Your phone rings. You say hello. A voice on the other end begins to speak. It is not uncommon to create a mental picture of that person. From the voice (and sometimes the name) one gets clues about sex, age, nationality, ethnic origin, original language, race, and so on.
On the net, however, one is reduced to the person's name and their command of English. And at times neither of these provide clues about the person. From time to time the person might use pronouns, or a statement about their husband or wife, that give you a gender clue. There are times when I have discovered that a correspondent had the opposite sex of the person in my mind.
So, here's the deal: you can begin this project by writing a description of what you think I look like. Send that to me.
And, of course, there are no limits to what you can describe. Maybe you think rgardner@* is a specialized version of "Eliza", an infobot, or an honest-to-god alien!
And, if you are always paranoid about people, like one portrait painter, use the finger command on me, like so:
finger rgardner@*
If you can't stand the suspense, then take a look at my resume and you will get to see a picture of me... unless that's somebody else!
Please copy and distribute this idea. In fact, why don't you edit this file, replace my name with yours, and send it on to somebody you know only via the Internet. To someone who doesn't know what you look like, or maybe even your gender! Oh, oh! Am I PG13 yet? Anyway, you can also just send it on to any number of people you know and tell them to give it a whirl.