[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.
I'm going to propose something more specific if you want online anonymity. Change your name (or keep this in mind for your future child), both first and last, to something pretty common that suits your taste. When people google you, they'll get so many results of different people with the same name that you'll have anonymity through numbers.
Here is something to help you out, though I'm not sure how good of a tool it is: http://namestatistics.com/
Whenever I google my name, I can never find myself having to sift through hundreds of different people with the same first and last name.
Good point. Though name is only one of many attributes we have. You should also take a common job (how do you feel about being a waiter?), keep a common wardrobe, live in a big city, drive an average car, and watch/read average stuff. Oh yeah, you probably want to ask a surgeon to give you an average face.
Then you'll be anonymous... and you'll also have one of the most boring lives you could imagine.
Sorry, there's an alternative. Corporations are not above the law: if the citizens decide that certain stuff is illegal, then it becomes so. Full stop.
I realise many americans (and other people) hate any type of regulation, but this is exactly what they are for. You don't need to wonder how to stop bribes. You don't say: "Well, this is the way the world is going and we can't do nothing about it". You make a law against it, and then the police will do their best. Will it solve the problem? No, but it would definitely help.
Yes, but we are talking of the future. The fact that we can't do it in the present is not being challenged by anyone. The point is Schmidt's prediction that in the future we will.
Neither of those things is going to work. Grouping all the John Smiths uniquely is going to be possible given smart enough algorithms, so is finding out that John Smith was called Smith Johnson before his 18th birthday.
How many years do you give it? Currently it definitely doesn't work even when you add details like my profession, home town, current location, and even alma matter.
People can do this manually now given enough time by looking at where the person lives, what sort of things he writes about, how he writes (word frequency analysis etc.).
It's only a matter of time before computers can do it too and it's accessible in search engines as "find more results by this person" or something like that.
I'm going to propose something more specific if you want online anonymity. Change your name (or keep this in mind for your future child), both first and last, to something pretty common that suits your taste. When people google you, they'll get so many results of different people with the same name that you'll have anonymity through numbers.
Here is something to help you out, though I'm not sure how good of a tool it is: http://namestatistics.com/
Whenever I google my name, I can never find myself having to sift through hundreds of different people with the same first and last name.