The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing we do would be private.

I then moved on to another article that talked about how Google(?) was working on an algorithm that could evaluate the writing style of someone online and make a good correlation as to who actually wrote it. Even if the author had posted anonymously or with a pseudonym.

The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing that we do online would be private.

But is this idea of “privacy” such a good thing? Ultimately, what it really is is the idea that we can go out in public or online and be anonymous.

And some people see anonymity as the same as the freedom to do anything they want. And as we saw in London over the past few days, anything they want seems to cover a wide swath of things that most civilized societies consider wrong.

Some examples of things anonymous people do:

• looting and destroying property
• verbally harassing people
• generally behaving like boorish trolls

And people who are willing to stand up and say who they are, thus taking responsibility for their actions, tend to avoid these actions, not necessarily because they don’t want to do them, but because they know that they are impugning on their good name if they do so. Because they are not anonymous.

I think of the (moronic) individuals who went looting in London and then posted photos of themselves and their spoils online. With face recognition software, they are no longer anonymous. And they can be held responsible for their crimes.

Internet trolls who write hateful comments on forums and blogs just because they are anonymous might think twice if they knew that their comments would be identified as being from them. And even if they didn’t think twice, their friends and family might have a better idea of what thugs they are friends with or related to.

I wish more people would stand up for their actions, and stop hiding behind anonymity.

Now if they’d just invent a flying trailer to go with it – or a truck that gets better than 13MPG and can still tow a 2-horse trailer.

In other news:

Jaryth’s site is back up. So if you’ve been jonesing for pictures like this, your wait is over. I’ve built it so that I can add new pictures by just uploading them into a directory. Lazy, yes, but heck, the photos are on the site again, so I’m happy, and hopefully his faraway relatives are too. ☺

I asked him to “smile” as I took the picture. This is the result.

Jaryth Smiling for the Camera

In a nutshell: in literature classes in high school and college we are taught to read literature with an eye towards what is not written. In other words, you’re supposed to find the allegory, the symbolism, the hidden meanings.

Doing this is fun because for one thing it’s a pretty creative way of reading. If the meaning you are positing is “hidden” then the fact that no one else can see it just proves your point more. In fact, as long as you can argue your interpretation effectively it doesn’t matter that no one else can see it. If you’re persuasive enough, everyone will see it (if only to get you to stop harping at them).

But what does this mean for reading later?

If you’re always looking for the hidden meaning in something, then there’s a good chance you’ll miss the overt meaning.

In High School, I had to read the Hemingway story “Hills Like White Elephants“. This story stuck in my head because it was the first time I ever really understood what people were seeing when they found these hidden meanings. (Thank you Mr. Duncanson.) I’m not saying that I really believed they were there, but we read that story so many times that I started to believe that the story might have actually been about elephants – not just descriptively titled.

My question to that class is, do you remember what the story was about, what the text said? In other words, not the pregnancy, or the idea that the character was trying to talk her into an abortion. None of that was actually said. Do you remember what the scene was? My guess is that most people don’t remember, because we got so hung up in the hidden story. Where was it set? What were they doing?

To badly mangle another quote: “sometimes and elephant is just an elephant”. Perhaps if we started reading things looking for the un-hidden meaning first we might have an easier time understanding what people are trying to tell us.

Why I Like Science Fiction

If you read most scifi books with an eye to what is said, and not what is not said, you’ll get the basics of most books. Literary snobs might argue that that makes the books less interesting – but I find them plenty interesting. And they don’t have to be obfuscated to hold my attention.

Don’t get me wrong, in re-reading “Hills Like White Elephants” 25 years after my first read, I was profoundly moved by the story. Most of the allegory that we discovered in that long-ago class has disappeared into where ever memories go when they aren’t used. And I suspect that a lot of the reason I found it difficult at age 17 was because of my age and lack of experience. But I still enjoyed the story first as a description of a couple sitting in a foreign train station, waiting for a train, and discussing their life together (or not) and what they were going to do.