On the Internet, everybody knows you’re a dog – Slate

Michael Kinsley has an amusing piece in Slate remarking on the fact that since so many people freely provide so much personal information on Web 2.0 and social networking sites, that now, On the Internet, everybody knows you’re a dog:

But anonymity does not actually seem to interest many of the Web’s most devoted users. They are the ones who start their own sites, or sign up for MySpace, or submit videos to YouTube. Quite the opposite: The most successful Web sites seem to be those where people can abandon anonymity and use the Internet to stake their claims as unique individuals. Here is a list of my friends. Here are all the CDs in my collection. Here is a picture of my dog. On the Internet, not only does everybody know that you’re a dog. Everybody knows what kind of dog, how old, your taste in collars, your favorite dog food recipe, and so on.

The original “nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon is here.

[via Question Technology]

UPDATE: Ralf Bendrath has written the kind of thoughtful post on Kinsley’s piece that I wish I had the time to craft myself…