Don't think you can hide in the new world

One of my faithful blog readers (Allison Kanti) pointed me to a very thought provoking article (Getting Found Out Web 2.0 Style).

The point of the article is that you can't hide anymore in the new digital world we live in. This is especially true if you are a proflific social networker and use tools such as Twitter, Facebook or Flickr.

I think this is great news for good people. Secrecy is the ally to evil. Think about the future of business in a transparent world: No bad act gets hidden, no good act goes unnoticed.

What does this mean? Same things I've been saying since 2002 -- Nice smart people succeed.

Comments

[Sheri]

Thanks for the comment, Tim.

I agree that tyranny and evil can only survive in secrecy and eliminating the ability to hide reduces -maybe even eliminates? -said forces. Also, you are correct in the part where the wrongly convicted and out of context problems pre-date the net. I do think though that the immediacy, persistence and broad reach of the web magnify those problems/practices. (Certainly the net provides a new forum for justice and many other forces of good. No argument there.)

That said you are totally correct that it is the fault of the people engaging in those practices who are a good deal of the problem. When we 'out' them we will have remedied the other side of the problem, which is that group of individuals who believe -for reasons I clearly don't understand-everything they see, read or hear at any given media outlet. A rise in critical evaluation of 'news' at the level of the individual would be a huge step forward in my opinion.

To the point of your opening statement in the comment, I think we are moving toward a time and place where people are going to have to live their values 'on their sleeve' and be prepared to either modify or live with the consequences of that value system. That is certainly already the case to some degree, but a lot goes by due the veil of secrecy among us -which as you noted is falling away and likely (that fall is) to more benefit than not. I wonder how total transparency will change the 'news business?'

[Tim Sanders]

Sheri -- I'm not quite sure how to respond.

My point was that we all have to be careful, because in this new open world, everything is known.

I continue to think that it is a good thing, because secrecy promotes tyranny and evil. People have wrongly been convicted and taken out of context for decades -- it happened pre-Internet. While a person can be taken out of context, the transperancy is not the problem, the people doing it is.

For those wrongly convicted, for the first time they have a platform (the web) to defend themselves. They are the 5pm news.

[Sheri]

Yeah Tim, but I don't know just yet. I have nothing to hide and I'm trying to keep an open mind to the transparent society concept; but these past few years have magnified, in my opinion, the trend of taking whatever you say or do, placing it out of context and overwhelming any correction and response on your part with the internet equivalent of a media blitz. You tube can make you or break you and not necessarily be in the right.

I think its like if we were going back to everybody pays cash for their health care - no insurance -of course the free market will correct outrageous costs -maybe even in short order, like 2 weeks, but what if you're the guy dying tomorrow? No insurance and no free market correctional forces today are not gonna work in your favor any way you slice it. I think once we get to a totally transparent social structure it will be great -but being caught in the interim is going to take down some people-and wrongly so. How do we make it where we can live with that? Like errors in the justice system, how do we live with that? Because that's an area where when you're wrong, you're really wrong.