I just caught this brief article on Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s speech to Techonomy, a technology conference. The gist of his talk was “people aren’t ready for the technology revolution that’s going to happen to them.”

There’s a lot of truth to this — his point that we create as much data in TWO DAYS as humans created from the beginnings of civilization 10,000 years ago until 2003 is particularly telling.

But from a small-town, small business standpoint, what struck me was this:

“The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.”

Just as it may seem strange that I favor local Internet sales taxes, so it might strike some as odd that a Web guy would agree with getting rid of the anonymous Web. The truth is, though, that anonymity doesn’t do a lot to make the Web (or the world) a better place.

What it does is breed a lack of accountability. After all, there’s very little that we do online that requires anonymity… and, unless you put yourself behind a phalanx of proxy servers and other anonymizers, you’re just kidding yourself about your anonymity. Whatever you’re doing, your ISP has a trail of it, as do the sites you visited and their server hosting company, etc., etc.

And that doesn’t count whatever the NSA and other National Security State agencies have replaced old Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program with — remember that, right after the September 11, 2001 attacks? Sure, they claimed to have dropped it (and the not-so-good Admiral as well), but if you think they REALLY got rid of their all-seeing-eye… well, I’ve property in Florida for you.

So… your phone number is tied to you (cell or land-line), your car is licensed to you, why shouldn’t your Internet connection be connected to you?