Plenty of people have personal Web pages. But are we reaching the point where you need one?

The answer is still 'no' - but that 'no' is no longer quite so firm as it used to be. And sometimes that hesitation is a sign that the wheels of social change are starting to turn - that 'no' will turn into 'maybe' and then from there move quickly to 'yes' and then finally to 'it's weird that you don't.' If you're a thirtysomething, you've seen answering machines, voice mail, email addresses and cellphones complete the journey from curiosities to perceived necessities, just as our elders saw the same thing happen with TVs and phones.

What would drive personal Web pages along that well-traveled track? It's not one thing so much as it's a confluence of things.

The first is the question of how we're to find each other in a rapidly evolving future. As I explored last month, landlines are disappearing, yet there's no 'white pages' for cellphones. And we don't want one - the rise of email, IM and other forms of messaging have transformed the phone call into an intrusive way to communicate, best reserved for certain situations between people who already have a relationship. Which is fine, but raises the issue of how we're supposed to get in touch with people we don't already know. The most likely solution to the problem is a single point of contact, with additional levels of contact information unlocked by us as we deem appropriate. A Web page - whether it's on an outpost such as Facebook or LinkedIn or a site built out with communications tools - can serve that function pretty well.

Another reason is potentially more troubling: the need to defend and define your own identity online, lest others do it for you. A Network World article by Curt Monash caught my eye last week, alleging that an obscure online dating service had created a large number of Web pages based on combinations of first names and last names in hopes of convincing people searching for those names to become members - and potentially crowding out more-useful sites about a person with that name.

More on that a minute - what really struck me was Monash's conclusion: 'The Internet WILL tell stories about you, true or otherwise. Make sure your own version is out there too.'

He's right, and that warning applies to much more than dating sites. By its nature, the Internet returns piecemeal glimpses of us - small slices of our professional life, hobbies or youthful misdeeds, viewed out of context. The problem with potential employers Googling young job candidates and finding pictures of their bravest keg stands isn't so much the behavior itself - soon enough, plenty of folks in HR will have keg-stand snapshots of their own - as it is that they might not find a record of that person's more-lasting accomplishments. A personal Web page is an opportunity to tell your story and balance out other narratives that you can't control.

Maybe your online persona is free of keg stands - or photos of them don't imperil your job prospects. You still might want a home that offers context for your various online activities, building a mosaic out of what would otherwise be baffling fragments. That was my reason for finally putting together a bare-bones Web site of my own - I wanted one place for links to various Real Times, my baseball writing and contact information. (Well, that and I wanted to use blog software to create a static home page to prove a point that blogging is just a common use for a certain kind of software, and not the stuff of revolution. But that's a previous column.)

Or maybe you want to correct the record on something, or clear up potential confusion between you and someone with the same name. I do a fair amount of self-Googling to see how my columns are doing, so I grimaced when someone sharing my name aroused brief indignation for his comments about Barack Obama and John McCain. I'm not likely to be confused with 24-year-old Jason Fry from West Virginia. (Though I have deep West Virginia roots, so it's quite possible we're middle-distant cousins. Stop saying silly things, cuz.) But suppose it had been another 39-year-old Jason Fry from New York City? Again, a Web page of one's own would help in such a situation.

Then there's the threat of dilution by spam bloggers, or sploggers. If you've ever searched for a term and wound up on a bare-bones, awkwardly laid-out site with a bunch of text that doesn't fit together and some ads, you've found a splog - clever, unscrupulous Web entrepreneurs crank them out in hopes of scoring high in page rankings, luring surfers and getting paid when those surfers click on an ad. (Another kind of splog links to other sites spammers are trying to promote, in hopes of driving up those sites' search-engine ranking.) What makes splogs more than an annoyance is that they crowd out legitimate sites offering real information. I haven't heard much about splogs targeting searches for people's names, but frankly, that seems like only a matter of time - the brute-force economics of spam ought to make it worthwhile for someone. If name splogs do take off, we'll have to work even harder to cultivate our online identities.

