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8/9/09

...on not casting pearls before swine


If you live long enough you experience the joy of learning things over and over again.

This is certainly true for me regarding the internet and specifically the social web. In the nineties when the internet came into the mainstream and more social with the advent of the worldwide web, I learned some lessons which laid the foundation for how I intended to deal with a technology that quickly became an information backbone of our time.

Since then, the internet has become more ubiquitous. A wealth of information and a cyber junkyard, a web of commerce and a social networking venue but above all else an overflowing warehouse of too much data. The rules controlling my online social engagement are pretty much the same as they are offline. I have come to relearn that not only is it intrinsic to my nature to be selective but also a requirement in order to keep my sense of self relatively intact as well as balance and order in my life. Rules for my life online need to come from my experience in life offline.


I was the kid who lived in a remote place and back in the day would have loved to have online interaction to explore the world and for a while escape what seemed like a mundane local world.



Oh, if I only knew then what I know now...












For some reason it seems necessary to reconsider the ground rules for operating on the internet. I'm not sure why...but I trust my instincts. It's not clear if this is due to the economic crisis, a change of decade, feeling overwhelmed, I'm wiser or something else and right now the reason seems irrelevant. The bottom line fundamental rule is I have control over how much and what information I see, and who I interact with online and any benefit or repercussions are due to my choices. In any case I use and interact on the web on my terms and what I use any website for is generally my business and not subject to the opinion of people who do not influence me.

This doesn't mean that I'm stopping or slowing my current online activity or judging what anyone else does. Perhaps our privacy is not as intact as we'd like to think and we should recognize accessing the "information superhighway" means sharing the road with unlicensed drivers. That also means making intelligent choices about how much road we can handle and proceed with caution.

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http://www.youtube.com/jrsnyderjr

8 comments:

  1. I basically agree and that is why don't really do Facebook. It seems stressful having to determine what to share and how to unfriend people.

    I tend not to blog or tweet to much about personal things.

    I am not sure why - privacy really is an illusion.

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  2. Read a good article somewhere recently about how the idea of cross-linking posts, tweets and status between LinkedIn and Facebook was not a good idea for reasons we can figure out. Who really wants all that personal info crossing over into a professional profile? I've avoided Facebook because it leans towards the more personal.

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  3. Interesting blog/vlog mix - you raise a lot of great issues and questions :-)

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  4. Hey JR.. you said it very well... though I'm not sure what it is you said or how any of us deal with it.

    I can thank the internet for some of the most wonderful moments of my life over the last few years, but i can also see it tending to lead me down the road to pointlessness. I never got there, never even got bored, but I for quite a while hung out on the internet and didn't do anything outside of it, really. besides eat, work, and sleep. Which are all real things, but you get my point.

    Anyway man, cool to see you are still on here making sense.. and cool desert video!

    Peace.

    Mike, aka rockandconfusion... aka 7anby in a past life.

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  5. Hey Mike! good to hear from you, wondered often how you were.

    The internet has opened windows for me but also exposed me to things I probably would've been better without. Your point is well taken and part of reasons why I wrote this post.

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  6. Then there's me who twits and tweets babble :-) Facebook is a goofy thing; I am there and I still dunno why.

    I approached my blog on townhall pointedly as a feminine take, written like I talk, including lots of personal vibe. It might not have been a great idea. :-)

    JR, I love the way you focus on one key issue as it's great mentoring of what blogging means. Short and sweet. I LOVE THE VIDEO TOO!

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  7. Gayle...in another century and another time I was young and my loquaciousness knew no boundaries!

    You have the right idea I think actually, about writing like you talk, it works well for a lot of people. The trick is learning to balance the informal in a rather formal medium (writing), you can ad lib more if your audience is listening instead of reading. Striking the that balance is what I think you're looking for and the basics are there so keep going.

    Oh yeah and focus on one or two key issues! ;~}

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