Our digital deeds and misdeeds

I am just another digital being who is currently using a tablet to write this blog post.  My worries might be similar to yours.  One of them is about my own digital footprint as I wrote in a past post.  We leave too many traces that can be picked up by other people and can be wrongly used.  

In academic life digital footprints are important.  We have to make sure that our ideas persist through time, and that people remember us, if not quote us or praise us and leave digital traces of their worship. So I am a member of communities like Google Scholar, Research Gate and the like.   I would love people to cite my articles.  As a digital being I would like to know that my ideas have some impact if not influence.  

Despite this,  what I find challenging is the continuous confusion of my own identity as a human being with the digital traces of my ideas.  I am confused as to whether being digital is taking over being human.  I keep reminding myself that I am not my articles, neither am I what people make of them.  

We live in a supposedly networked world.  Instant communication can be achieved.  Access to digitised documents can be ensured, provided you often pay a fee for it.  To get a full picture of someone we have to get access to both her ideas and her 'profile'.  Like everyone else, I check on other people's digital information.  And I also become prone to make judgments on the basis of this information.  With this I am contributing to an merging trend of conceiving digital footprints as deeds or misdeeds.  

And I am not the only one.  I am sure many companies will now influence their decisions to hire/fire people after seeing their digital information.  The more popular or unpopular people are perceived in social media networks plays a role.  Football players, celebrities or even your classmates can be your target or the target of someone else.  What they do or fail to do quickly becomes what they are today.  

Of course it is not up to us how people judge digital footprints.  I sometimes check other people's profiles on the web.  I also like to meet them face to face whenever possible.  And then my judgments can change about them. So I still have some leeway when it comes to judge myself and others.  

Still, we claim we need transparency in the online world.  However initial judgments of someone's online profile often change negatively after meeting them face to face.  Because we know that we can all embellish our digital information. And also because we know that after all we are human.  So what can we do if we acknowledge this contradiction? 

Perhaps we need to rescue the importance of having more time to make judgments or even question why we need to judge ourselves and others so quickly and so often.   

And perhaps we need to stop thinking that we are our digital footprints.