True Names and the Digital Panopticon

This is a guest column written monthly for the Chinese business magazine “China Electronic Business” (invested by Jack Ma of Alibaba) and IT news site Interfax. This month’s column deals with digital identity with interesting cases from Science Fiction and today’s Asian digital scene.

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If you think you need to have Einstein’s brain to experience the space-time continuum, here is a way to do it from your living room – or by boarding a plane.

By working with different geographies, you can effectively get to travel back and forth in time: many things happening on Japan’s mobile scene are the future of the rest of the world, many key web ideas such as real-name social networks, virtual goods and online games were proven first in South Korea and as China’s web and mobile populations are exploding, more and more innovation is taking place there, pioneering new revenue and service models. But there is another way that can be just as effective.

Enthralled with the future

People working in the IT industry tend to get excited by new technologies, trying to make the future “happen faster”. People working in more traditional industries, especially those threatened by the rapid evolutions of digital media, tend to protect the present status-quo.

In addition to researchers, there is a special group of people whose passion is to imagine new possibilities. They are the science fiction writers. In many ways, Da Vinci and Jules Verne were science fiction writers. According to a friend of mine who is both a web entrepreneur and a writer, the CEO of Linden Lab was visiting investors on Sand Hill (a Palo Alto neighborhood where venture capitalists gather). He was showing the novel “Snow Crash” by Neil Stephenson and telling them “I want to build this”.
In addition to using today’s science fiction for inspiration, I found that one could use old science fiction to understand better how to solve today’s problems.

New solutions from old stories

With the ubiquity of digital cameras, the flourishing of social networks, the social sharing, tagging and other Twitter following, I am concerned with privacy. By researching the topic I came across three interesting stories I would like to share with you, my anonymous reader.

The first story is over 200 years old and is about prison. Quoting from Wikipedia: “The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the “sentiment of an invisible omniscience.””.

Does that feel familiar? Would you be self-censoring your blog posts or your shared pictures already? It might sound like a far-fetched comparison, but have a look at the following pictures, comparing the Panopticon with the “Conversation Prism”, a visualization of social media services proposed by PR executive Brian Solis. Simply replace “The Conversation” by “You” at the center of it. People are watching you from all sorts of angles, and you can’t tell who is watching.

Though many cities around the world are equipped with a closed-circuit television system for surveillance (it is a humorous coincidence that China’s main public channels are called “CCTV”), web innovators have successfully built what I would call a “Digital Panopticon”.

I understand the idea as applied to criminals, but what about regular people living in a “Panopticon Apartment”? This is what is happening online right now. If you are not convinced, go to 123people.com and type your name (note: this service works better in Western countries).

The second story I found in a novella written in 1981 by Vernor Vinge, a math professor, computer scientist and science fiction author. The story is called “True Names” and envisions a near-future where the most important thing for people online is to protect their real identity, or “True Name”. I will explain why this matters.

Why True Names matter

First, in the social networking and virtual worlds industries, there is an ongoing debate whether users should be anonymous or use their real name. Facebook is a strong promoter of real-name, MySpace uses nicknames. It is possible to find equivalents of both in many countries. In Korea and China, the government is also part of the debate, which has spilled over to whether or not bloggers should be identified. In recent news, I found three interesting cases that got me to think:

The first case happened last year in Korea, when one blogger nicknamed “Minerva” started to blog economic commentary on the forum of Daum, a leading web portal in Korea. Within a few months, Minerva gained a large following and massive influence on stock prices until the Minister of Justice mentioned a possible investigation. In January 2009, the person-believed-to-be-Minerva was arrested as according to Korean law:

A person spreading a false rumor maliciously intending to damage the public interest by using an electronic machine can be sentenced to imprisonment for under five years or given a fine of under 50,000,000 won (~US$50,000)
– Electronic Communication Fundamental Law Article 47 Clause 1, Republic of Korea

Minerva was eventually acquitted and released in April. The reasoning of the court was that if any of the statements he made were false, he did not know they were false. One point that was raised is that the regulation itself might be unconstitutional.

The second case happened already in several places: it is what is now called “human flesh search”. Unsurprisingly perhaps, one of the most famous cases is again from Korea, back in 2005: a girl refused to clean after her dog relieved itself in a subway car in Seoul. Pictures of her circulated and she was rapidly identified, vilified and pressured for apologies. The girl eventually threatened to kill herself if not left alone. She is rumored to have quit her university. In late 2008, a famous Korean actress committed suicide due to Internet pressure around money matters. Readers familiar with the Chinese Internet have surely heard of similar cases. Again, the online mob – I would not call them “netizens” in that case – found the people’s true names.

Finally, to highlight a case where anonymity is not only welcome but important: Match.com, the world’s leading online dating service, announced last month that it was integrating a voice function allowing users to talk with a prospective match without having to divulge any real contact information. Though not overly innovative, this is obviously a useful feature and shows how the ability to manage personal information is critical to interactions.

Identity crisis

While Facebook is trying to force its real-name policy on users – just like Cyworld did in Korea 10 years before – and celebrities get impersonated on Twitter, being able to chose to express ideas under real name or anonymously while respecting others’ identities is increasingly important. By the way, did you know US president Barack Obama was on Twitter? I re-tweeted a recent message of his.

benjaminjoffe: RT @BarackObama: I can never find fortune cookies in China – how odd!
Surprising comment from a President-elect – maybe because I wrote it for him?

Though one could argue that privacy was a momentary inefficiency between life in the woods and total transparency, you are most likely born like me in an age when privacy mattered. I hope we will be able to phase out gracefully before transparency make things too uncomfortable.

Comments are welcome to benjamin [at] plus8star.com. Our presentation on “Digital Identity” is available on www.slideshare.net/plus8star.

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+8* | Plus Eight Star lives in the future in Asia and can get you there too.