Telephone Directories

20 years ago, if you wanted to find someone... you looked them up in the telephone directory and it had their number and their physical address. We didn't think twice about the fact that anyone could find out where you live.

Maybe it was because the world was smaller. Most people hadn't really gone overseas, and you lived, worked and played in a fairly small area. Maybe you ventured somewhere for holidays if you were lucky, but pretty much most of your activity was in one place. Even then, I don't think my family knew as many people in the neighbourhood as maybe was the case 20 years before that.

Now, perhaps there is just a fear of a boundaryless world where you really don't know anyone for certain?

Maybe that's true. But I think it is becoming harder, not easier, for those dodgy members of our society who make others live in fear to get away with it. More and more it is harder to hide who you are and what you have done. Perhaps this is scary, but maybe it is actually a step towards a safer world.

Seth Godin points out that 'Google Never Forgets'. Google yourself, you will be surprised what it picks up! More and more you (and the dodgy people out there) will have a digital footprint wherever you go.

Yes, this brings up issues of privacy. But maybe it means we are all just going to have to live more honest lives. 'The Washington Post Test', where if you knew what you were about to do would appear on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow, would you do it anyway?

Exciting Times

After an awesome first weekend in Bermuda organised by Grandpa Spanner with Friday evening drinks as the sun set over the sea followed by a night out, early up for Rugby, a round of golf (well, I looked for my ball and hurried to keep up with those playing golf), a braai, a booze cruise and a Karaoke evening... followed by a chilled Sunday (doing my washing) and beach hunting, I finished off by finishing `The Google Story'.

The book isn't well written but the thought of all the possibilities of the `Age of Ideas' really does get me quite excited.

Remembering back how hard it was to find relevant material to read up on when doing my thesis... I would have killed for Google Scholar which searches through academic reference material. Now they are busy digitising every book they can starting with universities of Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and others. The aim... every book ever written. Wow. I have often spoke on MIT and their free courseware. The really is no boundary to the access we could have to all of human knowledge.

It also opens questions up about what privacy is. I recently got a little freaked out by Google when writing an email to someone and the ads being rather too perceptive about the content... they recommended a psychologist! I think we may have to get over the whole privacy thing. So what if we live in a world where everyone could find out the truth about you. The reason that scares us is because people aren't accepting and open minded. We live behind facades.

The old question of what you would do if you were on a desert island and no one would ever find out is not necessarily so far from the truth. We go through our lives often doing things we expect no one to ever find out about.

Why are we so scared?

Circle of Trust

In the old world, it was very easy to have split personalities. A work personality, a family personality, one for your partner, and a number with different circles of friends. Not really different personalities but the different facets could co-exist quite comfortably.

The Goth could take off his make-up and take out his ear-ring and go to church. The priest could put on his drag and go do his stand-up comedy act. The playboy model could go to a staunch feminist book club dressed as a librarian. For different circles of friends, you may just not bring certain things up in conversation. Your sports watching buddies, your drinking buddies, your emotional support buddies, and then play cricket for the local church team.

Mitch Joel asks the question in the modern world does keeping a blog or rather is building a personal brand hurting your career.. My recruitment agent when I was recently looking for a job in London suggested I not mention my blog. She said, it was very `revealing'. Normally you keep your political,philosophical,sexual,musical and other views separate from work. In a digital age of ideas, that becomes harder and harder.

You are relying on everyone accepting the concept of freedom of speech. You are relying on everyone being open-minded. People are going to find out a whole bunch more about you than they did in the past. For now, very few people (relatively speaking), are blogosphere literate and so not many people find things out. But more and more `Google-stalking' will mean people can find out all they want about what you write. And you leave an electronic finger-print that never goes away.

There are a number of things I think about that I would love to discuss with open-minded, tell me everything, non-judgemental people that I either don't have the guts to write about, or don't think it is appropriate to write about.

There are many people whose blogs are more like journals. Some are very very personal. Then there is the dilemma of what rights do others have for privacy? Are you `allowed' to write about interactions with people? What in personal interactions is sacred?

The ethics of writing about past relationships for example? Or as some do, even current relationships?

In a world of ideas, one where I believe it will become almost impossible to hide, I think people are going to be forced to develop much greater levels of emotional maturity. We are going to have to be more accepting.

We are going to have to if we want people to accept us back! Cause all warts are going to be exposed. The age of blunt honesty?