"We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us…"

[Update: Response by Alan Jacobs: http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/18029873515/participating-in-cultural-life-is-not-something ]

[Update 2: Lengthy response, take-down: http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/12/0212/022212.html ]

[Chaser: http://metalab.harvard.edu/2012/02/twitter-nprs-morning-edition-and-dreams-of-flatland/ ]

[Cross-posted by Alexis Madrigal: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/we-the-web-kids/253382/ ]

"The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression.
Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse."

[Transcript: http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html ]

"The trickster isn’t the good guy or the bad guy, it’s the character that exposes contradictions, initiates change and moves the plot forward. One minute, the loving and heroic trickster is saving civilization. A few minutes later the same trickster is cruel, kicking your ass and eating babies as a snack.

The conversation about Anonymous points to this trickster nature, veering between praise and fear, with the media at a loss for even how to describe them…

The point is Anonymous, despite the false shock of contemporary news reporting, isn’t sui generis. It’s not a surprise, and it didn’t spring fully formed from the forehead of Ceiling Cat.

In this place and time, with the exhaustion of political discourse, the overwhelming pressures of modern life, and rise of the internet, the stochastic network organism of Anonymous was inevitable."

[See also: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/quinn-norton-occupy/ ]

"To those whose names I’ll never know,

Thank you for keeping your students engaged. Thank you for listening to students’ ideas. Thank you for treating students like human beings. Thank you for helping students learn to think.

Although you’ve never had a viral video, been asked to speak for TED, don’t have thousands of twitter followers, or been quoted by the media, I thank you for the work you do. The work of those whose names we all recognize, pales in comparison to the real work of education you do everyday. While the so called gurus might have great ideas, their ideas are meaningless without your work in the classroom.

All my best,

JWK"

"It’s all quite an achievement for a onetime broken-down drunk. And Wilson’s success is even more impressive when you consider that AA and its steps have become ubiquitous despite the fact that no one is quite sure how—or, for that matter, how well—they work. The organization is notoriously difficult to study, thanks to its insistence on anonymity and its fluid membership. And AA’s method, which requires “surrender” to a vaguely defined “higher power,” involves the kind of spiritual revelations that neuroscientists have only begun to explore.

"Changing the world with a roll of stamps and whatever we find in the neighbor's recycling bin

"Omegle is a brand-new service for meeting new friends. When you use Omegle, we pick another user at random and let you have a one-on-one chat with each other. Chats are completely anonymous, although there is nothing to stop you from revealing personal details if you would like."

"Ownership of one’s behavior? Who knew?!?!? I’m sure some of the wacky Internet contingents will flame me for saying that anonymity is a bad thing, but the fact is that anonymous environments create the environments in which Godwin’s and Harris’ Laws apply. What’s the point of starting these communities if they eventually end in pain and suffering? Anonymity is overrated in my book. (Whistle-blowers are an exception, and last time I checked, anyone can anonymously drop an envelope in a mailbox, so it’s not like the Internet needs to be there for that). ... It’s only a matter of time, sadly, until this loss of empathy will hit the real world. We’re training ourselves to destroy other people, and there’s a generation growing up with this in their DNA. They don’t remember a world when communications were primarily in the real world."

"This is a quick technical guide to anonymous blogging that tries to approach the problem from the angle of a government whistleblower in a country with a less-than-transparent government. It’s not intended for cypherpunks, but for people in developing nations who are worried about their safety and want to take practical steps to protect their privacy."

"The truth is, giving up our online anonymity may not be all bad - we'll have a convenient, portable friend graph, for example. We can burn our notebook filled with our usernames and passwords. Our search data will be easily accessible from one place. But for the convenience of a simple login, searchable personal data and web history, and social networks filled with friends, we'll have exchanged a bit of who we are in the process. We'll pay for our services on the new internet with our identity and personal information. When the companies we sold ourselves to use it for their own benefits, our outrage will come too late. We'll only have ourselves to blame."

From the email of an anonymous lawmaker: "Paulsen and congressional Republicans, or the few that will actually vote for this (most will be unwilling to take responsibility for the consequences of their policies), have said that there can't be any "add ons," or addition provisions. Fuck that. I don't really want to trigger a world wide depression (that's not hyperbole, that's a distinct possibility), but I'm not voting for a blank check for $700 billion for those mother fuckers. Nancy said she wanted to include the second "stimulus" package that the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans have blocked. I don't want to trade a $700 billion dollar giveaway to the most unsympathetic human beings on the planet for a few fucking bridges. I want reforms of the industry, and I want it to be as punitive as possible." And he goes on from there...

"A social commentary on the problems with anonymity online."

"You can use this site to send anonymous, constructive advice to anyone about anything you like. The hope is that, over time, this project will have triggered lots of small, seemingly insignificant changes that collectively might make a slight contribution to a better society. Your advice will be sent by post. It can be trivial or devastatingly important but the key is for it to be constructive."

"The Change IP Country (cIPC) is our anonymizer program which acts as an HTTP or FTP proxy. Through it, you can can retrieve any resource that is accessible from the server this runs on. This is useful when your own access is limited, but you can reach a

"Nearly overnight, Anonymous shifted focus. The Anons began planning for a worldwide protest, they compiled research, started a lobbying campaign, and cranked out flyers and informational pamphlets."

"Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress and Tor"

"When you search on Google through Googlonymous, it is Googlonymous that goes on Google and does the search for you, the only ip address that Google will see, is the ip address of the server of Googlonymous."