This past weekend, the Wall Street Journal published two more thoughtful columns in their series on privacy.  Nicholas Carr "penned" an excellent piece titled, "Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty, With Real Dangers," and Jim Harper penned an equally compelling column, "It's Modern Trade: Web Users Get as Much as They Give."

In a weird twist of political philosophy on privacy and liberty, I agree and disagree with them both.  However, I disagree not because Nicholas and Jim are wrong, but because I do not believe that we must accept the assumptions behind their arguments.  Their assumptions with respect to online privacy are rooted in the idea that the World Wide Web is a static state of affairs, that privacy can only be managed through settings at various websites.  As CLOUD has written and tweeted extensively over the past year, the World Wide Web is but one "view" into the Internet.  True privacy and security of the sort that tackles Facebook's continued bouts with privacy problems and the challenges with patient data from EHRs will depend on a new language for the Internet, one built around people and not web pages.

One sentence in particular from Mr. Carr's article jumped out at me.  "Most of us view personalization and privacy as desirable things, and we understand that enjoying more of one means giving up some of the other."  Based on the current paradigm of the web, that is true, but what if privacy were architected into the Internet?  Current mechanisms for "logging into" web sites or submitting data force this sort of false trade-off.  CLOUD believes that transparency and privacy can co-exist, but it requires a new perspective.  That perspective is ME 1.0, rather than just Web 2.0.  Quoting from Mr. Carr again, "This tradeoff has always been part of our lives as consumers and citizens. But now, thanks to the Net, we’re losing our ability to understand and control those tradeoffs."  CLOUD's goal through it contextual markup language (CTML) is make those tradeoffs clear and put control back in the hands of individuals.

The idea of ME 1.0 is described on our homepage.  This concept and the idea of separating WHO I Am and WHAT I Am are at the foundation of a new Internet.  The language that CLOUD is building is why I can agree and disagree with both Nicholas and Jim.  I agree with Nicholas that as individuals we must secure our privacy to secure our liberties, and I agree with Jim that we should "get smart and learn how to control personal information."  CLOUD believes, however, that that control should be in our hands and not just at the mercy of others on the Web, be they Facebook, Google, your doctor or the government.