I have several email addresses, and I use them each for different purposes.  I never receive personal emails on my work account.  The account that came with my Internet at home has been sacrificed to spam since I use that account for every website registration.  I keep an old email address that’s hardly used just in case someone I haven’t spoken to in 10 years contacts me.  So I understand that for different roles I play, I have different email addresses.

This week I came across an advertisement that goes one step further – it suggests that a person should have an email address that their Second Life avatar can take with them into Real Life.  LindenPost.com is now offering email accounts that are tailored to people’s double identities in the “real” world and Second Life.

This is compelling because the language of the LindenPost ad is a departure from most of what we read about Second Life.  News bites about Second Life tend to sound amused by the popularity of the virtual world, or slightly condescending about the idea of spending significant time in a virtual world with an alternate identity.  But avid Second Life users seem to understand that the virtual world gives people the opportunity to express facets of who they are (or would like to be) in a new context.  Many Second Life users are not just tinkering around – they are expressing one of their identities.  Whether that identity is very similar or very different from their “real” world identity matters very little – an Second Life identity is a valid part of the whole picture of a person.

In a previous post, I talked about managing multiple identities at work.  In that post, I had in mind more disparate versions of identities, perhaps those that are forced by the tasks and roles a person has at work and home.  The LindenPost ad suggests something more – that it might be good business to respect the voluntary exploration of multiple identities.  As more companies, especially non-gaming companies, take avatars seriously, the exploration of multiple identities will become less marginalized.

Why does this matter?  I’m not only thinking of the necessity of being respectful of other people’s identities (though I do think that’s important).  This may also be crucial to finding new ways of using virtual worlds.  Current uses of virtual worlds are fairly limited by what we take for granted in the real world.  As Becky recently discussed in a post, we will have to break down assumptions about the real world before fully taking full advantage of what virtual worlds have to offer.  Some experts believe the US is losing its competitive advantage of creativity and innovation.  If we want to stay competitive in the world, we need to break down old assumptions and find new uses for old and new technologies. For instance, people are beginning to accept that playing video games is not just nonsense, but can teach skills that are useful and desirable in other contexts (see our post on gaming and leadership skills).

This may be quite a conclusion from just the wording of the LindenPost website.  But words signal attitudes, and attitudes can influence behaviors.  These bigger issues are part of what we have to consider about new technologies such as virtual worlds.  And if we want to find truly ground-breaking uses for the new technology of virtual worlds and virtual collaboration, perhaps we have to overcome our underlying assumptions about multiple identities.