BWAB: Do “They” Have The Right To Know?

Let me preface this with saying that I gave up any debate on this issue, long ago. This blog is an archeological relic and I barely ever shlock stuff over here unless it's just irresistibly retarded like this one.

“Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.”

Please list all aliases or “handles” you have used to communicate on the Internet.

Bozeman isn't simply interested in finding out where to look for potentially embarrassing personal details; the city wants full disclosure, since the form demands username and password information for each. City employees will apparently be able to dig through any information applicants have put online, regardless of whether it's accessible to the public.

It's probably safer to ascribe this sort of behavior to cluelessness rather than malice. (Or maybe not). But the cluelessness is apparently a two-way street, as Sullivan indicated that nobody has objected to the city's request for login credentials.

Yeah, right, whatever ... if you're only discovering this question NOW, you basically lost your right to ask it nearly 10 years ago.

And as an extension of that utter cluelessness, "people like them" continue to wonder why "people like us" simply do not fit into this society. Sorry, but we just can't teach rocks to read, regardless of the persistence of our own earnest optimism, patience, and fortitude.

Sometimes, ipso facto, this is the kind of stuff that makes me suspect that "we" -- some theoretical and as yet ill-defined nebulous sub-group of the human race -- are already an entirely distinct evolutionary branch of the species from "them" -- occupants of the middle of the bell curve of human cognition.

If none of this makes sense to you, dear reader, don't worry, here's a special translation just for you: "OMG! Look at all the Ponies and Rainbows! OMG! LOL!"

Profiles as Mitigation Measure

Randomly checking my profile site today, I discovered that now, for a limited time, you can order your own mini set of 25 Google Profile biz cards.

Perhaps this is part mitigation measure (of dubious effectiveness, I suspect) for the previous post’s observations?

If it’s not that, it is certainly more fulfillment what we began talking about here in the first place and drives another welcomed nail into this blog’s coffin.

Ideas aren’t *supposed* to be hip and novel forever, they are supposed to come to fruition; and with luck, incrementally improve the world for humans in some modest way as they metamorphose from larvae to butterfly, fluttering off into the ever fleeting future.

EPIC FAIL! What Google says can make or break your career

“Any information that raises a red (or yellow, or even faded green) flag can quickly take candidates out of consideration for a job,” he said.

Apparently HR hasn't receive the memo yet: It's way too late to go back to your make believe saccharin corporate world.

Promoting an increasingly artificial boundary between Humanity and Work serves no good or productive cause. It's far too late to put the genie back in the bottle. That might be what the Corporate Control Freaks want, but We the People outnumber them, massively.

Corporations are all "made" men and women and WE "make" them. So BE YOURSELF, 100% of the time. It's their culture that must change to accommodate us, because without us, companies are nothing.

You're no longer in the position to dictate the terms of our existence Computer World Canada, Robert Half, IBM, or whatever. We are the talent that you need and we're no longer leaving our humanity at the door.

We tried it your almighty know-it-all market way and you failed, repeatedly and completely; now, the tables have turned.

Welcome to the Identity Web, the Human Internet, where People Are First and Corporations Shall Now Serve Our Requirements.

See you at Happy Hour!

Isn't it Time You Owned Your Identity?

Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. When I made the first post to this blog (and wrote the first essay much earlier) people looked at me like, "WTF are you talking about, man?" You'd think eventually one would get used to that, huh?

Now, even a Chi.mp gets it, the importance of a "Centralized You" on the web. Awesome.

Oh, and of course PeopleBrowsr takes it completely to the n'th degree.

Newsvine: Whose Vine Is It, Anyway?

Note: My crusading days are well past me now, so this is mostly for my own entertainment, though there is an infinitesimal embedded hope that someone, somewhere in this sprawling User Generated Content circus, will eventually pause to think some of these things through and improve the current, mostly cobbled-together early model for aggregating, exchanging, and circulating information value. Cheers!

On Aug 15, 2008, at 2:00 PM, Newsvine Help wrote:

Hello,

Please note that Newsvine is a platform designed to enable collaborative discovery and discussion of the news -- it is not a vehicle for self-promotion. As such, it is the community's policy to prohibit the seeding of links to your own web site, and/or the posting of material deemed to be advertising or of a promotional nature. You are welcome to list a web address under the 'personal home page' field on your account settings page. A link to your home page will then be available to other users on all of your articles and seeded links.

