As the internet evolves, especially for us “very online people,” there’s a deepening sense that we are, together, becoming something beyond the scope of our original intentions. We are rapidly approaching a sum far greater and more mysterious than what we often perceive as its cold, mechanistic parts.

While we conventionally think of ourselves as “u... See more

I believe we are going to see the opposite of the context collapse of the internet today. I call it identity dispersion, where individuals control the creation, separation and unification of their multiple online selves.

What the internet allows us to do is to see what we have in common. This resulted in a new experience of what it means to be a person. We have multiple lenses and identities ready to be activated at any given moment. They are meaningful. Digital avatars are just as meaningful to us as other identities.