Put it all together, and bit by bit, the case for having a page of one's own emerges - as one poster in a Slashdot conversation on the subject put it, 'Your name is essentially your very own brand; might as well try to paint it in a decent light.' Will that evolve into a social expectation? Not immediately, I'd wager - but in time, absolutely. And if so, Facebook could be the likely model - easy to use, indexable by search engines, emphasizes real names over pseudonyms, and has controls letting users control how they're contacted and by whom.

Many people may find that troubling. Our age is marked by worries about too much information floating around too freely - some of us want as little to do with the digital world as possible, and most of us who feel differently still sometimes wish we could keep that world's tentacles at bay. Given that, it's off-putting to imagine that having a Web page could become an expectation and a near-necessity. But technology and the social changes it ushers in have always been coercive. We'll get used to the idea, just as we've gotten used to all the ones that preceded it, and soon enough we'll be able to tell a lot about a person by, say, the mere formatting of their home page - including if they made it themselves or had the communications company do it for them. Whether we like it or not, it's too late to cram the personal-information genie back into his bottle. Better to make sure he serves us.

現在，不少人都有個人網頁了，但我們真的需要它嗎？

回答依然是“不”－－但這個“不”字已經不像以往那么堅決。有時候，遲疑是一種跡象，表明社會變化的車輪已經開始轉動－－“不”將會變成“可能”，并很快變成“是”，最終轉為“沒有才怪”。如果你30歲上下，那一定見證了電話答錄機、語音信箱、電子郵件和手機從新鮮貨變為必需品的整個過程，正如更加年長的人看到電視和電話的“成長歷程”。

為什么個人網頁也會沿著這條既定軌跡走下去？這里不是一個因素在發揮作用，而是多種因素綜合影響的結果。

首先就是如何在快速發展的社會中彼此聯系的問題。上個月我發現，美國家庭的座機電話正在減少，而手機還沒有類似“白頁”這樣的查詢手段。當然我們也不需要－－因為電子郵件、即時通訊和其他各種形式的聯系手段已經讓打電話成為一種比較“冒昧”的溝通方式，只有彼此認識的人在特定情況下才會使用。這一點毋庸置疑，但問題在于，我們怎么才能跟陌生人聯系？最可能的解決方案是建立一個聯系界面，并由本人根據情況決定是否進一步提供其他合適的聯系方式。個人網頁－－無論是Facebook或LinkedIn這樣的交友網站，還是帶有交流工具的網頁－－都能很好地實現這一功能。

另一個因素則更令人不安：為了在網絡世界捍衛和說明自己的身份，以免被別人“冒充”。在2008年7月初的《網絡世界》雜志(Network World)中，科特•莫納西(Curt Monash)寫的一篇文章引起我的注意，文章說有個名不見經傳的交友網站用隨機組合出來的姓名杜撰了大量個人網頁，以此吸引那些在網上搜尋同樣名字的人成為該網站的會員。這種做法可能會讓真正使用該姓名的人的個人網頁遭到排擠。

再多說幾句－－真正讓我感到震撼的是莫納西在文中的結論：“互聯網將有關于你的故事，無論是真是假，所以一定要確保你自己的真實版本也在網上有一席之地。”

他說得沒錯，這一警告不僅適用于交友網站。從本質上說，互聯網可能留有關于我們生活的零星記錄－－我們的職業生涯、愛好、年輕時的胡鬧行為等等，而這些往往會被拿出來孤立地看。招聘企業可能會到網上搜索求職者的名字，結果發現他們倒立在啤酒桶上用軟管吸酒的瘋狂照片。照片上的行為本身不會帶來多大問題－－因為不久后可能整個人力資源部的人都會去拍這種照片－－關鍵是他們可能無法找到應聘者其他更大的成就。如果擁有個人網站，你就可以自己介紹自己，抵消那些無法控制的網絡信息所帶來的負面影響。

