“Namespace” is one of the great terms from the world of programming that I encountered in the course of my book research. A namespace is a defined set of labels (in programming, usually for variables or addresses or the like) in which each label can be assumed to be unique. “Namespace collisions” happen when two such sets overlap and cause unplanned-for ambiguities: the word “fender,” for instance, has one meaning in the namespace of auto parts and another in the namespace of electric guitars.
The original namespace, the ur-namespace, as it were, is the set of names we use for one another — the names in the phonebook. In the age of the global Net and search engines, this namespace has become pretty unstable. People with names like “John Smith” have always had to cope with identity confusion, but today, we all face collisions with other people who share our names.
My name isn’t quite so common, but not so uncommon, either, I have learned. When I worked as a theater and movie critic in the ’80s and early ’90s for the San Francisco Examiner, I discovered that a screenwriter who bore my name was beginning to have a successful career. For years I received congratulatory notes, including one from a fundraiser for an educational institution I once attended, who had to be disabused of the notion that I had newfound riches to share. I still get occasional emails from aspiring screenwriters begging me to look at their work.
Over the years I also discovered that there is a Scott Rosenberg in the Bay Area who is a jazz musician and composer. Since I confine my musical efforts to friends and family, this was less of a problem.
Now, though, it seems there is yet another Scott Rosenberg who is actually writing movie reviews for the San Francisco Examiner — which is, itself, not in any way the same newspaper that I wrote for a decade ago (that Examiner’s entire staff was absorbed into the Chronicle; the new Examiner is a freebie owned by conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz). This is distressing — and I can foresee a lifetime of search-engine confusion for both this newcomer and me. I wish he’d, like, have used a middle initial in his byline. (I’m sure he wishes I had done the same.)
There’s a new industry of startup companies and Web services trying to help organize the human namespace on the Internet. I’d heard of one called Zoominfo, “the search engine for discovering people, companies and relationships,” and I figured I’d see how well it handled the profusion of SRs. Not good. First name on the list is one Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. Who’s that? Zoominfo says it’s me — Salon exec and writer, former SF Examiner writer, and so on. Only where’d the “Mitchell” come from? My middle name is “Alan”! Zoominfo also lists another “Scott Mitchell Rosenberg” as a luminary in the comics world. Ahh — this must be the guy who let the “scottrosenberg.com” domain lapse a few years ago, allowing me to obtain it.
Zoominfo actually lists a “Scott Alan Rosenberg,” but it claims that he’s the jazz musician. Could the jazzy Scott and I have the same middle name? Or is Zoominfo just hopelessly confused? It’s got a whole bunch of other Scott Rosenbergs, including one who is the president of something called “The Rosenberg Group.” (That “the” is a little optimistic; Google says there’s a whole slew of “Rosenberg Groups” out there.)
Wikipedia has developed a practice of providing “disambiguation pages” so that when you search for information on, say, “Python,” you can say whether you want the page about big snakes, the page about the programming language, or the page about the British comedy group.
I think that the Net needs disambiguation pages for people. Really, the whole world does, too.
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