This is something I've been meaning to do for more than a decade, and I find it mind-boggling that I've gone this long without possessing such an essential component of my identity.
I've nurtured my Internet presence over time, starting with a Yahoo! email account. I quickly started posting comments in forums and reviews on Amazon before stepping up to gmail and all of the associated Google services and apps. Intrigued by all the fancy things the new cell phones could do, I started a Twitter account with which I hardly ever tweet, and intrigued by social networking, I started a MySpace account that I never, ever visit. And let's not forget the YouTube channel, Flickr photo storage, and LinkedIn profile. Then came Facebook, and this blog, and some pictures of me come up if you do an image search on my name, but I had yet to secure the center of my personal Internet webwork.
Tonight I did that. I laid out $83.40 to own my name in cyberspace for one year.
One must own one's name these days. It is not enough to be issued one, to bear a Birth Certificate or have a Driver's License. You must exist on The Web and be found in the search engines. Even better if you can tie it all in to your smartphone so that your digital-id is always at your fingertips and up to date. How wonderful it will be when we can finally just wire it all directly into our nervous system!
But for now there's me in meatspace, and me in cyberspace: www.bretrboulter.com.
At least for a year. That should be long enough to completely lose my mind.
