If Digital Doppelgangers Turn

I was watching The Island last night trying to keep myself awake and wondering if I would ever own a clone of my very own. I, unlike others, wouldn’t be riddled with guilt for bringing a doppelganger to life as a medical just-in-case. Then it struck me though: I have clones online haunting the trackless waste of cyberspace—What if they all fuse together into an uberforce of artificial dark cunning and turn on me? After all, I’ve dabbled in personal avatar creation on many an occasion, more so than most I think; and then there's the looming threat that at some point technology might pull a Matrix on us.

Check this out: I have a Second Life, an IMVU avatar, and a Digg profile, plus active profiles in Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, and aSmallWorld. I'm also a Wikipedia contributor. I’ve spread my online persona so thick that sometimes I feel I’m more real online than off. Is the Internet undercutting my true self? After reading fellow blogger and friend Ryan’s post on her experiences with MyCybertwin.com, I was immediately enthralled by the idea of having a fake me taking care of my most quotidian conversations. I immediately created my own CyberTwin and let him loose on my friends. Although the conversations were totes retarded, it was fun having a virtual Juan chatting away with my online contacts. It was evident it was a fake. But is this a foreboding of something creepier on the horizon?

What’s your take on this? Can digital doppelgangers gain precedence over the real you, to the point where you yourself become irrelevant? If so, can the weather ever lift, or is this exponential? How much can I nurture my own online persona before it Frankensteins into an unstoppable force that feeds on itself? Am I being a paranoid alarmist?