Change requires courage. The courage to stand alone. Most of the people I have admired, and continue to admire, have stood up for their values without fear, and have done it in public, they’ve been punished for it, with restrictions, jail, even death.

So I don’t buy anonymity per se. I understand it but I would rather concentrate on fixing “onymous” rights. More later

I suppose total privacy is not something that we can expect when in public. Let me take the example of Howrah Platform – you buy a ticket – get in – don’t need to provide any other details. However you are in person , probably with your familiy or friends or colleagues – people might watch you or perhaps over hear what you are talking and will perhaps know the language you speak, number of kids you have .They might not know about what you do, where you studied.

Let’s look at other Platforms like say a social site – where we provide some information while subscribing. This instantly becomes public.

Staying anonymous might be the easiest way to maintain that privacy in public but stops you being a part of many platform.

To me staying private in public means I know what I am sharing and have a choice of what others would know about me ..

Then, after “seeing off” a few friends, I started to understand I was faced with a different station and travel culture than in my native Switzerland. Here, it’s quite sufficient if there is one person willing to take you to the station — and even then, this is some kind of a luxury at times.

In India, I remember we’d go to the station, 8-10 of us or more, because somebody that somebody we knew knew was leaving for a few weeks.

I grew to like the idea. It’s nice to have a whole bunch of friends to wave good-bye when you’re going off somewhere.

I want to be anonymous in public, that way privacy does not matter either way.

Will think about the ‘being private in public’ prompt. Something about appropriate personas for various virtual venues ?

Anne Johnson

A few years ago when developing the “Forum Contact Space”, one of the team suggested the idea that privacy in a shared (electronic) environment could be considered as if it was a currency. Hence, the default mode was that you would be “visible”, but you could save up your “privacy”; the use of “privacy” was a finite, valuable resource. Other people would know you were “invisible”, but this was suggested to be yet another cue on how to decipher the equivalent of “tele-body language”.

N

References:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=633292.633492

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=307759&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=10247044&CFTOKEN=41086477

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1246872&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=10247044&CFTOKEN=41086477