Digital Cavemen?
Sometimes I ponder. Yep, ponder. I’ll be looking at this blog and think; what am I doing? Look at the dancing guy or the robotic beer tossing fridge… what would a potential employer think? And then there are other days when I look at my long winded posts about site maps and I think it’s a snore-fest.
It really raises some questions. Such as, who is this blog for? And how smart is it to talk out publicly about your likes or dislikes in general? But this all leads to a bigger issue. It’s one I’ve been thinking about not only in regards to this blog but in regards to the direction of technology in general and the web in specific.
Where is the line between personal and public persona in today’s myspace/blogger universe? And where will the line be in the near future as everything moves even more toward the great social collective of Web 2.0? I think the lines will no longer exist.
At first this is a troubling thought. It seems like a serious price to pay for information. Information is power. And, besides responsibility, power comes with consequences. I’m not sure we yet understand this as a culture. The loud touting digital cowboy proponents of Web 2.0 might actually be digital cavemen playing with fire.
But this is just a gut level fear of change, right? Sure webcams permanently mounted onto computer monitors is reminiscent of the Orwellian telescreens. But there are many Orwellian elements these days. Why harp on those details? There are other ways to look at it.
One possible positive outcome could be a return to personal responsibility and some type of ethics. It’s easy to be mean, ruthless, disrespectful, and hurtful to others when your behind a ‘mask’. But if our good and bad are laid out for others to see then the game is changed. It’s an idea that works well with the concept of a ‘global village’. Sure we are a million miles apart but now we are all neighbors too. And your not going to rob your neighbor. And if you do then you can bet everyone else is going to know about it and there will be social consequences.
But this is all conjecture. If one day I lose a job because I thought a robotic arm tossing you a beer while you watched the game was a good idea then so be it. I probably didn’t want to work there anyway. And we can’t really fight the social nature of man. It’s one of the primary reasons we’ve been able to adapt and survive this long.
So what does this mean for my posts? Nothing. I’m still going to post any nerdy funny stuff as well as my thoughts and advice about web marketing. That’s how I roll.
