Anna Raccoon – a possibility, not actual news.

Cherie79 found a post on the Slog which suggests that Ms. Raccoon has pulled out of the blogosphere herself.

She’s seriously ill and can probably do without all the vicious sniping the Internet encourages, so if she has decided to withdraw and spend her remaining time relaxing, who could blame her?

I have no firm news at all, either way, but it looks like she might be alive and unwell still. Let’s hope so, and hope for a recovery.

The article also suggests that John Ward of the Slog is about to do something similar. Maybe we should all be considering future options, in preparation for the day when the giovernment finally find a way to shut us all down. .

At least, they might find a way to silence the blogs. There are other means of dissemination of information. Farcebook, for example, is little more than a child’s toy, but it can point to, for example, a free daily eBook appearing elsewhere…

Then there are the forgotten places. Is MySpace still in existence? I opened an account there many years ago, couldn’t work out what to do with it and forgot about it. I’ll bet it’s all tumbleweed and cobwebs over there now. There are forgotten forums all over the internet that can be used as temporary bases for discussion.

The old espionage stories used a coded message in the newspaper small ads. A comment on an innocuous subject on Mumsnet, a strange question on Yahoo Answers, could alert those in the know to a message left elsewhere. The old ways still work. All this before we even think about the complexities of proxy servers and undernets.

As the Slog says, at the moment we are easy to monitor. They know where to find us if they want to read what we’re saying. Send us underground and there’ll be no way to watch us all. It’ll be like looking for shadows in the dark. Sounds like it could be fun.

I hope Anna Raccoon is still around if that happens. I suspect she’d enjoy watching it, even if she takes no part.