Something many people (me included) seem to have taken for granted about the internet is that the anonymous nature of discourse is the source of much of the vitriol and short-sighted or unbecoming comments/postings found online.
This argument seems to be falling apart now with the emergence of Facebook as the most popular, populated social networking site; most people go by their own names but I don't detect a major change in the etiquette of the majority of people that show up on my feed compared with the random comments on blogs I read or Youtube videos. The topics are typically more personal, of course, because they are meant to be amongst 'friends' but in many cases that only makes things worse...
Is it that the denizens of the web were conditioned previously into this ridiculousness by living with the anonymous internet that we are voluntarily waving away and failing to adjust their behavior accordingly? Or perhaps people actually don't realize yet that all of this is being recorded and their grandchildren will have no problem mining for choice quotes from their grandfather in his youth calling people "faggots," fighting with his girlfriend in a public space online, or arguing ferociously with his peers over trivial bullshit.
I am beginning to think that the more thoughtful of us were making an excuse before for everyone else by assigning blame to anonymity. To some people, the internet is not the same as a public park. Unfortunately for them, it actually is a public park... with a massive surveillance system in place and a stenographer. Thoughts?
some also complain about the restrictive conformity and group policing part of facebook; is that an inevitable repercussion to the move away from anonymity?
ReplyDeletealso--is anonymity really that big deal? most of the time one can delete and block the troll; the most persistent can get around that, and then the blogger (for example) just has to delete them; editors for discussion lists also solve a lot of problems. Maybe Lanier overstates it.
btw, do you know of any good chart programs, charts that I can use almost like an updatable spread sheet, except they would be excessible and easy to use (maybe like the timeline program you found?)?
People seem to be increasingly aware of the risks associated with putting personal information online -perhaps it's just the elite, but regardless, it's noteworthy as I believe we are starting to see a cleavage between those who are willing to put everything online, those who scrub, and the anonymous trolls who think they're safe, not all categories are exclusive, and "J"s question about whether it's a big deal lingers...In a few years are we going know who everyone really is based on IP addresses, cookies, and all those other delights that are already around, I suppose we could already know if we cared to learn.
ReplyDeleteI do think that group policing and conformity are inevitably attached to a move away from anonymity, but perhaps only because those are the calling cards of human society at large.
ReplyDeleteAnd I find the personal information sharing debate extremely interesting. I am one of those who has all my privacy settings turned down all the way; I feel like I shouldn't have to hide who I am from anyone or anything. I realize this is naive from a number of angles: I get data mined to hell, surely, but although I don't arrogantly make the claim that targeted advertising has no effect on me, I have Adblock on all of my computers and phone and don't really see them and I watch television that is downloaded from a private television torrent tracker and all the ads are stripped out...
And then there's the act of finding employment once I'm done with school, and this is where I get really stupid. I don't like the idea that something I do outside of the workplace that doesn't have an effect on my job performance should be held against me on principle and I'd like to pretend that I can find a place to work that would check my online presence out and say: 'Oh hey, this guy is actually interesting; let's choose him over the guy who scrubbed his data!'
This is all magical thinking (that is, I want it to come true just from me imagining it even though I don't believe in magic and realize the flaws in my arguments).
And it's not that I feel safe, it's that I'm comfortable with not being safe. I like talking to strangers, too.
Oh, and as far as the software; have you looked into using Google Spreadsheet? I'm fairly positive you can make them public and I know for sure that you can make charts, etc. just like in Excel. You could probably even embed it on your blog?
ReplyDelete