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July 21, 2006
On the Internet, Anyone can Find Out if You Are a Dog
Peter Steiner's 1993 New Yorker cartoon posited a complete online anonymity: "On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog". At the time, this was quite true: a person could adopt any online persona they wanted to use, or any set of them, with no fear of discovery of their true identity unless they themselves revealed it. But the Internet has evolved since then, and web spiders like Google have uncovered enough information that it is now possible to find almost any information, including information people might want to hide. Like when an online journalist uses made-up sources for quotes, investing them with massive authority ("worked for the Reagan and Nixon administrations" and so on). This happens, of course, with print journalists as well. These are harder to catch, but they can be caught; ask Jayson Blair.
The beauty, and terror, of the Internet is that anyone can find out if you are a dog.
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Comments
That is hilarious and has kept me awake an hour longer than I had hoped to be. For all the MSM complains about blogging standards, blogs run rings around them in areas like fact checking, where the MSM is too lazy to care, especially if stories fit the template of their biases.
Posted by: Brian Medcalf at July 22, 2006 1:23 AM