Author Cory Doctorow 

I have recently been thinking about Cory Doctorow's wonderful futuristic book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.  It really reminds me of Open Salon.

In the Bitchun Society to which the main characters belong, people don't use cash but instead gain Whuffie points, basically points given you by people you've encountered.  The more people approve of you and your behavior, the more Whuffie you accrue.  In other words people who do kindnesses for others are rewarded with Whuffie for gratitude.  People who are funny are given Whuffie for making people laugh.  If you are smart...  Committing a mean-spirited act will cost you Whuffie, if you're caught.  Of course, there are those with plenty of Whuffie and not a drop of actual kindness or decency in them.  High Whuffie count can give you leadership positions and other advantages associated with wealth today.  The instantaneously updated count itself can become a form of behavior modification. 

I don't want to go in a negative direction with this comparison to Open Salon.  I am not accusing people of campaigning for Whuffie.  It just shows what I have learned in recent weeks.  We are moving toward a time when we all have an online self, capable of garnering friends and even enemies.   We gain friends in favoriting others, rating their articles, commenting on their articles.  In exchange, we are more likely to be read, rated and favorited.  A cynical person could see it as game-playing and politicking, but it really is just our cyber-self moving into a new community and meeting people.

Our online self is an interesting entity, in turns a total fabrication or the maybe the truest picture of ourselves we have.  In this forum, my cyber-self is very free to speak my mind and relate mistakes from my past.  My flesh and blood self cannot always do that as a public school teacher in a very small town.  So cyber-me is a little more open in many ways than real me is allowed to be.  In both incarnations I'm genuinely friendly and have a tempered optimism about the world.  If that gets me Whuffie points, okay.  But in the cyber-world I am also a little more likely to express controversial viewpoints.  I think that cuts both ways in the Whuffie count.

Anyway, having fun here, meeting good people here, expressing myself here.  These are all good.

DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM--by Cory Doctorow.  You can read it in one evening.