Steve Baker says anonymity is the next big industry. I don’t know whether it’s an industry, but there is value to add there. What do newspaper job classifieds and headhunters really provide but anonymizing? In the new world of jobs and resumes where buyer and seller can come together frictionlessly, there is some need for a trusted agent to act as the anonymizer (which may be newspapers’ last hope to keep a foot in that marketplace, if they figure it out and act quickly). Ditto personals, until you’re ready to meet and mate. Ditto some other commercial and informational transactions. It’s harder to provide anonymity in a distributed world but it still had value.
: LATER: Michael Zimmer says in the comments: ” ‘Pseudonymity’ is probably a more attainable goal.” Right, he is. And now let’s butcher that into a verb: pseudonymizing?
