Danny O’Brien laments the loss of private space on the Internet, claiming that the shades of public, private, and secret life we enjoy in meatspace have been replaced by the binary public/secret world of the web. He makes an interesting point, but I don’t know if I buy his distinction between the private register and the secret register–I’m inclined to go with Goffman and call it all “backstage.” The real issue is not that we’ve lost a middle register, but that we haven’t yet learned how to structure netspace as well as we do real space–we don’t have the virtual equivalent of cubicles, or soundproof glass, or curtains, or corridors. As a result it’s harder to exclude people from our audiences and easier to intrude on performances not meant for us.