One cultural shift that has taken place on the Internet is the way people now use it to promote themselves, presenting their real identity to the world rather than a fake one. This may seem obvious to those of you that have been doing it for a while, but back in the olden days it was taken for granted that you used a wacky username to communicate. Putting your real-life details out there was seen as a very brave thing to do, as Sir Humphrey might say.

This was probably a good thing in many ways, at least for me. I don't thing it would do me much good if the people I work with (contacts as well as colleagues) could follow all my edit wars on Wikipedia, earnest discussions about geek culture or outright flaming of the America Deserved It brigade on various message boards after 9-11. I still use pseudonyms most of the time.

I guess it's not an issue with younger people who happily post photos of themselves on MySpace. But for slightly older people like me, it can be a bit of a leap. It's just not the done thing ...