A Brand New Internet . . . opens a can of worms

The NYTimes has an article this week about whether or not we need to build a new internet. The internet was built based on a very narrow view of its use with a decentralized structure. The internet today far outstrips any ideas its first developers had. Over time we have patched and stretched the structure of the web to do what we want it to do but this has very real limitations. While many of the issues a new internet would resolve are about security the tradeoff brings up issues of privacy and anonymity. The NYT article talks about the challenges any endeavor like this faces – don’t think this is the first time rebuilding the internet has been attempted. However, it cites anonymity as one of the key reasons any attempts are likely to fail. Security is directly tied to anonymity, and while we would all like the internet to be more secure we have to wonder what we are willing to give up to achieve that.

While I feel a visceral concern about giving up my anonymity on the web even for more security, I have to laugh at myself a little bit. I have a Facebook page with my picture, same with LinkedIn, I have cookies all over and I definitely have certain sites store my credit card info for easy check out – I even have experimented with Mint.com which logs in and downloads my credit card and bank statements. So I look at this and I have to wonder if I shouldn’t be more concerned with security then privacy. Nevertheless, there are a lot of slippery slope and big brother issues that need to be explored before I can make a decision – what does less anonymity mean exactly? We need a national discussion about the tradeoffs to determine where the sweet spot is between someone tracking my every move on the internet (can’t they already do that?!) and keeping my credit card and personal information safe. It promises to be a thorny, though important, discussion.

--By Kate Grossman