A few years ago someone whom I know asked me in a worried tone how he might be able to remove URLs from the list that comes up in the address bar when he clicks on the mini-arrow at the right of that bar. From his tone it was obvious that he wanted to remove the addresses of pornographic sites. But although this event really happened to me (and at the time I didn't know how to help, though now I do), I still get the impression that the discomfort that most people feel toward having someone gaze into their hard drive doesn't primarily stem from the fact that we're hiding dark secrets. Sometimes the darkest of our secrets is that we simply don't organize our files, and we simply don't like people looking at our mess.

Another reason is perhaps involved here as well. When I write something it usually goes through numerous versions, and being a chronic copy-and-paster, I've got lots of documents on my hard drive that are basically snippets of thoughts still waiting to take shape in a format that I'd feel comfortable posting (and of course even after posting, they seem to still stick around). Those snippets are basically a back door to my thinking processes, and to a certain extent, just as we hesitate to be hypnotized for fear that we'll expose something that we prefer not be made public, I want to maintain control over when and how I allow my thoughts to cross from the private to the public.