

Transparency - davi
http://davibock.net/blog/090503_transparency/index.html

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jerf
Technology may have changed; humanity hasn't. There's a reason why we have
shades on our windows (and don't build houses entirely out of windows), and I
think it's more likely that this generation is going to rediscover those
reasons than to discover they weren't necessary.

As an old fogey of 30 who has been on the net for a long time (by most
standards now), one thing that I personally find very lacking in Facebook is
that you can only have one identity. Probably the _biggest_ reason I don't
join Facebook is that the resulting collision of high school/social etc.
(which I'm not that fond of anyhow and would face the choice of either
"friending" a whole bunch of people I don't want to friend or offending them
by rejecting them) and my tech/blog life would be very annoying for both sides
and very, _very_ annoying for me.

In fact, I think this is the root problem. If you had two personas online, one
a party animal and one a professional one, that were only poorly linked, then
we wouldn't have problems like "you can't be hired because you have been
pictured drinking". Old technology did this by default; every forum, every
newsgroup, every email chain I can be a new person, in fact I hardly have a
choice.

We do this in real life all the time, even when deciding who to hire. Until
that concept catches up with the online world in a bigger way, I think there's
going to be trouble. The young'uns may yet be right that it's not a problem,
though, because we may yet _return_ to this idea. (I emphasize the word
"return" to highlight that this is not a new idea, so going back to my first
sentence, there is some hope that we can settle on this because, again,
humanity hasn't changed and what worked once can work again. Those shades are
there so that behind them, we can choose our persona freely in our own living
space. They are not merely there to "hide" bad things, they are persona
firewalls.)

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jsz0
Very insightful write up. I definitely see it as a generational gap that I am
probably in the middle of and may never fully accept myself. I desperately
hope it will break the mold of this horrible phony society that so many people
live with. Let's face it, people get drunk, people say stupid things, they do
stupid things and sometimes in the middle of it all they do wonderful, kind,
and brilliant things too. We'll all be better off when it's acceptable to be
yourself and not worry so much about how people are going to judge you for it.
I've always felt like if someone wants to cyber stalk me and build some
aggregated profile of my life then I probably have nothing to worry about. In
the end they're the one being the creepy voyeuristic stalker.

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dan_the_welder
Seriously. You can never go into public office if you've gotten publicly
drunk, had an affair, smoked weed (Hi Bill Clinton)

So now we have this charade where people get their past sanitized and we live
with a public/private schitzophrenia that is incredibly unhealthy.

I was born in 68 and I feel like I am stuck on both sides of this. On one hand
I am self employed which insulates me and I personally believe I can do what I
want. On the other I kind of freak out when a customer friends me on Facebook,
because there I am with the red cup in my hand.

We as a culture need to grow up and accept our humanity and stop try to live
up to impossible ideals.

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Eliezer
Eventually people will have to change their names when they turn 22 to outrun
all their accumulated net debris.

~~~
aristus
Changing names after reaching majority or having a "family" name different
from your public name is fairly common in other cultures, eg Lula / Ignacio da
Silva or Abu Mazen / Mahmoud Abbas.

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mcav
Well-written.

We're eventually going to reach a point where most people actually know their
way around technology. At some point, everyone will have grown up with
technology, and their lives' intertwining with the internet will be second
nature.

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rw
To make available possibly-incriminating information _once someone knows who
you are_ is one thing... providing identifying information to possibly-
malicious strangers is a different animal entirely.

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mmphosis
Judgments. My mind is making them all the time, and I let them go.

Am I afraid of what I am showing to others? No, why would I be afraid to be
me. And, why would you afraid to be you? Judgments. But, the truth is we're
way too busy thinking about our own stuff to be making judgments about other
people's stuff.

Let's show up.

~~~
prodigal_erik
> we're way too busy thinking about our own stuff to be making judgments about
> other people's stuff

Sadly, we aren't. _You and I_ may be, but words like "nosy" and "busybody" and
"judgmental" are well known because they describe common behavior. Our species
is easily capable of tribalism, prejudice, persecution, and shunning. The
wingnuts have even started murdering doctors again, which is bad news for
coexistence.

