Timbuckteeth is a word play on Timbuktu - a town in the African state of Mali. In ancient times Timbuktu was both an intellectual and spiritual centre and a meeting place for many nomadic tribes and was located at the intersection of two great trade routes. It was quite simply the place to be. For me, writing blogs and tweets, academic papers, poems or fiction, or indeed anything that other people are likely to read (and I have done them all), requires that you are either intellectual or thoughtful in your approach, or spiritually aware (and hopefully both). I strive in some way to bring both of these attributes to my writing, whether it is an 8,000 word book chapter, or a 140 character tweet. And like Timbuktu, I want my blogs, tweets and other writing to represent places people want to come to visit, where they can egage with the ideas, be challenged, inspired and ultimately, where they will learn something new. And if this paragraph is seen by any readers as pretentious claptrap, I will simply say that in all honesty, I want my blogs and tweets to have some 'bite'
That I hope explains the name, but how do I explain the blue astronaut? Blue has always been my favourite colour (don't know why, don't care really), but when the profile picture comes up on say a Twitter wall at a conference, it is easily recognisable because it stands out. The sunglasses are quite random. But all of this is mere trivia. The image itself is a little more meaningful. It is esoteric, yet still holds significance for me - and it's all about dates. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke is involved (the astronaut image is lifted directly from the Stanley Kubrick film '2001: A Space Odyssey' - an adaptation from one of Clarke's novels - the blue astronaut is the actor Keir Dullea). So is the concept of satellites. (See the connection yet?) In 1945 Clarke proposed the idea of geosynchronous satellites. His vision was not long in realisation because just over a decade later on 4th October, 1957 the first satellite - Sputnik - was successfully launched, ushering in the global communication revolution. The day, the month and the year of Sputnik are all significant to me. You see, I was born in 1957 (I'm the same age as Sputnik, but we did not attend school together), and I was married on 4th October (in 1986). When Arthur C. Clarke died on 19th of March 2008, it was a sad day for me, but it was shortly after this that Timbuckteeth was born, and from that moment on my tweeting, slidesharing and flickring and other online presence has been managed under this identity.
A lot was discussed around the idea of digital identity at Online Educa Berlin a couple of years ago. The important ideas that came from these discussions for me was that digital identity - they way you represent yourself in digital environments, is an extension of some essence of your persona. You digital identity is your vicarious presence in that place where you are unable to be physically embodied, but where your emotional bandwidth can still be fully exploited. Digital identity has elements of your personal life and memories invested in it, and is the way other people online view you, so it should bear some personal significance for you. To borrow from Erving Goffman, digital identity becomes the channel through which you manage your impression and present yourself in everyday (online) life. So Timbuckteeth is a growing part of my digital identity and will be with me for a while yet, because after all.... he's only me.
He's only me by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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