As my taxi pulled into the Sydney airport, this sign really got me thinking. Just what can and should be shared in blogs or tweets and what can’t be or shouldn’t be? In other words, what do we gain and lose as we put more and more of ourselves into the virtual world?
We can share experiences virtually. We have done this for a long time in different ways. For example, we used to go on a trip and then bore our neighbors and family with slides or shaky videos of the kids on the beach. Now we send a stream of Flickr pics or videos.
We can now be located within feet of where we are with GPS-enabled applications like Google’s Latitude. For that we give up the bit of anonymity we enjoyed when we went out walking or while we were traveling.
We can use emoticons, sounds, words, and even pictures to share emotions virtually. The movie industry has been doing this since its beginning. Virtual games give us the illusion of reality except for smell and, sometimes touch, although both of these are starting to become part of the virtual experience.
Obviously, there are benefits to this. I can almost immediately share experiences with a spouse or anyone far away. I know that if I get lost, I can be found. I can experience dangerous things in safety and learn how to cope with emergency situations before they happen. On the other hand, I lose anonymity and some freedom in the process.
I created this table as a way to clarify my thinking about what I have to give up in order to take part in social media experiences. We can never stop technology from changing our lives. Swords fell to guns, horses to cars, and the pen to the computer. Each of these costs us something and each creates benefits. What we have to do is to decide what our table of gains and loses looks like and how we can intelligently live with the consequences.
But the guys who created the Sydney airport sign are right. You really cannot blog a nice cold beer!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
One of the best elements of blogging to me is that of perspective. As we live in a more global society each day we realize that we all come from different experiences and that each of us has our own process of induction as to what has worked in our own personal world. Then we have to take that lense and look at the rest of the world. So I find it helpful to read the musings especially of people who think differently than I do.
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