From The Washington Post "Short Stack" Blog
The Internet as the real world
Guest Blogger: Coye Cheshire
In popular discourse, the online world is often treated as a fundamentally different place than the offline world.
Discussions about risks and uncertainties on the Internet tend to lean toward one of two extremes. At one end are optimistic utopians who point out that the Internet provides unlimited opportunities to interact in large-scale conversations and e-commerce transactions without geographic restrictions....
At the opposite extreme, others fear that the Internet will become a virtual Sodom, rampant with threats to security, privacy, and morality....
Such polar extremes are not especially useful because they tend to conflate information technologies with their social uses. The telephone can be used to reach a loved one, or to call in a bomb threat. The pen can write poetry or a death sentence....
Note: Coye Cheshire is an editor of the new book eTrust: Forming Relationships in the Online World, which explores a range of questions from how to assess a reputation online to the limits of Internet trust.