He's only me

Several people have recently asked why I use the name Timbuckteeth on Twitter, Flickr and Slideshare. Others have asked me about my use of the blue astronaut picture as my Twitter profile picture. Well, here it is - my response to those questions. Let me tell you about the way I manage my digital identity. I hope it resonates with you....

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. 

Tomorrow: Double agents

He's only me by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

1945 and all that

This is part 9 in my series on the history and impact of distance education. Yesterday in Part 8 we saw how the television was conceived and invented. However, before the introduction of geosynchronous satellite technology, global telecommunication was problematic, and global distance education continued at the pace of the snail mail whilst radio and audioconferencing the mainstay distance communication media.

1945 is a momentous year in the history of the development of distance education technology. It was not only the year we saw the back of the Second World War. It was in this year that a young English scientist published a seemingly outlandish article in the magazine Wireless World.

The article, entitled Extra-Terrestrial Relays speculated that if three radio transmitters were placed at equidistant points at a precise altitude above the Earth's equator, they would be able to achieve global communication coverage. This is a facsimile of the original article. The author of the article was none other than the now celebrated science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and other stories), and the article was instrumental in opening the debate about the feasibility of global communication satellites. Just 12 years later, on October 4th 1957, the USSR succeeded in launching the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit - and the Space Race began.

The most important aspect of Clarke's theory was the placement of the satellite at a precise orbit of 22,300 miles over the Equator. At this altitude, Clarke speculated, the satellite would have exactly the same velocity as the rotational speed of the Earth, and it would therefore appear to be stationary in the sky. This technique is now well established, enabling satellite users to dispense with expensive tracking devices. Communication satellites are placed into geosynchronous orbit, and this zone of optimum distance above the Equator is now referred to as the Clarke Belt. If you are in the Northern hemisphere, you will see that satellite dishes tend to point South toward the Equator. In the Southern hemisphere the opposite applies. In Equatorial regions, it's a common site to see satellite dishes pointing right up at the sky, and some have holes drilled in them to drain the rain water out! Queen Elizabeth II knighted Clarke for his services to science in 2000. Sir Arthur C. Clarke retired to the island of Sri Lanka where he died in 2008.

In 1965, Clarke's dream was realised when the first ever geosychronous communication satellite was positioned in orbit above the Atlantic Ocean by NASA. By 1969, three satellites had been linked to achieve the first fully global satellite coverage. For more on the uses of satellite technology in distance education visit here. Today, a lot of distance education provision is dependent upon geosynchronous communication satellites, and we take for granted the ability to talk to people on the other side of the world via telephone, video or other means. Watching live events from around the world on television is not something we think of as particularly special. We are so used to the idea that satellites are there, we give them no second thought. If they suddenly disappeared though, I think we would all know it.

On Monday: Part 10: University of the second chance

Image source

Clarke's legacy

So farewell to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who has died at the age of 90. Born in Somerset, and the son of a postal worker, he was probably best known for his work as a science fiction writer, with books such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 - pictured) and Rendevous with Rama (1972). I enjoyed reading his books as a lad, and still recall the abstract beauty and surreality of the Stanley Kubrick film that was made based on his novel. I particularly recall the psychopathic supercomputer HAL, which reminds me a little of someone else...

But Arthur C. Clarke leaves a legacy of a different kind. Not everyone has read his books or seen the films, but everyone in the Western Industrialised world, and many more in the emerging nations make use of one of his ideas every day. Geosynchronous satellites. It was his idea originally - that's why communication satellites are now placed above the equator at around 23,000 miles high, in the 'Clarke Belt'.

We have a lot to thank him for, and I still keep a link to a facsimile of his 1945 Wireless World article about 'rocket ships' and 'extra terrestrial relays' on the satellite technology pages of my e-learning website. Take a read. It's well worth it just to see how far we have come, and to acknowledge the great man's prescience....