8 Ways to Sunday

Paul Boutin has penned an article for Slate discussing John Walker’s cyberpunkish (in the “information wants to be free” sense, not in the “black-clad, mirrorshade-wearing mid-90s fashion zombie” sense) treatise “The Digital Imprimatur.”

Walker’s manifesto explores initiatives toward a more controlled and surveillable Internet backed by special interests such as the movie and music industries and the American intelligence and defense communities. The ultimate solution for the parties would be a unique digital ID for every Internet user (also called an “Internet Driver’s License” and other euphemisms by compliant politicians) that would mark every transaction, site visit, download, and purchase made online. This sounds impossibly Orwellian but it’s one of the cornerstone ideas behind Microsoft’s Next Generation Secure Computing Base, slated to appear in their next major operating system release in 2006.

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I’m getting increasingly tired of this site’s current design, and I’m probably going to find time to change it in the next month or so. I’d love to hear suggestions about how I could improve the look, readability, or navigation of this site. Just comment to this entry to let me know what you think. Don’t forget to subscribe to comments for this entry if you want to hear what others have to say as well.

So far, I’ve come up with the following:

• Replace boxy design with something more elegant.
• Use serif fonts for entries rather than sans-serif, improving readability and lending a friendlier feel to the blog.
• Less blue.