The Boston Globe has a long article about how Google changes what we can find out about one another. They have a very good point in there, concerning court privacy : "Of course, most court information has long been public. But there is a profound difference between records buried in a county filing cabinet and the one-stop precision shopping you get from Google."

A very good point. This is not only a proof for the significant changes even single web services are doing to our society. It's also a warning to people who think, that you can import and export terms and concepts between online and offline world. That's not that easy! Yes, it's public. But it's differently public!

And an additional thought: Some people here at our institute had problems with the custom of writing in our ethno::log with so called screen names, or pejorative "micky-maus-names". Now you should know why. First of all, internet is different "public", as stated above. And second, the ethno::log is also for experimental thoughts. Even for not-already-scientific ideas and news. As most of us don't wan't the things they say in the institute kitchen printed in Current Anthropology, this screen names give you back the privacy, Google destroyed. Using a different name in the offline world maybe fraud. In the online world it's a widely used tradition which a different goal, as in this world are different circumstances.

You may also read this fanatastic short story concerning this topic.

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