The beta of Apple OS-X Leopard provided to developers that attended WWDC has been leaked. Nicholas Deleon of CrunchGear posted about the upcoming operating system appearing on Oink, a private piracy site and, oh boy, are the darknet pirates angry. In their anger, they are throwing out every homophobic rant they can think of in their comments to Deleon’s post.

There remains implicit support in our society for intolerance, and teenagers and young adults have learned from their parents, peers, and politicians that it is okay to verbally abuse people they do not agree with by using language that is never appropriate. We have therefore found ourselves in a Web 2.0 world where the most common criticism in response to a post comes in the form of explicit homophobia. Combined with the fact that most comments are anonymous or made using silly usernames, this vitriol has gotten out of control.

What to do about people who hide behind their anonymity to continue pirating copyrighted content and perpetuate intolerance? We should start by removing anonymity on the Internet. To use the Internet, everyone should be required to provide their true name.

When gaming, usernames are appropriate. People purposely create a different identity for entertainment purposes. When people conduct business, join discussions, or other activities in cyberspace, then usernames and anonymity are not appropriate. Their use indicates the user does not take full ownership of their actions and any consequences. They are cowards who pretend to fear Big Brother and a loss of privacy, but who really just want to do whatever they want without being caught, including criminal activity aimed at harming others.

One of the reason why I now use Facebook is because this social network values real identities instead of usernames and anonymous activity. You can create fake names, but a majority of people appear to be using their true names and true identities, in the spirit of staying in touch with family and friends. Compare this to activity on MySpace, blogs, and sites like Digg, where few people take ownership of their identities and become intolerant jerks in their anonymous freedom.

If content is to be valued, then the creator must stand nakedly beside his or her content. This is cybernudism, the ability to expose your true name, your true identity while interacting on the net over great distances of space and even time. To conduct yourself otherwise is to become a closeted phantom, as ephemeral and unimportant as the ghosts from superstition and pseudoscience.

When I see a silly username or “Anonymous” respond to a post, I know the person is cowardly and I respect nothing they have to say, whether the response is positive or negative. I can no longer support content piracy when the pirates choose to complain with intolerance while hiding behind masks. May they continue to gravitate toward their Morlock existence in a lower darknet that stifles innovation in its religious pursuit of cowardice. Meanwhile, those of us in cyberspace who embrace our true names, take responsibility for our actions, and learn through the consequences, will welcome the revolutions yet to come.

I find it necessary yet again to mention that my Cybernudism blog, like most blogs, is commentary. In this format I hope to engage in larger debates on the issues facing humanity now and in the future.

Frontier Channel, on the other hand, is a science and technology news site. The separation between cybernudism.com and frontierchannel.com is my attempt to separate commentary from objective news reporting.

However, the selection of topics I choose to write about for Frontier Channel is itself commentary. Most of the articles I have written have to do with my obvious passions for planetary science, the Technological Singularity, transhumanism, radical life extension, the Internet, and the intersection of society with technology. I believe that these topics are important and therefore these are the topics I write about. By being both editor and writer for Frontier Channel, I present yet another obstacle to objective news reporting.

I work to present only the facts of a topic for Frontier Channel. I provide a list of direct links to the original source material and other information. I credit images, captions, and quotes correctly. In this way, I hope to be as objective as possible given the obstacles above.

Cybernudism is my subjective space for trying to place this news in a larger context via my own beliefs I hope readers always keep this in mind, here and elsewhere. Commentary is only a guide to new ideas and never an alternative to critical thinking or education.

Marshall Brain used his engineering and computer science experience to help an Internet audience learn How Stuff Works, and then turned his attention to exploring The Robotic Nation. While finding Robotic Nation Evidence everywhere and contemplating on how this may lead to The Day You Discard Your Body, Brain has also written several books, published online advice about How to Make a Million Dollars, distilled his knowledge about creating a website for profit, and lamented at how Sad Tech can look today compared to expected future technologies. Now Brain has turned his curiosity, insights, and approachable and easy-going writing style toward religion, by asking Why Does God Hate Amputees?

The title is immediately blasphemous to billions of humans around the globe that believe in God. Brain’s latest work emphasizes the troubling paradox of God – why does this entity, if He exists, allow pain and suffering? Brain is not content with the typical religious response that pain and suffering are somehow part of God’s plan. Instead, he begins by examining particular stories of horror in this world, each leading to the same paradox. Then he asks, in a world where the religious believe such pain and suffering can be vanquished through the power of prayer, why have there been no miraculous regenerations of amputated limbs? Of all equally as amazing supposed miracles documented throughout history, why have amputees alone been left out in the cold?

The answer, Brain argues, is that God does not exist.

Although some Christians may insist that his style is confrontational, Brain uses the trademark approachability of his previous works to carefully navigates from point to point toward his conclusions. The paradox of God is not new, but the illustration of this paradox using the plight of amputees and the lack of limb regeneration in the record of miraculous events sheds new light on the issue, leading to his blasphemous (to many) conjecture that God cannot exist.

Some might call Brain brave. I instead call him an epitome of the Cybernudist, that person who willingly and without anonymity exposes his memetic processes while releasing the resulting memes to cyberspace and to the larger noosphere. This is not at all like the majority of citizens in cyberspace who remain anonymous while spouting off their own opinions. Brain does not hide behind a handle – yes, Marshall Brain is his real name – and he does not rest on the laurels of his past achievements.

Rather, he emerges fully nude and fully named, Marshal Brain, an explorer utilizing cyberspace to both facilitate his exploration and deliver the fruits of that labor, who in the process exposes himself in a way that only the immediacy and pervasiveness of cyberspace can, unmatched by verbal communication, books, radio, television, or other traditional media alone.

Cybernudism requires ownership of your thoughts, just as nudism requires ownership of your own physical body. That Brain openly identifies himself does not prove that his work is the truth. However, it does show that he takes ownership of his thoughts, unlike many of his critics who, quite literally, have allowed themselves to be named “Anonymous” by the automated tools of Blogger.com. Those who hide in the shadow of their anonymity remain fully clothed and safe, and yet they shout the loudest. They do not deserve a listen.

Marshall Brain deserves a listen.

What is up with the name change? “Leis On Life” did not exactly fit what I am trying to do with this blog. Sure, this is me commenting on life, but it has become a bit more specific than that. I focus mostly on science and technology and how humanity is dealing with the rapid progress in both.

Cybernudism is a word I coined that represents that Internet-inspired drive to expose yourself to the world, in more ways than just visually and nakedly. Now that everyone and their grandmother seems to have a blog, every inane photograph and video clip is showing up on the net, amateurs are trying to be talk show hosts, and (unavoidably) all sexual mores appear to be well-represented somewhere in cyberspace, it is time to reflect on what it all means for humanity.

Cybernudism is also a response to “Big Brother” and “Little Brother”. The escalating invasion of privacy by the government and your next door neighbor can be combated with a philosophy that there are no secrets to exploit if you no longer keep secrets. Cybernudism suggests leaving behind anonymity (without any requirement to volunteer information) and instead taking responsibility for your own revealing to the rest of the world.

And then again, maybe not. The point of this blog is to discuss those possibilities, while highlighting the several ways science and technology are radically changing what it means to be human, sentient, and free.