I attended the World Tecnology Summit & Awards in New York last week. I was impressed with some the more well-known of the information technology attendees: The Electronic Frontier Foundation's John Perry Barlow, Microsoft Tablet PC's Bert Keely, The Wall St. Journal's Walt Mossberg, Groove Networks' Ray Ozzie, and Lindows.com's Michael Robertson.

As with most such events, several of the less famous participants provided much food for thought. I'll be talking about some of them in future posts. Although I lived in the city quite a few years back, I had neglected many of the tourist activities ... made up for some of that this time around.

Some thoughts on privacy and the global village: Back when the web was young (1993), the New Yorker published its famous cartoon, "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog." To my mind, that kind of utopian anonymity just isn't possible in the new internet village.

The reality is better described in Roger Rosenblatt's Rule #2--"Nobody is thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves--just like you." That puts so-called internet security in a new light. The promise of the internet is that everyone can "stand up and be counted," not hide behind the spammer's ever-moving email addresses.

I've had a web presence since 1995 and from the beginning have used my real name, mailing address, telephone number and a constant email address. For better or worse, being who you really are and taking responsibility for the things you do is a lesson the internet community seems slow to learn.

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