On the Internet, No One Knows You are a Dog

This is a famous quote from an old New Yorker cartoon. It shows a dog sitting, typing, at a computer.

I just found out something about one of my favorite Tech bloggers. I’ve been reading Dare since I started reading blogs. He used to work in XML and now works on social computing. He now works on Microsoft’s Live properties. I really like his discussions how computing and social patterns interact — mostly because he approaches it from the technical side. He is also the “founding” author of the blog reading software I use, RSS Bandit, to keep track of the 300 blogs that I read.

Reading his posts I’ve built up a model of who he is. Of course, it is limited (I’ve never met the guy), and I’m sure I’ve projected some traits. But none the less. So, it was a little bit of a shock when Scoble, the perhaps most famous blogger, outed Dare’s father — the president of Nigeria! I can’t decide if I’m pissed at him for that. On the one hand, the more real information I have the better off I am and the better I can interpret his posts, but on the other hand, it gives a totally different spin to some of Dare’s posts — his yearly trip back to Nigeria, for example (to say nothing of his nickname, which I think is from game playing).

I also have to wonder what Dare thinks about being outed in such a public way.