Digital Identity

Narratives

“OMG,” Elizabeth thumbs into her cell phone’s miniature keyboard. “He’s soooo cute.” Send.

Perched in a windowsill high above the city, Elizabeth coos over her new nephew. “What a peanut!”

Elizabeth’s sister smiles from the hospital bed. Andy’s not even a day old, still wrapped tightly in the ward’s white-and-blue swaddling blanket, his tiny facing peeking out from his mother’s arms.

Elizabeth points the cell at Andy and peers through the viewfinder. The baby screws up his already crinkled face. She clicks a photo with the built-in camera, which makes the sound of an old-fashioned camera shutter, for no good reason. Send.

“Must already be the most photographed baby of all time,” her sister laughs. “You should have seen mom. You’d think she’s never seen a baby before. Her poor friends. They’ve probably all exceeded the quota on their AOL inboxes from all her endless e-mails. She’s never learned how to avoid sending pictures as enormo attachments.”

Elizabeth takes Andy’s tiny hand. She runs her finger over the plastic bracelet he wears. “Cohen, Baby Boy,” it reads, along with a bunch of other data that a nurse entered into a computer kiosk somewhere. Time of birth, mom’s name, a unique identifier, and so forth.

“Hey, what about my friends? I’ve been texting them every three minutes since he was born.”

“At least they’re used to it. There’s no doubt they know to ignore half your messages. Just so they can get something done all day.”

“Not when there’s a picture of your adorable Andy attached,” Elizabeth pouts, fiddling with the cell phone. “Actually, I put the pictures all up on Flickr. My friends who really want to know what I’m up to subscribe to my Flickr feed, so they get a ping every time I upload a new picture. So I guess their RSS readers look kinda like the inboxes of mom’s friends. But that’s their problem.”

“Andy’s dad is keeping a copy of every e-mail a friend sends in to say congrats in a special folder on our computer at home,” her sister says. “He figures that’ll be a twenty-first century baby book. We haven’t gotten a single hand-written note of welcome to little Andy.”

Without warning, Elizabeth flips out her phone again and trains the lens on her weary new mother of a sister. Click. “Hah! Gotcha. Mom’ll love it.” Send.

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Fast-forward: Andy’s four-and-three-quarters. He’s been typing e-mails to his grandparents and, most important, his Aunt Elizabeth since he was two. Well, he’s had a little help from mom, who lifts him onto her lap, queues up the e-mail program, types in the destination e-mail address, and lets Andy clack away on whatever keys he can reach.

The early mails from precocious Andy to Aunt Elizabeth read: “wwnijrosffreeooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx” and “ijgjigrrwopo[-[pppppppppppp.” She loves them. They’re saved to the harddrive of her Apple in a special folder called “Andy.” He’s her favorite digital correspondent, bar none.

Andy’s mom’s laptop is a bigger draw than the TV in the basement. Not a close call, actually. Andy’s a big fan of time on his own, so long as that means he’s plunked in front of the screen of a laptop playing interactive games. His mom worries a little about too much “screen time.” But Andy loves it, and he goes only on good, safe sites, with a parent always nearby.

Andy’s latest favorite site is pbskids.org. He doesn’t know it, but “Between the Lions” is teaching him the alphabet and leading him on some early steps toward reading. (He’s also getting exposed to the “Chick-Fil-A” icon every time he logs on. They’re the corporate sponsor for the web site.)

In order to play “Between the Lions,” there’s a catch. You have to download a bit of software made by a company called Adobe. In the processing of downloading the software, you are prompted to give Adobe word of whether you are over 18 or not, your name, and your e-mail address. Another entry in the Digital Native’s distributed digital file is born.