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One of the things at stake–in the debate about internet privacy, say–is whether or not people will be able to be whole people, real people, on the Internet.

This is related to the question of whether or not people can be whole people, real people, in public.

A difference between living in a city and living in a village (not that I’ve ever lived in a village but, you know, from what I’ve heard) is that you know everyone, or know about everyone, or know somebody who can tell you about everyone, in your village. So while you may act differently in different settings, nobody is pretending to be someone they aren’t, and nobody’s hiding anything important.

Whereas, in a city–a big city–you are always anonymous to most of the people around you. There is nearly boundless potential for new human contact, and the information you share about yourself is important. What kind of person are you signaling yourself to be? In New York City, especially: What are you wearing? People will react to that, because they have so little else to go on. They will judge you, filter you. Not maliciously, but just people people need to make snap decisions about other people in order to guess how to act. Life is complicated and hard, and human connections are opportunities–for information exchange, for commiseration, for collective action, for business, for sex, for friendship, for love.

The Internet is a little like the biggest city of all. Of course, it is (almost) stripped of constraints on geography. But besides that: A lot of people using the Internet want things from other people, from new other people, and are therefore worried about their ‘public appearance’. They don’t want to be judged and ruled out for something they say.

There’s nothing wrong with that, except that the Internet has so much potential to be more than just ‘the public’. It is not a giant sidewalk, and not everyone writing everywhere is on a soapbox. There are designated spaces for business and artistic expression and revelry. It’s not unlike having offices and museums and bars to hang out. And while it can be awkward to meet your boss at a bar, that’s different from showing up to work drunk. On the other hand, just as you shouldn’t go outside your home to take a dump on the sidewalk outside, there are some things people shouldn’t post to the Internet.

I think a sociologist would say that people project different identities in different spaces. I’m not a sociologist and don’t have a very flexible idea of personal identity, so I’d rather say some behavior is more appropriate in some circumstances than in others. But my point is that the norms around this stuff can be open and flexible without shredding the social fabric.

One thing that’s new about the Internet is that it makes it possible to participate in multiple kinds of spaces at once. For example, I used to be in instant message conversations with friends while doing on-line work. Some of those friends were coworkers. Often, those conversations were crucial to getting my work done, or affected how I managed people. I was in a professional space, and a personal space, at the same time. I’m pretty sure most people of my generation do this. It’s not a big deal. It’s probably a lot more like what working was back when people weren’t afraid to be real people at work. Maybe everyone is doing it because it’s in fact very natural and normal to exist that way.

Because maybe that’s part of the potential of the Internet. That it doesn’t have to be a biggest, baddest city ever. Maybe it can be the biggest, most vibrant and interesting village ever.