Reluctant Blogger

I’ve never blogged under my own name before. The timing of this is then, I suppose, a little ironic given that it was prompted by events that caused some very well known bloggers to temporarily and perhaps permanently give up blogging. For anyone not familiar with what occurred, a very brief recap is here.

This will be a long post. (EDIT: Series of posts) It’s also a work in progress as I think through some issues, so please read with that in mind.

It’s about, among other things: personal history, blogging, Nazis, the Kathy Sierra incident, fear, Ze Frank, and “Radical Transparency.”

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Largely overlooked in the discussion of the Kathy Sierra incident this week, was an interesting juxtaposition with some other articles. In particular ComputerWorld’s “Web anonymity can sink your job search” and Wired’s already infamous issue on “Radical Transparency” and lots of attendant discussion all with basically the same message: you’d better start exposing yourself in public, online, stat if you want to participate in the business world (or get a job) anymore. Wired also helpfully included an attractive model in a removable Mylar dress with the header “Get Naked” just in case anyone was still missing the point.

I’m tech-savvy, blog-literate, and as a freelancer am almost always looking for my next job - but I don’t have a “personal” blog, and I certainly don’t seem to be participating in any Naked Conversations. So what gives? It’s certainly not due to lack of effort or material; I’m a regular contributor to a lot of different blogs and forums online. A quick survey of my participation in “The Conversation” just this week would include comments at:

• TechCrunch (re: Twitter vs. Dodgeball)
• Photo Matt (re: Facebook and age discrimination in the tech industry)
• Ze Frank (random thoughts and a snippet of a song I wrote for the sports racers)
• Publishing 2.0 (My own prescription for saving the news biz)
• Twitter stream (playing with the newest shiny toy in technology)
• CPU (hate speech incident)
• Scobleizer (hate speech incident)

There’s more, but that’s enough to make my point, and that’s pretty normal for me on a heavy work-travel week. Not a lot, but also still more and better thought out, frankly, than the contents of a lot of blogs - - and certainly a sufficient post-rate to establish some kind of an online presence. However - despite all of that contribution, over many years, I’ve never put everything in one place, nor have I put it under my own name before. Why?

Because online anonymity is an illusion, and some of us have legitimate reasons for wanting (and even needing) to keep our privacy.

I’m planning to explore both those reasons, and some possible strategies for addressing them in a transparent age over the course of this essay.

I will post Part II (On Violence) as soon as time allows.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 8:17 pm and is filed under , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.