What sort of surprised me is that when you had the first generation with widespread internet access, they didn't remain deeply in love with psuedonymity. We al

What sort of surprised me is that when you had the first generation with widespread internet access, they didn't remain deeply in love with psuedonymity. We all had our psuedonyms-- AIM screen names, email addresses that weren't firstname.lastname@domain.com, forum usernames derived from fantasy-novel characters, and the like-- but seemed perfectly eager to trade it away for non-anonymous alternatives once MySpace/Facebook/etc. became the dominant paradigm. The concept of "I can have multiple, context-dependent identities" seems like it solves a lot of community problems naturally. You can choose whether or not to leverage an established name between different communities. You can seek a fresh start by spawning a new identity and returning to zero. The context-dependent identity can hide or exaggerate factors that might trigger bias (can you tell from a username alone if the person you're writing to is 13 or 30, or do you have to actually judge what they're saying?) I think the most effective use of it that still sticks around is the Reddit/HN throwaway accounts-- you want enough identity to get notified of responses without any further attachment to the rest of your life.