Allan Bishop and I engaged in a rather interesting short discussion this morning on blogs, public discourse and what it means to share your thoughts in the internet era. He raised the story of the chap that went online and suddenly discovered extensive discussion amongst classmates over his shortcomings. Commentary was written with the assumption that the subject of their discussion would never actually see the content. I made the statement that when I throw stuff online I simply presume that it is public, even if I do not intentionally make it so. Case in point…this blog site. Although it can be accessed and shows up in Google searches, I don’t actually link to it from anywhere. Only a couple people have been pointed to it at different points. I am not deliberately keeping it secret or hidden, I just want to see if and how I actually use it before deciding how I would intentionally share it. So it remains unlinked, but still findable should someone make a deliberate attempt to search for it.
But how much of this is actually in my control. Not as much I would suspect I or most people would think. Therefore I try to exercise some discretion on what an how I write to the blog.
What about anonymous broadsheets of the 17th and 18thCs? Although published under pseudonyms, small circles were often aware of to whom each could be attributed. So, is there any degree of anonymity today. Much less I would argue unless one takes great technical pains to cover ones footsteps. However, sniffing out the breadcrumbs is also tied to how technically ept one is…so there are varying degrees of anonymity and no universal application to a single individual. Not sure what all of this means, but it raised the question of author’s intentions. I perceived that a diary was much more private than a journal and Allan held the opposite. I related a journal to a more businesslike entry of daily transactions and a diary to a more emotionally driven critique of thoughts and feeling. The journal, Allan thought was more of this…and further, a gender issue arises. I had always felt that journals were something that was in the male domain and a diary applying more to the feminine. This too is something of discussion. Thoughts?
