{"id":3606,"date":"2010-09-13T21:13:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-14T04:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=3606"},"modified":"2010-09-13T21:13:16","modified_gmt":"2010-09-14T04:13:16","slug":"doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/09\/13\/doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"Doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s something uniquely web-world weird about typing in the name of a long-ago friend into a search box – say, Facebook’s? – and discovering his\/her Doppelgaenger<\/em>: the person who has the same name and could – just possibly could<\/em> be the person you were searching for, but could also be a completely different person altogether.<\/p>\n

\"\"In days of yore, you might have simply speculated on the similarities you discover. But now you might also have a photo – an image – to go with the facts you recall, and it makes you wonder: Is this the person I knew x-years ago?<\/em> And you grab on to geography (let’s see, White Rock is close enough to Victoria<\/em>, or, Mattapan is close enough to Cambridge<\/em>) to make a “rational” case for why (or why not) this ghost may (or may not) be the old girlfriend or the old boyfriend.<\/p>\n

What do you remember? That your friend was sent to a Federal penitentiary? How do you search that? (Probably not.) That s\/he married a single dad\/mom? (Try to recall the kid’s name – see if s\/he is on Facebook!) That her family owned a car dealership or the father became a mayor?<\/p>\n

You search – and come up with so many replicates! Who needs science fiction: your double – older, younger, and\/or geographically displaced – is out there.<\/p>\n

Barring a positive identification, you’re left with a ghost – and doubt.<\/p>\n

Frustrating, yet thrilling: doubt.<\/p>\n

You put it away – file it, knowing you can return to it at some later date. The web-found replicates carry on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s something uniquely web-world weird about typing in the name of a long-ago friend into a search box – say, Facebook’s? – and discovering his\/her Doppelgaenger: the person who has the same name and could – just possibly could be the person you were searching for, but could also be a completely different person altogether. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1652,678,1242],"tags":[117],"class_list":["post-3606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authenticity","category-ideas","category-just_so","tag-identity"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3606"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3610,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606\/revisions\/3610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}