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Internet Identities - Who Are We? The miraculous medium which is the Internet provides access to unprecedented communication on a global scale. On a personal scale, I discovered the PARKINSN listserv support group on-line in July 1995. Both events, going on-line and finding a Parkinson's Disease (PD) support group, changed my life. The Upside: I can now lay claim to a PD cyber-family whose members are contributors to several PD forums on-line. The Downside: I have discovered Internet 'games' - hoaxes, viruses, flames, spam, and multiple identity syndrome. This is still an uncontrolled frontier, after all. A brief history. The Internet was created in 1972 for some USA government agencies and universities; it was 'free' and limited to plain-text-based E-mail messaging. And the games began: E-mail anonymisers entered the scene (begging the question: When does 'anonymising one's E-mail address' morph into 'protecting one's privacy' and 'concealing one's identity'?) After the World Wide Web (WWW) was invented in 1991, photographic images became WWW-viewable and Internet-transferable. In fact, pornography, much of it illegal around the world, comprised the bulk of the initial traffic on the WWW. 'Chat rooms' and 'avatar games' where identities are re-invented as a given part of the 'action', and which had been popular in the text-based Internet world, now flourished. Enter the general public of the global village, you and I, who want to look up information for homework assignments, or buy a book at amazon.com, or check out the hurricane warning, or locate long lost relatives, or share inspiration via a web site, and who don't necessarily understand what kind of world they are surfing into. Anonymity can be used to share ideas, emotions, and information without racial, religious, disability, lifestyle, or economic 'factors' getting in the way. Anonymity can also be used to manipulate and deceive with apparent impunity. It pays to be circumspect: I would never walk into Central Park (say) and sit down on a bench donated by Columbia University (say) and lay my emotional self bare to a stranger who simply happens to wear a nametag declaring "Hi! I'm Joe and I have PD!", just as I would never leave my grandson or granddaughter in the care of a stranger wearing a nametag claiming "Hi! I'm Joe and I am a babysitter!" Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) pertains here. Most of the WWW forums and chat rooms and website services are free; if we pay nothing for a service, we need to be cautious about how we use it, especially in this market-driven society of ours. Which brings me to the concept of a market-driven WWW. 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 potential pitfalls. When telephones were a relatively new technology, some were abused; I worked for the phone company way back when, advising customers on handling obscene or harassing calls. Caller ID and other techno-advances have transformed that scourge into a virtual antique. (Telemarketers are the new version, but technology is catching up with them too.) The difference between the telephone communications networks and the Internet and WWW communications networks is that the users, you and I, pay hard cash for every aspect of telephone service. In a sense, those transactions form the basis of our 'id' or 'password' or entitlement. I suspect that future Internet users will have to ante up something similar, maybe in the form of a combination Internet-identity-passport-cashcard. My cyber-hint for today? If you join an on-line PD forum, I recommend sharing telephone numbers and telephone calls as part of getting acquainted. My telephone number and my E-mail address have been plastered all over the Internet for the past two years. I have never received a harassing or obscene phone call; there is nothing to fear but fear itself; trust me! Do not necessarily suspect all, but do be circumspect with all. The medium may not bring the message we expect, but it is still a miracle, in my humble opinion. ------------------------------------------------------------------ as published in the Parkinson Paper, Volume 25, Issue 2, May 2002 newsletter of the Parkinson's Society of Ottawa-Carleton 1053 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1Y 4E9 Tel: 613 722 3241 Janet Paterson Member Editorial Commitee ------------------------------------------------------------------ http://webhome.idirect.com/~janet313/janetsjo/publ/index.html janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit primarily perky, parky pd: 56-41-37 cd: 56-44-43 tel: 613-256-8340 email: [log in to unmask] my newsletter: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newvoicenews/ my website: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn