no idea really) but if it were, what difference would it make? These sites are public. From my experience in HR, I know that a damning MySpace profile can land your resume in the trash. I would be more concerned about my boss finding debaucherous photos of me than the CIA knowing my favorite movie.

We’ve always known that our personal lives could be made public on the internet, but now sites are encouraging us to write about others. If this catches on, you could conceivably find anyone’s general bio via Google in a year or two. How would this change our behavior?

Maybe nothing would change. After all, we don’t have control (even though we like to believe we do) over what people think about us or how they judge us.

Initially, I wanted to liken this whole thing to corporate or governmental transparency. Generally, transparency in institutions is considered to be a good thing, but what about for people? If anyone, anywhere could add to your online profile with the click of their mouse, might you act differently? Like Wikipedia, it’s likely that some vandalism would occur on the profile database, but that overall, entries would be balanced. How would your life look in summary? How might this trend change society?

I recognize that we often attempt to regulate our interactions with others by telling them what we’re like, by giving them the information we want them to have. When meeting someone new, we may provide a list of our likes and dislikes, personality traits, and common habits. Sites like MySpace and Facebook are places for self expression as well as places for us to define ourselves via friends, hobbies and social events. How much of this represents the “real” me and how much is simply a need to create a division between myself and other people?

I like my personal information to remain private just as much as the next person, but interacting with the world requires some loss of control. We are observed, described and judged already. There is no balanced, unbiased account of the life of a person. I guess the question becomes not what do these sites mean for our society, but instead how are you personally interacting with the world? Are you constantly creating a story of yourself to tell others, trying to control their perception of you? Or are you just being, content to experience every moment as it comes? If you do this, your life’s story will take care of itself.