The problem with the plethora of social websites is not that people have to keep track of and maintain multiple profiles/identities — we do that in real life too (acting differently in different situations, talking about different things with different people, etc) and we’re pretty good at it. The problem is instead that we have to keep track of multiple profiles/identities for every person with whom we interact in more than one context. It is this social/cognitive task which we find so disorienting.

Note the inaugural use of the ‘thesis’ category! It’s not due for over a year, but this is the task, or at least an early formulation of the task, that I want to tackle with my final ITP project.