This policy -- and all other guidelines from the Newsvine Code of Honor and User Agreement -- is designed to help keep Newsvine an honorable place. We fully understand if this particular guideline wasn't immediately clear.

Best regards,

- Newsvine Team
Additional information can be found here:
http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/info/codeofhonor
http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/info/useragreement

My Response

Oh, the policy is quite clear, I just believe that it is wrong for a number of reasons.

Foremost, *I* am your CONTENT and I own ME and all that *I* produce. My work is a gift from me to you if I choose to use your pretty templates to do what I already do in a hundred other places.

If anyone is curious to know why the policy is wrong, one could start by watching this http://blip.tv/play/Ab69Ra47 and reading this.

If none are so curious, that's okay too, we'll just use some other service for publication of our particular newsvines. There is absolutely nothing special that forces me or anyone else to use this particular "vine."

Not attempting to be unproductively combative ... just passin' on another view of truthiness for those who care to consider it.

What many social media sites are not quite realizing is that they are equally fortunate to have all of us as we are to have the pretty templates that sites like Newsvine provide. That is pretty much the only thing of value NV provides: a pretty template with predictable subject hierarchy, and a statistically unknown (though possibly some day significant) global brand. Even then, the brand is only as valuable as US, THE PEOPLE, unless you want to just be a Green Themed version of Google News.

I appreciate that it burned a ton of VC cash to get to where you are, but we the people don't really care about those debts and we are of equal and even greater value than pretty templates and fledgling brands. So feel free to banish my account if you like, it is no skin off my nose in the least. It is, however, ONE LESS CONTENT PROVIDER and one less ad viewer and distributor for Newsvine, right?

Again, please pardon the abruptness, but it is to establish a point that seems to not be getting through to people who really do need to find ways to adapt the model, or ships will indeed sink. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

I am more than happy to intelligently discuss all of this with anyone who cares to help prevent Newsvine's otherwise inevitable bankruptcy; but if there are no such people at NV, I only wish you ...

All the best,

m.s.

Current state of eWork

oDesk and Elance are cited as examples. Either way, u r pwnd. What business is it of the client's if you outsource a product or service they hired you to deliver? If the deliverable meets and exceeds all mutually agreed upon quality standards and is delivered within time and budget, you have fulfilled your every obligation.

eWork norms are in the process of being established. YOU have a choice as to how you participate and what you help to become normalized, so think of the kind of workplace you are creating for your children. You are not a powerless inconsequential cog, you are a VOTE, and votes ultimately decide all collective outcomes; at least in any environment even remotely resembling a democratic atmosphere.

You WILL Provide A Mug Shot

Like it or not. On Slate.com:

Lately, the Internet has been trying—politely—to find out what I look like. Gmail suggested that I upload a photo "that everyone will see when you email them." My new Apple computer asked whether it could take a webcam shot for iChat. And Facebook was so annoyed with my question mark icon (where a photo would normally be) that it found a photo of me that someone else had tagged, surrounded my head with a red square, and asked whether it might make a good profile picture. The text-y era of the nobody-knows-you're-a-dog Internet is ending. You either have a head shot or you're invisible.

The more you think about Web head shots, the more loaded a social artifact they become. Scholars have begun to examine "impression management" online.

No kidding? You mean, Online Identity Management became a science after all. Gee, never saw that one coming, did we? Slate goes on to summarize:

So it seems that you, Internet person, are left with two options: Just pick a photo and go for it, or go the arty/ironic route. It's not as if you can stay hidden forever. Eventually someone will upload you to Flickr or tag you in a wedding pic wearing an unflattering, unchosen color.

And where exactly do they derive the right to TAG YOU? It doesn't matter, does it? It's way beyond that.

Welcome to the Transparent Society. Game over. Blog obviated. Another Quixotic battle reaches its inevitable outcome. Don't worry, it's now the age of Wind Energy, so plenty of new windmills to tilt upon!

Onward.