Posthuman Blues

The survival of democracy as we know it hinges increasingly on the inherently decentralized nature of the Internet. So I'm annoyed by Netizens who remain forever anonymous behind "clever" usernames and handles in a vainglorious attempt to keep their "real" lives and online lives discreet.

If you have something important to contribute to the datasphere, speak out! Use your real name! The Net is not one big chatroom; it's one of the central forces keeping our world from dissolution at the hands of mega-corporations, chomping-at-the-bit neo-fascists and "protective" watchdog government agencies out to fulfill the usual list of Big Brother power fantasies.

The childish reliance on Internet nicknames amounts to an admission of guilt. Guilt about what? Taking part in a liberal democracy, however seemingly immaterial or "virtual"? Ideas have always been "virtual'; while the Web has changed many aspects of our lives, it has not supplanted the sheer creative force of new insights and fresh dialogues. It has merely forced the boundaries further into the background.

And if you think that posting "subversive" material online while using an alias somehow disguises your tracks from the aforementioned bad guys, guess again. The odds are you're being watched anyway, if you're sufficiently interesting (or amusing). Which, from a merely statistical viewpoint, you're probably not. Even in Orwell's Oceania, the spooks who eavesdropped via telescreen were forced to perform spot-checks instead of lavishing 24-hour surveillance on a single given Party member.

There is no more "virtual." Conversely, there is no more "real" -- at least in the pre-cyberpunk sense. Making the leap to an information-driven existence is at least as ontologically bewildering as the advent of quantum mechanics, and every bit as critical for our future.

The government and the media want you faceless and nameless. Why are so many of us, armed with one of the most potent democratic tools imaginable, helping them along?