Years ago, when I wrote for a print magazine covering the
Internet, we used to sit around and think about the day when the online experience
would become so ubiquitous that our magazine would become completely obsolete,
like a print journal about telephones. The day came soon enough, but I don’t
know if any of us imagined the direction in which digital identity would go.
Back then it seemed that the Internet would become the savior of niche culture,
that it would turn all of us into particularists free to indulge our strangest
interests with small groups of like-minded folks.
