Comment by Cumulonimbus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cumulonimbus | Hacker News Reader

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I remember quite some time ago, before Social networks. Before blogs. Before all of what we think of the WWW.

We were still in Web 1.0 , with email, usenet, IRC, and other then-essential services. Dial-up was the way online. And when people talked with each other, we were told to not release who we are. Be guarded in your real-identity.

And that lead to user1 talks with user2. I didn't know if user2 was white, black, asian, hispanic, native, male, female, transgender, gay, asexual, or what. I only knew from the content of the text we traded in communication. There was enough bandwidth for pictures, but didnt. Webcams were bad and expensive. Scanners were hard to come by. And there was no impetus to link a pic to a person's text.

Now, it's "Real Name Policy". Facebook will encourage friends to rat your lying profile to catch you. Google will do similar, or datamine your real content. Everyone wants a picture for your profile.

What used to be "person talks to person", is now "Person with forced specific identity talks to person with forced specific identity". And it certainly doesn't feel better than before. It feels strictly worse, bringing identity politics in with it.

I want the old days back.

This really is a problem that cannot be fixed by pretending that it doesn't exist. Are you going to ignore the fact that by "forcing" identities, we are unable to behave in a way that makes identity irrelevant? The only way we can currently achieve the utopia in which gender, race, sexuality, class, attractiveness, etc don't matter is when we purposefully construct an environment where it all magically disappears. While it's great that internet communities give us the promise of a fully integrated society, these communities are built on a fragile and naive premise. That is, when people on IRC begin to link their Facebook profiles, nobody is going to be able to control the way that people begin to react to the ideas coming from the identities of the people on the other side of the screen. Social networks aren't the problem, they simply reveal the insidious nature of the problem.

But it's not forcing identities, or it wasn't back in the day.

Were you black? It didn't matter. White? So what. Male? Female? It didn't matter.

The words on the screen, and the thoughts behind the superficial bodily stuff was what mattered. How did they think? How did they communicate their ideas? How did they collaborate? What were their ethics and values? -- Those were what mattered, not that someone had a blue mohawk and were bisexual. Those things didn't matter.

Better yet, this method also transcended poor and rich... Yes, you had to have a certain amount to access a computer and the internet. Or you hacked the local university's access. Or used it at the library. Or had a cool friend. Except, now it's what you think, not what stylish clothes you wore, or the jewelry you had.

And this blurring of gender, sexual preference, race, weight, height,.. you name it was distilled down to "what's in that skull". And someone whom you might never walk up to and talk with, you could strike conversations with them, and they you. It also was the first steps of breaking down national borders - I could talk with people who say they live in Europe, or Asia, or Africa, or wherever...

At that time, for a small window, "We" were one peoples of this world. As the Hacker's Manifesto put it;

"We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals."

I await this day to come again. Hopefully the next time, we can meet face to face, and celebrate our differences and come together as one peoples of this world.. But a few of us saw it the first time, for a bit.

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