I'm not sure I have this thought out well enough to write down but I'm going to try. I love the Internet, I love the Web. I love the new communications these technologies allow and empower. However, I have long been worried about the perceived anonymity of the Web, from both perspectives of (1) "hey you really shouldn't think you are anonymous" and (2) "wow, you are a complete moron when you think you're anonymous". I have also witnessed an inexorable degradation of personal content and personal speech on the Web, largely due (in my opinion) to this perceived anonymity.
Maybe it's my British upbringing, but I for one would welcome a few more people being held to account publicly for that which they say in public. For many of us, there existed a world before this one that was less generally rude, more consequential. As a child and a young man, I knew that the people around me might see me acting in a given unsociable manner and report to my parents/aunts/uncles/cousins/whomever. This seems to have been forgotten online.
I'm not certain how far to take this thought, but it seems to me that it wasn't all that long ago that in smaller, more defined communities, more people were similarly held to account by their community for their speech and actions. Our collective community has grown from village and town and city to worldwide, is this not perhaps simply the social mores and expectations finally beginning to catch up? If so, is that entirely a Bad Thing (TM)?
Could it, should it lead to a more polite, more respectful online community of humanity?