[extropy-chat] ExI profiled?

[Mike Dougherty]

On 1/20/07, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> ExIers, where are you from?
>
> Give the question your own interpretation (where do you live, or where did
> you grow up, or where do you want to live, or where is the place you go at
> newtonmas that you think of as home, for instance) and answer or not
> according to your comfort level.  The result speaks to both transparency and
> accuracy of online polls.
>
> Since we first did this question about 8 years ago, there seem to be fewer
> transparency advocates and more privacy fans.  Comments on that comment also
> welcome.  Mike I am traditionally a big transparency fan, but having the
> baby recently has caused me to rethink that notion.

I usually advocate trying to protect identity because it is all we
have/are in an online world.  That can be a difficult thing to do
because our world is generally too open.  For example, if I provide
information about myself to an archived forum, that information become
publicly available forever.  If that information changes, there is no
way to revoke it.  Generally web content is assumed to be "now"
regardless of how old it actually may be.  So out of date information
cannot be corrected because the "right" to manage that information is
immediately relinquished to the point in time it enters the public.
We will need a major upgrade to the infrastructure of the information
age before we have mechanisms that would allow me to authorize
information to a group (such as ExI) without coincidentally
permanently authorizing that information to the public.  Considering
the economic advantage to business/government to maintain the status
quo, and the complete lack of awareness in the general public about
the value of the information they carelessly give away - there is
little motivation to even consider how this upgrade might happen.
[several tangential thoughts aborted for lack of coherence]

Spike, what about having a baby has changed your view on transparency
vs privacy?  I could envision how a baby could sway someone in either
direction.