6. Gnozi seauton: identity artefacts in the (individualistic) social web

Abstract

In this paper we focus on the Internet as an environment where users may undertake a process of self discovery and self development. Gnozi seauton («know yourself»), Socrates suggested to ancient Greeks and to every man, is presented as viewing knowledge of ourselves as the key factor to understand the world and become able to find answers to all the philosophical questions a man puts to himself. Internet and the Web 2.0 environments specifically offer useful places and tools to support self description, self representation, and self discovery. We refer to the results of these descriptions,  representations and findings, as identity artefacts. In this paper we also ask the question: are Web 2.0 environments individualistic places? This question arose from findings derived from an analysis of data from a social network formed by a blog and its blogroll. We registered very weak links among the nodes of the network, and this brings us to seek further validation of the following statement: the social web is an individualistic place where people are more focused on the production of identity artefacts than to the sharing of them.