The name is this blog, exploded library, is just one of many metaphors for the internet (anyone remember the Information Super Highway?). The world's knowledge which has been centralized in libraries, is in the process of being scattered and decentralized. It is a time of chaos, with a likelihood of both positive and negative changes. I also see that this also describes how I am in the internet - scattered. The main explodedlibrary blog is my most public face. It's often about work-related issues and tends to be fairly serious. This bunker is my not quite so public place. I have blogs in other places, not to forget the LiveJournal, which to varying degrees, are less public, where I show other aspects of myself.
In an ideal world, it wouldn't be like this. Everything would be in the one place and there wouldn't be any negative consequences, or any possibility of negative consequences.
From my point of view, unless you're independently wealthy and don't need to concern yourself with making a living, or you're an artist and your job is about baring your soul to the world, I think it's naive to think there can be no negative consequences in disclosing too much.
Maybe in this I'm a bit of a luddite, who is focused on the dangers of this new technology without seeing the benefits of the new or learning the skills to avoid the pitfalls.
I can see four different approaches. It's possible to use all four at once, although everybody will have their own balance of what works. Self-censor, anonymity, scatter and trust.
Self-Censor. Maybe this isn't the best word because it has negative/chilling connotations. It's simply being able to monitor what content is or isn't appropriate to go online and being able to keep within these self-imposed limits. People do it everyday. Material that doesn't quite seem appropriate for the blog would simply not appear online in any form - maybe the blogger will confide in family or friends or journal about it in a paper journal. The downside is that sometimes it is helpful to share such content with with a larger audience, it's also how things seem to work these days. At the risk of making sweeping over-generalizations about generations, I think that the generation growing up with LiveJournal, MySpace and blogging in general will find this very difficult to do - everything goes online, it's just a matter of how and where. For the baby boomers and those older than them, online self-censorship is the norm. Putting stuff on the web is a big deal, nothing would go up unless it's really needed. Of course there will always be exceptions to these generalizations.
Anonymity. Anonymity is also limiting in that it places a real divide between the blog and the real life of the blogger, a divide even more profound than being scattered. For example, if the blog has several unflattering references to a workplace - even if disguised - the blogger is going to be very careful that her or his secret identity as a blogger isn't discovered. I think that a rigid division between one's blogging life and real life tends to impoverish both. Case in point: I've been asked to look into the different knowledge management (KM) possibilities to facilitate the storage and retrieval knowledge surrounding reference queries. It's still in very preliminary brainstorming stages, but one of options I'm looking into is the usage of internal blogs as a KM tool. As a blogger, I am learning more and more about the potential for blogs to store my own knowledge. But if I were an anonymous blogger who didn't want his identity discovered at work, if it be difficult for me to pursue such an idea without drawing on (and risking exposing) my own individual blogging experiences - and I would most likely drop it. That said, sometimes anonymity is the best and only answer.
Scatter. This is the approach that I do a lot of. Scatter the information in a number of different places. This doesn't guarantee that it somebody won't be able to find it and piece things together, but the task will be too much work for all but the most savvy and determined of inquirers. It's possible to blend the scattered and the anonymous approach, so that one's writing could be scattered in a combination of named, pseudonymous and anonymous places. The downsides of being scattered are fairly obvious - everything takes longer and each of the individual parts is the poorer for scattering of energies.
Trust. Sometimes trust is misplaced, but often it isn't. Most of the time things will work out - once in a while there will be problems, but the positives of trusting are much greater than the negatives. Besides, whatever happens is likely to be out of our control anyway, so wouldn't it be better to be trusting than to be paranoid and fearful? Trust is what allows an anonymous blogger to share her/his blogging identity to somebody else. Trust is what allows the scattered blogger to reveal his other identities. To a certain extent, trust is what permits any speech when it is safer to self-censor.
At this point, I have almost convinced myself that to self-censor, scatter or conceal one's identity can only be paranoid. After all, it's not as if I have any great dark secrets which I need to hide. That said, I am fundamentally a shy and private person - and this is ok. I am claiming the right to be a blogger and be like this. The contortions contained in this post are the things which allow me to continue blogging. Everybody will find their own answers to this - and same may find that it's not something they need to answer at all, because it's not really a concern.