Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Back to the Facebook phenomenon...

... which I still find freaky.

An excerpt from the Guardian

Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive, recently reiterated his suggestion that internet users may one day be able to change their identities in order to distance themselves from personal information shared so freely in their formative years. "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he told the Wall Street Journal.

Zuckerberg takes a different tack. "You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity," he was quoted as saying in David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect.


Guardian - issues of facebook and privacy in the technological age

For me, this indicates that either Zuckerberg is behaving like a businessman and defending his business against logic, or that he really does not understand that as you get older, do different things, and interact with different people, it is perfectly normal and natural to behave slightly differently to different people, and exhibit different facets of your personality in different situations. Of course, we have one identity. But not in the way Zuckerberg either understands it, or cleverly chooses to state it. There is no lack of integrity in behaving in one way with close family members and friends, having more private and in-depth conversations, and in a more superficial (but no less polite) way with acquantices or collegues. Not everyone needs to know everything about everyone one. And only the abnormally nosy (and those who potentially lack integrity) would want to have to have that level and depth of information on so many individuals.

No comments: