this message is cross-posted to all parkinson's disease forums on the internet To: new voice net <[log in to unmask]>, new voice news <[log in to unmask]> From: janet paterson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 11:16:19 -0500 Subject: internet identities - who are we? hi all the internet is 30 years old it has always been free it has always been e-mail and plain-text based not very interesting for **'stereotype warning'** the information systems dweebs who ran the computer rooms in the universities and the american government agencies where the internet's data bases were mostly located i do believe that 'spam' was invented around this time along with other tricks of the bored hackers' trade e.g. anonymiser programs for 'anonymising' one's email address i.e. making one's email look like it came from somewhere else i.e. 'protecting one's privacy' aka 'concealing one's identity' 20 years later, when the world wide web was invented, suddenly images and photographs were easily wwweb transferable and viewable the primary use of the wwweb in its early days was for viewing and sharing pornography of all kinds, much of it illegal around the world and for 'chat' rooms and 'avatar' games where identities are hidden and invented as a given part of the 'action' enter the general public of the global village like you and me who want to look up information for homework assignments who want to buy a book at amazon.com who want to check out the hurricane warning who want to locate and email long lost relatives who want to share information and inspiration via a web site who don't necessarily understand what kind of world they are surfing into my old metaphor of the bench in grand central station still holds anyone can come and sit on the bench beside me wearing any name tag at all making any claim at all and not be expected to 'prove' anything at all caveat emptor = buyer beware if we pay nothing for a service we need to be circumspect about its source in this market driven society of ours which brings me to the concept of a market driven wwweb meshing a non-commercial entity which has been geared to anonymity with a commercial community which has to guarantee transaction security above all or fail has one or two inherent pitfalls telephones were abused in their early years; i worked for the phone company many moons ago and one of my duties there was advising customers on how to handle harrassing or obscene phone calls with technology and caller identification options that scourge is virtually an antique now [telemarketers are the new version but technology is catching up with them too] the difference between the telephone communications networks and the internet and wwweb communications networks is the user you and me are paying hard cash for every aspect of telephone service the cash is a form of id or password or entitlement i suspect that users of the internet and wwweb will need to ante up something similar maybe in the form of a combination internet-identity-passport-cashcard which could be a requirement for access to hey! support groups like ours unfortunately such a 'screening' system would only limit membership to real '3D' people; dweebs and hackers could still 'infiltrate' but only one at a time and only using their real names until then, be careful out there ... janet janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit perky, parky pd: 54/41/37 cd: 54/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask] smail: 375 Country Street, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0 a new voice website: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ is your website accessible? http://www.w3.org/WAI/ ===== janet paterson EMAIL: [log in to unmask] WEB-SITE: a new voice: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ ______________________________________________________________________ Web-hosting solutions for home and business! http://website.yahoo.ca ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn