Digital Identity

Intro

I used to write reviews of my personal life at philipdakin.com. Then I took them all down because they were not very interesting. Now I have some time to think and am trying again. This post documents my thinking on phildakin.me.

Ideation proceeded as follows:

  1. Defining the goals of my digital identity.
  2. Internalizing the goals of my digital identity.
  3. Gaining competency by analyzing existing digital identities.
  4. Figuring out the technical details.

Defining Goals

Here I constructed desire by using language as a tool for thought. I was able to say two things:

  1. I want to enrich my communal life. By making it easier for others to evaluate my being, it becomes easier for compatible others to become my friend. This is worthwhile because friends are the best teachers and are frequently helpful.
  2. I want to encourage high-quality engagement with my interests by encouraging a communication-oriented approach to my engagement. This is worthwhile because clear communication requires clear comprehension.

Internalizing Goals

Sometimes I have things I want but I fail to get them due to lack of resolve. I’m working on figuring out how to overcome forgetting in this dimension. The memory palace seems to work well and is also fun to do. So I internalized the goals of my digital identity by:

  1. Completing a memory palace exercise.
  2. Reviewing the memory palace verbally four times.
  3. Writing out the goals from memory in a notebook a few times.

I will describe (1) below. (2)/(3) are not that interesting and the reader is invited to apply their imagination to the content of those exercises.

Goal Memory Palace

Location

First I chose a suitable physical space. I feel serious about these goals so it was appropriate to select a location that is emotionally important to me. So, I chose the library from my hometown.

Visualization Preparation

Constructing a good memory palace requires strong visualization. Before selecting the images I would engrave to represent my goals, I warmed up by trying really hard to remember everything I could about the library.

Documenting my sensory memories of this building I love would take hours and is perhaps a good artistic exercise for my old age. Abstractly, I envisioned myself beginning at the front door of the building, then pacing every reasonable path through the building while looking with a keen eye. As I looked, I was able to place some past experiences - the frighteningly clear face of a frowning librarian who clearly disapproved of our extensive Runescape playing, me as a child memorizing my cyan library card’s number so that I could reenter it faster when the library computer kicked me out on the thirty minute timer, me as an adult tutoring clients for hours as the Calder mobile slowly groaned it’s repositioning overhead. This made me cry.

Visualization Completion

Thus armed with imagery I proceeded to break down the content of my goals into components and to represent those components as interesting images. These are:

  1. Goal: Enrich my communal life. Image: Gazing into the seating area of the library, every chair is filled with a copy of the frowning librarian. Simultaneously they all turn to meet my gaze.
    2. ‣
    By:
    ‣
    Because:
  2. Goal: Encourage high-quality engagement with my interests. Image: Present-day me walks into the computer area of the library, sits down, and starts playing Runescape.
    3. ‣
    By/Because:

At this point I knew what I wanted, why I wanted it, and had taken the appropriate steps to ensure that I would not forget these things.

Gaining Competency

To better understand my options I undertook an analysis:

  1. Collect a list of personal websites.
  2. Develop an analysis scorecard with common features.
  3. Identify my preferences in terms of my goals.

The essential dimensions of (2) are the level of stylization and the level of productization.

(3) is a bit tricky. My preference is for a low level of stylization because it encourages focus on the quality of my content, and for a minimal level of productization because it prevents me from being a captive of my audience. However, I can imagine certain types of content that are greatly enabled by stylization, and audience-author compatibility allowing productization to simply be a mechanism for expanding reach. My mind is not settled here and I will ponder this more.

Technical Details

Buy domain, host website on Notion, use https://super.so/ for allowing custom DNS and minor stylistic tweaks.