I was talking to Evil Michael last night about the necessary self-censoring that goes on in weblogs – why I can’t be completely open about Mr Big for one, why I can’t really vent about Max and Peter for two, why I can’t talk about what goes on at work for three. He cut fairly close to home when he said that honesty and freedom to express oneself had to be the aim nonetheless – even if that had to be compromised occasionally.
An occasional flash back to first principles cannot help but be a good thing – it makes you remember the core of the enterprise – which for me has always been to have a place to put stuff down, to empty my head. I found it profoundly useful to be able to do this on screen rather than in real life. To an extent, I’ve lost that ability steadily over the last year and a half. So I’m working on a graduated privacy scheme for plasticbag.org as we speak, whereby I can open it up to certain people and keep it very private from others.