Thought Police Be Damned

To switch gears a bit, a friend of mine (who I will leave anonymous at this point) recently attended a work related IT presentation that focused on Social Networking, and how the internet is impacting it. Among the issues discussed was the very real threat posed by employers searching sites like MySpace , Yahoo360 , and Google in order to gather information about applicants' private lives. Not just what we post, but who our friends are, and what type of comments they make to us, or about us. The line of thinking is that by viewing the peripheral interactions, a clearer picture can be formed of who or what a person is all about.

To complicate matters, my friend is a social worker, and a soon to be practicing therapist. In that line of work, one stands to make an enemy or two in the form of disgruntled clients, patients, or whatever the correct term is. If any of these people were able to access information about him that was of a personal nature, they could wreak a lot of havoc on his life. In response to this, he has chosen to limit access to his Flickr , and hidden the comments and friends pane on his MySpace. You never know when someone like.. well... me might happen along and drop a turd bomb in your comments from deep in the far left reaches of our galaxy!

At first I was very critical of his decision to take these steps. I jumped right into the "you need to keep it real" type rhetoric. I was all fired up about our need to represent who we are under any circumstance. I mean, if someone doesn't want to associate with us because of who we are, better to ward them off from the start! Right? To what degree could we be happy, productive beings in a scenario where we censored ourself in order to be accepted? Our reality from thereon would be marked by the need to maintain the front. Eventually though, I began to understand his need to do this, and he explained to me that it was more of a security issue than anything else.

Maybe we should be careful about what we say and do online. Whether tomorrow, or 500 years from now, there is a distinct chance that it will still be here, archived. We can choose to view that as a negative... or we can run with it, and make the most of it! Come to think of it, wouldn't this imply that we are all legitimate authors, right here, w(right)e now? What an amazing opportunity we have as bloggers to make real change in our world, right this very moment.

Since I began this blog, I have posted articles in Wandering the Ether, regarding anonymity, censorship, and my fear of the Orwellian. But thanks to blogs like My View Of It , I find myself slowly repositioning my disposition towards a more candid dialog. When I think of what an amazing tool we have at our disposal, through which to speak the truth, and share brief glimpses of what life is like, here, now... it nearly overwhelms me. Thought police be damned.

Tags: Anonymity, Censorship, Fear, Flickr, Google, My View Of It, MySpace, Orwellian, Private Lives, Security, Social Networking, Truth, Yahoo360

Anonymity Anxiety

I've recently been dwelling on the anonymity that seems to be prevalent on the Internet. So much in fact that this Blog site has been, in part, born out of a desire to express my thoughts with more accountability attached to them. I am weary of the lack of interpersonal intimacy forced upon us through the allure of screen names and user accounts, hidden e-mail addresses, and blank profiles. We relish in our freedom of speech, but suffer a deeply seeded anxiety at the mere whisper that someone representing consequence or accountability might be privy.

So we create elaborate facsimiles of ourselves, avatars designed to evoke "ooohs and ahhhs." We speak the truth but we do so as ghosts, shrouded in the garb of Midnight Riders, we "run to keep on running, cause we not going to let em' catch us no" (Allman Brothers). We spend so much time protecting our identities online; that we lose sight of the essential reality of what it is we are doing, communicating. There are some who will argue that this is irrelevant, how could the person knowing who we are possibly have any bearing on whether or not our exchange is taken seriously?

Looking at this question from the metaphorical position of contemporary academia, let’s imagine that the bulk of our communication is represented as an essay. What would happen if we were to submit that same essay with no works cited, quotes with no parenthetical references, and signed it "author unknown?" You are beginning to understand the scope of this now. By our choosing to shirk accountability by hiding behind a digital mask, we are losing any real substance we might otherwise be able to provide. We are doing ourselves the ultimate disservice by not even so much as validating our own words with a linkage to experience.

While it is clear that there are many tens of thousands of people online frequenting message boards and forums, crafting Blogs, and pouring themselves into online journals and personal websites like "MySpace"... there remains a disconnect between saying what we think, and actually owning up to that same thought. In many ways, having an opinion online and laying claim to it, is like voting for that idea for the world to see. While this is a fearsome prospect isn't it our responsibility? Not only to ourselves but to everyone else we co-inhabit this rock with? Who knows, maybe it is possible to effect change, but we need to start by having the guts to raise our hands and say "Hey, look at me, I disagree!"