A couple of days back in work I was given the task of preparing a seminar on web-user security to be given at the end of may. Not very interesting in and of itself but it’s got me thinking. The guts of the content is to do with the rise of social networking sites such as myspace, bebo or (the much better package) virb and so the attraction to to the masses.
For what ever reason I have a way defaulting to a particular model of research before doing any formal teaching. It goes a little bit like this:
- Outline current position / problem / situation.
- Go back as far as possible and, assuming change, explain old position.
- Observe transition(s) between the two points.
- Highlight changes / constants I feel are important or interesting.
Wither or not any of this makes it into the final draft kinda irrelevant but I find it a good way to get into the subject matter. So while I was playing about with things like hypercard on my dad’s LC II back in 92-93 and had seen the internet on Dr Irvine’s computer it wasn’t until I got to uni in 97 that I got my real introduction to the internet. This was back in the day of dial-up, £100+ costs just to have an isp and then cost/minute for use so home internet connections were fairly rare. And what did we use the internet for? Well, boring enough, the same as the kids today. Easy communication. Yeah, I could get all sorts of info, and yeah there were cool sites (for the technology!!) but usually we used it to talk to each other. Remember that these were the days before mobile phones so andy (http://www.fotophobia.com) and I would arrange on the train on the way to uni to be in a particular chat room at a particular time, or send emails in the same way that we now use text-messages. It was great cause it was sudo-anonymous. The first thing you got bombarded with was “sal?” sex-age-location (or something like that) and hey you could say whatever you liked cause there were no photos, no location data, no school you went to, nothing, and if you got found out you simply left that room, changed your name and went into another room. There was a built-in security thing in my head to not actually get too involved with people, don’t give out too many details cause these people are probably bluffing more than you were. As there was no permanent record of who you were you could be who you liked.
Today, while we still use chat clients, more and more people also use a more permanent medium. We produce content for others to see. Some people share photos with friends, some people want to be famous, some people just like ranting in the hope that someone will listen but more and more it is simply an extension of our regular lives. Is this a bad thing? Is it a good thing? What it will, and already does, highlight is the blur the lines between private / public / employment.
I have always refrained form adding my name to this site as don’t feel the need to (or maybe still hung up from early preconceptions of the internet). Of course someone somewhere will have linked to here using my name and so you can eventually get here from google if you try hard enough. So do I just give in & give up my anonymity?
Thing is that I think there is something more to it. See currently the readership of this place currently falls into 2 categories.
1. Friends & family who check up on me from time to time when they’re bored in work.
2. People who search for some part of the content. This is surprising but it’s amazing what people search for.
Obviously the first group of people know me and reading these pages doesn’t add that much to their knowledge of who I am. The second group come here looking for something in particular and, hopefully, get what they want and leave again. If I add my name to this then a third group is added to the list - people trying to find out info on me. On the surface there is no big deal with this, there is nothing on here that I’m ashamed of (I’m not responsible for the spam!!) but there is more to me than this. For example I don’t write about my job as there are privacy issues and I don’t want to loose it. Does this then mean that future employers look me up in google find nothing about my professional life and assume that I don’t actually care too much about it and therefore not consider me for the position? I don’t write about my social life as I don’t think it’s an interesting topic for anyone to write about. So do old friends look me up and think I’m even more boring than I used to be and so decide not to get in touch?
So do I include this third group or leave it at the first two? Is anonymity something even worth striving for? Do I need to add ‘what I’m doing now’ and ‘what I’m thinking now’ sections to the site?
When I first glanced at this campaign I immediately thought it was, as every other campaign seems to be, about climate change but Turnoff TV Week isn’t actually a reminder to turn off rather than leave on standby but, shock horror and attempt to watch less TV.
I should add that the building is a police station.
