But I don't want you to know who I am!

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Yes, but there are two key differences between the work place/small town analogies and the situation that would be created by this proposed law.

I'll grant you that - but I do still wonder if technology enable us to have that small town relationship in a much larger community. Of course there are psychologicaal and physiological barriers at some point - but the technology seems to at least enable things moving in this direction.

The other thing about technology is I wonder over time whether or not privacy is even possible. After I saw the movie The End of Violence, I became hyper aware of all the surviellance cameras there are just about everywhere you go. It's kind of big brotherish but we already spend an awful lot of time on camera, add the GPS feature on cell phones - red light cameras, IP address logging etc. maybe we should focus less on protecting our privacy and more on protecting our rights to be ourselves in public.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

I'll grant you that - but I do still wonder if technology enable us to have that small town relationship in a much larger community. Of course there are psychologicaal and physiological barriers at some point - but the technology seems to at least enable things moving in this direction.

There has been research that seems to indicate that whether you live in a small community or a large metropolitan area, people tend to have close relationships with about the same number of people. It seems like we're more impersonal in big cities because you come across more people you don't know, but in the end, we all hit some maximum upper limit of social capaicty which is relatively stable (accounting for the expected statistical distribution of individual variations) from person to person. So while the internet may offer the advantage of widening the georgraphical net of who you know, it most likely just means that other acquaintances will fall off the table, or never get on the table to begin with.