Technology may have changed; humanity hasn't. There's a reason why we have shades on our windows (and don't build houses entirely out of windows), and I think it's more likely that this generation is going to rediscover those reasons than to discover they weren't necessary.<p>As an old fogey of 30 who has been on the net for a long time (by most standards now), one thing that I personally find very lacking in Facebook is that you can only have one identity. Probably the <i>biggest</i> reason I don't join Facebook is that the resulting collision of high school/social etc. (which I'm not that fond of anyhow and would face the choice of either "friending" a whole bunch of people I don't want to friend or offending them by rejecting them) and my tech/blog life would be very annoying for both sides and very, <i>very</i> annoying for me.<p>In fact, I think this is the root problem. If you had two personas online, one a party animal and one a professional one, that were only poorly linked, then we wouldn't have problems like "you can't be hired because you have been pictured drinking". Old technology did this by default; every forum, every newsgroup, every email chain I can be a new person, in fact I hardly have a choice.<p>We do this in real life all the time, even when deciding who to hire. Until that concept catches up with the online world in a bigger way, I think there's going to be trouble. The young'uns may yet be right that it's not a problem, though, because we may yet <i>return</i> to this idea. (I emphasize the word "return" to highlight that this is not a new idea, so going back to my first sentence, there is some hope that we can settle on this because, again, humanity hasn't changed and what worked once can work again. Those shades are there so that behind them, we can choose our persona freely in our own living space. They are not merely there to "hide" bad things, they are persona firewalls.)
Very insightful write up. I definitely see it as a generational gap that I am probably in the middle of and may never fully accept myself. I desperately hope it will break the mold of this horrible phony society that so many people live with. Let's face it, people get drunk, people say stupid things, they do stupid things and sometimes in the middle of it all they do wonderful, kind, and brilliant things too. We'll all be better off when it's acceptable to be yourself and not worry so much about how people are going to judge you for it. I've always felt like if someone wants to cyber stalk me and build some aggregated profile of my life then I probably have nothing to worry about. In the end they're the one being the creepy voyeuristic stalker.
Seriously. You can never go into public office if you've gotten publicly drunk, had an affair, smoked weed (Hi Bill Clinton)<p>So now we have this charade where people get their past sanitized and we live with a public/private schitzophrenia that is incredibly unhealthy.<p>I was born in 68 and I feel like I am stuck on both sides of this. On one hand I am self employed which insulates me and I personally believe I can do what I want. On the other I kind of freak out when a customer friends me on Facebook, because there I am with the red cup in my hand.<p>We as a culture need to grow up and accept our humanity and stop try to live up to impossible ideals.
Well-written.<p>We're eventually going to reach a point where most people actually know their way around technology. At some point, everyone will have grown up with technology, and their lives' intertwining with the internet will be second nature.
To make available possibly-incriminating information <i>once someone knows who you are</i> is one thing... providing identifying information to possibly-malicious strangers is a different animal entirely.
Judgments. My mind is making them all the time, and I let them go.<p>Am I afraid of what I am showing to others? No, why would I be afraid to be me. And, why would you afraid to be you? Judgments. But, the truth is we're way too busy thinking about our own stuff to be making judgments about other people's stuff.<p>Let's show up.