也許你沒有在網上留下什么倒立喝酒的照片－－以及其他那些可能危及工作前途的圖像證據，但你還是需要一個網上家園，以便讓別人了解你的情況，使你在網上留下的點滴痕跡不至于那么令人費解或容易誤會。這就是我給自己建立一個簡易個人網頁的初衷－－我想在互聯網上有那么一片天地，放上“Real Times”專欄的各類文章鏈接，還有我寫的關于棒球運動的文章，以及自己的聯系方式等等。（當然，另一個原因是我想試用一個博客軟件創建靜態個人網頁，以此證明撰寫博客只是某個特定軟件的尋常功能，而不是什么革命性的創舉。但這是之前一篇專欄文章的內容了。）

也許你想更正互聯網上關于你的一些信息，或跟另一個同名同姓者的網上資料劃清界線。我經常上網搜索本人的名字，看自己寫的專欄文章反響如何，因此當看到某個同名同姓者發表對美國總統候選人巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)和約翰•麥凱恩(John McCain)大放厥詞引起別人不滿時，總要揪心一陣子。我想別人可能不太相信我跟那個24歲來自西弗吉尼亞州的杰森•弗萊(Jason Fry)是同一個人。（雖然我老家也在西弗吉尼亞州，由此可見我倆很有可能是遠房表兄弟，呵呵，我就不再胡扯了。）但假如那個同名同姓者也39歲，也住在紐約呢？同理，如果有自己的個人網頁的話，它在這種情況下就可以派上用場了。

此外，還有來自垃圾博客的威脅。如果你在網上搜索一個關鍵詞，然后找到一個設計簡陋、版面粗糙的網頁，上面有些不知所云的文字和一些廣告，那么這就是一個垃圾博客－－由某個腦子聰明但缺乏道德的網絡商人炮制出來，希望能在搜索頁面上排名較高，吸引更多人氣，如果訪客點擊廣告的話，就能賺上一筆。（另一類垃圾博客的頁面設有連接，把訪客引導到他們想推廣的其他網站，希望以此提高那些網站在搜索引擎上的排名。）垃圾博客更讓人討厭的是，它們會把提供真正信息的好網頁排擠出去。我還沒有聽說利用姓名搜索來吸引注意力的垃圾博客，但老實說，這只是時間問題而已，低成本的垃圾博客遲早會擴張到這個領域。如果利用姓名的垃圾博客開始蔓延，那我們得更加努力地打造自己的網上家園。

總而言之，擁有自己的個人網頁很有必要。正如科技新聞網站Slashdot關于這個話題的一個帖子說：“你的姓名就是你的品牌，不妨把這個品牌擦亮一點。”這種思維方式會不會成為社會潮流？近期不會，但我敢打賭，早晚一定會的。果真如此的話，Facebook網站應該是個不錯的模式－－不但使用方便，可以被搜索引擎捕捉到，強調真名實姓而非網名，而且能讓用戶自己控制聯系方式，以及選擇是否接受別人的聯系。

很多人可能會覺得這樣做很麻煩；我們這個時代的特點之一就是有太多可以自由流通的信息－－我們中的一些人根本不想跟數字世界打交道，而能夠接受互聯網的大多數人有時候也會希望網絡世界的觸角能暫時遠離我們的現實生活。在這種情況下，想到今后個人網頁可能成為一種趨勢，甚至接近于一種必需品，我們難免會感到不快。然而，科技發展以及隨之引發的社會變革向來不以大眾的意志為轉移，我們會慢慢習慣這一觀念，正如我們習慣以前那些新鮮事物一樣。很快，我們就能通過瀏覽個人網頁了解一個人的很多情況－－比如他的個人網頁是自己創建，還是由通訊軟件公司代為創建的。無論是否樂意，我們已經把神仆從阿拉丁神燈中釋放出來，沒辦法把它塞回去了，唯一可做的，就是確保它能切實為我們服務。