The High Price of Anonymity

This video is 48 minutes long. Worth it in my opinion.

In the past, I have railed a bit about the how the Internet has sped the devolution of culture.

I did so long before I knew that "Web 2.0" was a ten-dollar word term for nonsense, i.e. the posting of unsubstantiated drivel on Wikipedia, putting up web sites full of misinformation, making up stories and data whole cloth, mindless chatter on bulletin boards, and the posting of bizarre theories and conjectures as if they were actually based on fact.

And then, of course, there are those who act out their rich fantasy lives on bulletin boards, and the folks who seek out attention by flaming others, and the bevy of nameless faceless trolls and "click-and-treat" whores who will do almost anything to have their presence acknowledged.

Not to be left out, we also have the folks who insist on forwarding every bad joke, every disturbing picture taken at a bad wedding, and every improbable Urban Legend.

Finally, of course, we have the folks who think it a very good idea to forward every paranoid Oliver-Stone-worthy political theory, rumor, or invective-filled diatribe they can find against the opposition, whoever he or she may be.

Welcome to the Internet!

What I find particularly frustrating is the notion that all opinion is equal.

The theory here is that people who have never sailed a boat across a pond are on an equal footing with Joshua Slocum who built his own boat and sailed it solo around the world.

And so on the Internet we have folks who berate Cesar Milan for his dog training techniques, though they themselves have yet to train a dog to walk on a lead, much less wrestled an aggressive and mature Pit Bull hell-bent on using all his teeth.

Of course, the instant experts do not start and stop in the field of dogs, do they? The same type of people can be found in nearly every forum writing on every topic, from hawking to law, from car mechanics to farming, from genetics to politics.

So is there a fix?

Hardly.

Bullshit has always been with us, and the only difference now is that it can be thrown farther, with a single click of a mouse, than ever before

In the above video, however, Andrew Keen nails one of the core problems of the Internet: anonymity.

It is axiomatic that honest men and women have real names and addresses, and do not hide behind fake monikers or "handles."

When people are allowed to be anonymous, they no longer feel bound by self-restraint and responsibility. People who have done nothing can say anything, and fakes can be presented as genuine experts.

Too often, the result is a kind of chaos in which people without jobs, or groups with very pointed political or social agendas they are trying to mask, spend all day trying to warp and twist the knowledge base.

The result is a kind of Internet version of Gresham's Law, in which lunatics and idiots drive out the sober, the sane and the knowledgeable. When truth and fact become exhausted, lies, misstatements and distortions are left to stand.

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