@ jldevoy and VampyrByte:
Sadly people do care what you did as a kid. In this social network age anyone, and I mean anyone who wants to know who you are can find out everything that is posted about you. Say for example you are applying for your dream job and there is something posted by you or by someone else about you (and if you are on multiple social networks this has already happened regardless of how benign the post is) your employer will(many if not all) look at this info to get an idea of who you are. Now, if you are very carefull about what you show the world then you have nothing to worry about, but if you aren't carefull, I can guarantee you that anything that shows you to be untrustworthy or unreliable will lose your chance at the job. Apply this to any application you submit: school, loan application (car, credit, home), etc. and the results will be the same. I do not believe that you are so short sighted to believe that these people are not going to use that info to make a decision.
Now on to what this post is about. I do agree with many of you that things are changing, the future of privacy is unknown and will evolve as our access to information increases. However, I am coming to the conclusion that Eric Schmidt, regardless of how good of a businessman he is or how much good he is doing for his company, he should not be taken seriously in regards to privacy.
First; his only goal is to make sure that his company makes money. He doesn't care about us, he wants to increase profits and will do whatever he can to guarantee this. Unless you have a stake (fiscal or personal) in the company why are you defending them or him? If you believe in what they say, great! Support the ideas and goals, not the company cause they aren't paying you and will not pay you for your fervor.
Second: On how Eric Schmidt shouldn't be taken seriously in regards to privacy. A few months back Eric spoke to the media and said(this is not verbatim, this is done by memory, if you don't believe me look it up) the only people who want privacy are people who are doing bad things, if you aren't bad then you have nothing to worry about. Yet, when a journalist wrote a piece on Eric Schmidt using information that the journalist gathered through Google, Eric reacted as if the journalist and their publication had violated his privacy. Hmmm, that doesn't compute. If he truly believes that poeple do not need privacy, what was the problem? His actions speak for him in how he really feels about privacy and what his true goals are (re: First point)
Third and last point before I am banned from the forums. Without some radical changes to the laws regarding names and aliases, changing your name does not protect from what you did by your other name(s). Many applications require all known aliases that you have. If found that you witheld any info this can and probably will harm your chances with the group applied with. The use of changing your name is nullified when you provide all your aliases. In addition, which someone already pointed out but I want to emphasize is that facial recognition software is only getting better. If your photo is taken people can use your photo to find any and all websites that have your photo. In the end, changing your name doesn't help.
Thank you all for your time.