Econometa

Ed Batista quotes Esther Dyson (reg req’d) saying that:

The popular perception is that people want anonymity; in fact, it appears that most people crave recognition. Many young people want it so much that they join multiple networking sites, rate themselves and friends on various scales, and fill in online questionnaires and surveys. Even as individuals evince more and more concern about privacy and identity theft, they flood onto the Web as themselves, publishing blogs, posting photos, contributing reviews, and revealing all (or so it seems) on dating sites.

In effect, people are trading anonymity for a voice.

Ed agrees, concluding that attention is the opposite of anonymity.

I agree with Esther that people are willing to part with anonymity for a voice, both to participate in conversations and to achieve recognition; and I also agree with Ed that part of raising a voice is to attract attention. But I’m not so sure that this is a global “trade,” or that attention is therefore the opposite of anonymity.

It seems to me that most people want both anonymity *and* a voice. And what they want most is *control* over whether they are anonymous or recognized in each transaction. Just because I publish a blog and contribute reviews doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be anonymous when surfing the net. I’d bet that most people who have left comments and contributions as themselves have also been in situations where they preferred to do so as an “anonymous coward”. In some cases it might just be a matter of being more polite, in others the subject might be sensitive and private, like a medical condition.

I think that a key reason that people want to control anonymity is that identity, like all personal data, has value; and so if I’m going to give up my anonymity, it should be in exchange for something valuable in return. Joining a social network gives me contact with like-minded people; blogging lets me participate in a conversation I care about; and I pretty much only fill out a form or questionnaire in order to get to on-line content that would be inaccessible otherwise.

People do and should have concerns about privacy and identity theft, but that doesn’t mean they want to live in an anonymous bubble; it means they want as much control as possible over whether each piece of personal data is completely private, accessible by a select group, or public for all to see. So rather than being the opposite of anonymity, I think that attention is one of many valuable things that can entice people to give up anonymity — but only if this happens in a manner that is under their control.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2005 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Personal data. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.