"We are our real identities online."

Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook delivering a keynote address at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich, January 2012.


Or so proclaimed Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's second most powerful executive, in her keynote address to the prestigious Digital Life Design (DLD) technology conference, held this year in Munich. Even though she made this statement in the context of explaining that we are no longer anonymous on the Internet and that

 "what we do online and on our mobile devices is increasingly about who we are, about real identity,"

I still take exception to this statement. Anyone can create any kind of identity online. "Sophie" could be "Samuel" in real life, but no one would know the difference until they met him. We may no longer be anonymous, but we're not necessarily "real," either.

The conference's other keynote speaker, Viviane Reding, the European Commission's vice president for justice, is not as sanguine about the use of social media. She is trying to find a way for consumers to control their own data. She firmly believes that the great threat to individual liberty in the digital age comes from companies that use our data to enrich themselves by buying and selling our most intimate details for their own corporate benefit.

Reding believes that individual privacy in today's networked age can only be protected by tighter legislation on what companies are allowed to do with our data and by more agrressive data-protection officers and agencies. To this end, Reding is introducing legislation that will give consumers the

 "right to be forgotten"

on online social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. It is her belief that people should have the right "to withdraw their consent to the processing of the personal data they have given out themselves."

Reding is also very concerned about how personal data "collected in Berlin" may cross international boundaries to be "processed in Bangalore." She regards our personal data as the "currency of today's digital market" and is looking for ways to inbue it with "stability and trust." She feels this can be done in three ways: by creating legal certainty, simplifying the regulatory environment, and providing clear rules for international data transfers.

What both speakers agree upon is that personal data has become

 "the new oil, the vital fuel of our digital economy."

And just as contentious politics over real oil shaped our 20th century industrial economy, commentator Andrew Keen believes that "the politics of data will shape the 21st century digital economy."

So much is at stake here. Small fragments of information about an individual can remain online forever, casting a long shadow over the "real" self of the person who first posted it, a self which may have changed radically since its early adolescent postings. But when do you know to remove something or leave it for posterity? Our technology has given us fabulous new tools, but the questions that have arisen about how to manage them are equally as daunting.