Maybe we can meld Chris’ idea with one of my pet “future tech” topics: direct neural connectivity to the Internet. In this “responsible anonymity” mashup, you could be anonymous, but your behavior could always be traced digitially back to your physical self. No one would need to know who you are, but if you behave badly the system could send a nasty shock directly into your brain, causing you to fall on the floor spasming and drooling. “Ah, crap, Harry must have been a jackass online again- he’ll be peeing himself and twitching for the next hour at least.”

Doesn’t that have a certain visual appeal? 😉

I think Chris has a good point, though: I’m just not sure how it could be managed. You’d need some sort of safe/neutral/impartial “arbiter” of the relationship between your various anonymous selves and your real identity. Penalties would have to make some sort of sense: my electroshock idea is probably right out, but perhaps blacklisting/reputation downlisting for all of your anonymous selves based on your global actions. And then, of course, there would have to be some limits or controls to prevent the government or authorities from simply picking on people who disagree with them.

How would you get people to participate in this mechanism? Why would the people with behavior problems give up the absolute anonymity that permits them to act out? I suppose you could enact a form of exclusion: if you don’t participate in the new responsible anonymity system, you can’t post here…something like that.

The underlying problem is nicely expressed by this somewhat crude cartoon from Penny Arcade. It would be nice if people could just learn to behave: in the absence of that, perhaps a bit of electroshock is in order after all?