Our New Years

Realized last night that I haven’t posted anything in awhile… We’ve been a little busy. Besides all the regular holiday-time hoopla, I’ve started studying for Exam 9 again (second time taking it) and we took a little trip over new years. Tons of fun hanging out with some awesome friends out east in Colonial Williamsburg.

We also got to spend an afternoon in DC at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Again, tons of fun with some great hosts.

Google+ and Pseudonyms

If I “disappear” from Google+ over the next few days, it is due to Google’s policy on requiring that users use their real names: they’re banning the use of pseudonyms. My stance on this policy is that they have every right to do whatever they want with their service, but that by making this decision they’re severely limiting Google+’s potential.

I don’t use my real name or those of my family members on services or sites that I intend to post publicly on. If you’ve read my blog or my posts on twitter or tumblr you’ll know that I never use my last name and that I use nicknames for my daughters.

My first and last name are uncommon enough that I am easily searchable online. Because of this, if I were to post publicly using my real name I would be creating a fairly direct connection between my online activities and my offline life. My offline life includes my wife and daughters.

The major problem with this is that the internet is not a friendly or safe place. While a lot of the danger and unfriendliness comes from the internet being mostly anonymous, forcing everybody that uses Google+ to use real names won’t fix the problems this anonymity causes. The real name policy will not change the fact that public posts, or comments made on posts that are public, can be read by the anonymous internet.

Discounting my own right to privacy I must also consider my daughters’ rights to privacy, their right to decide which aspects of their lives they want to disclose or keep secret from the rest of the internet. Part of being a parent is making these kinds of decisions for my children until they are mature enough to make these decisions on their own. The problem I and other parents have with decisions regarding information disclosure, on- or off-line is that once information has been disclosed, it can never really be taken back.

As my daughters get older, they may decide that they’d rather not have certain aspects of their life known to the world at large (the internet). I would like to be able to share information about my (their) life now in a way that will protect their right to disclose information later in life. Using a pseudonym offers that protection.

If I had to use Google+ with my real name, I would have to sever all connections between Google+ and any other service I use as these other services use my various pseudonyms. These connections would create more links between my online and offline lives. I would also not be able to post or comment on anything public. How I use Google+ would be severely limited due to the risks I, and I’m sure there are others, feel are involved. I would need to use Google+ like a “walled garden” in very much the same way I now use Facebook. Google+ could be so much more than that.