Fareed Zakaria posted an excellent piece on his website March 3 2011:

Are America's Best Days Behind Us?

I first read Mr. Zakaria's work years ago when he was doing a regular column for Newsweek. There was always something unique about his writing: a sense of clarity, the perspective of someone who isn't entrenched in one dogma or another. It was one of the things I missed most when I cancelled my Newsweek subscription. Not so much from being tired of its pages but more having less time to read them. I also suspect they stopped offering me the new subscriber rate.

Anyway, if you'd like a thoughtful, non-partisan, intelligent read on the reasons America is where it is and where it may find itself without thoughtful guidance, look no further.

--Jack

Laura June posted this piece on Engadget recently and I'd like to bring it to everyone's attention.

It's pretty clear that I believe in an individual's choice to use the internet in a way that doesn't supply the entire world with their name, their home address, and their mobile phone number. Part of the incredible richness that exists on the internet is exactly because people can use it without full disclosure. Sure, there are people that would rather have a cleaner, more scripted and controlled user experience. There are others that revel when hints of anarchy color things less black and white as well.

(Copyright Jackrabbitscrewball.com)

This clear division of attitudes made itself clear to me just this weekend as I was browsing the comments on a post about malicious android apps (also on Engadget). If you disregard the chaff comments (which are exactly why people decry anonymity on the internet) it's clear that there are two camps: those that prefer a guided controlled experience (iTunes apps) and those that prefer the freedom of an unguided market and accept the inherent risks (Google's Android market). Those same two camps will vote identically when asked if they approve of the TSA security measures before boarding an airplane. Full body scanners? It's either "Sign me up, I love being safe!" or "No thanks, I'd rather keep a shred of privacy and decency than give it up for unproven potential increases in safety."

You'll never reconcile these two groups, no matter how you ask the same question. All we can ever hope for are useful real world compromises that make the first group feel safer and take the least away from the second. I'll be opening comments up on this thread. Maybe we'll get a few that aren't anon spam too!

--Jack

Engadget link 3/27/2011: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/07/editorial-facebook-single-identities-and-the-right-to-be-anon/

I came across an interesting blog post about the evolution of Facebook privacy over the last 5 years. It's by Matt McKeon, a developer at IBM Research's Center for Social Software.

Just link yourself over here and click through the timeline links on the right side.

If your privacy is important to you, learn about it and take control.

I really like the posts on the front page here... maybe I'll not post more so this set will stay up front.

As I was adding the new RSS feed page the other day, I realized that not everyone understands what RSS feeds are all about. Yesterday I told Alice "I'm putting up an RSS feed page, is there anything you'd like on it?" Her reply was "What's an RSS feed?" So what is an RSS feed and why should you care?

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