I’ve been thinking recently about the possible value of reassessing my presence on the internet, with a view to perhaps changing things around. Instead of simply going for every opportunity suggested to me I’ve been attempting to evaluate various possible outlets, often by seeking the advice of friends and enquiring about their experience. Today, however, I tried a different tack, and decided I would see what happened if I looked into my own profile, as if I were an enquirer who knew my name and had some idea that I had to do with art. There have been two curious results so far.
It is quite astonishing to discover just how many people in the world share the same name. I tried not only putting my own name into a search engine, but also the names of friends or family. I believed that some of them have quite idiosyncratic names, but invariably it turned out that they shared names with several other people. The lesson I’ve drawn from this is that the name alone is not adequate as an identifier. I had not grasped previously how useful the word “art” is, when attached to my name, as a filter leading to a unique focus on me.
The other discovery has been the extent of junk that is out there. I was reminded of the concerns expressed by some people about the quantity of sheer junk that is orbiting the Earth these days. I know that space is big, but I can’t get out of my mind the old adage that if something can go wrong sooner or later it will. In fact, at some point we’re in for a mighty mess as a consequence of collisions between satellites …. useful or not. I was reminded of this when I discovered what a large proportion of my internet presence is totally out of date, and appears on other people’s reference sites over which I have no control. The experience which really brought this to my attention was an entry about me on an American site I had never encountered before, mentioning my activities back in 2011. They also, to my astonishment, noted that I was at that point among the top 1 million in my field! On a global level I guess that can’t have been bad. I wonder where I stand today?