More of the meme

"A lot of us thought that [cyberpunk sci-fi author] Neal Stephenson's view of the world was the right view -- that cyberspace was going to be completely different from the real world, and you're going to be ten feet tall, and all that stuff," says [Wallop CEO Karl] Jacob. But as it turns out, he says, people don't want to be someone else when they're online. "Now a whole generation has come along and said, 'Wait a second -- my real life and my online life are actually the same thing."

From a Technology Review article on new social networking service Wallop.

This raises an interesting idea: that in the future, online anonymity won't be held with the same esteem that it has been in the past. In real life, there are situations in which anonymity is perfectly acceptable (I don't know the names of the people standing in line at McDonald's, and that's okay); others in which it starts to become awkward (why have we been sitting in class for the last month and I still don't know your name?); and others where it's downright creepy (you've live in the next-door apartment for two years, yet never seem to come out).

What this little quote suggests is that in the future, the number of situations in which anonymity online is going to seem appropriate will go down, while the number of situations in which stable identity-- even a parallel one that isn't identical to your real one-- is a virtue will rise. Put another way, the "on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog" cartoon won't seem funny any more.

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