I particularly liked your piece – it was articulate and well thought out.

It clearly addresses the issue that society hasn’t yet caught up with the technology in terms of a consensus of opinion over the issues you have raised. I seem to remember this theme occurring in Wikinomics when I read it a while back. I suspect that when society does, the agreement might be fragmented across genders, generations and nationalities – more or less as it seems to be now, but with at least some of those questions having been debated and a range of answers being available.

My own personal view (having recently launched a people search website WikiWorldBook which incorporates the ability to create a profile of yourself, so that you can be easily found and contacted without having to reveal your contact details) is that different people have different levels of concern about how much information is on the web about them – whether they put it out there or someone else. Obviously there is a level of information that could leave you defrauded which is to be avoided by all – unless you have deep pockets or a masochistic streak – but apart from that, it is the young that are breaking down the barriers of what is acceptable publically, whilst older generations tend to be much more cautious because the public environment of the internet is alien to them.

As a firm believer in transparency, I therefore come down on the side of the young. I think its ok if all your faults are shown up because we are all flawed, and if all our flaws are public, who can cast the first stone? Maybe simplistic and naive, but that is the way the internet is heading regardless. I read a story recently about how George Bush got re-elected the second time around because the early voting procedures in certain states meant that too many people had cast their votes before the story came out about his adolescent loss of driving licence due to drink driving. Otherwise the pollsters strongly suspect he wouldn’t have made it. In future, that won’t happen – George Bush’s youth would be open to all, but so would his opponents. In England we don’t expect our politicians to be lily white – indeed, if there is no dirt, we wonder where its being hidden and in some parts of Europe, they would seemingly prefer that their politicians definitely aren’t – how else would you explain the election of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy?

So, to cut a long story short, there is going to be more about us on the net in future, whether we like it or not, but society will in turn adjust its expectations to reflect this, just as the Social Contract we have has never been something fixed. Pillars of virtue are a dangerous myth and only greater personal transparency can help to dispel them – just as in the western world we know that the post-war movement towards greater transparency in companies / corporations has been hugely beneficial (the current transactional opaqueness in banking arrangements is separate from corporate governance), so similar transparency in people’s personal lives should bring a combination of less hypocrisy and more social responsibility. I won’t be casting the first stone.