Privacy- Do We Have Any Anymore?

I listened to the most recent Media Hacks episode of Mitch Joel’s excellent Six Pixels of Separation podcast, where the guys were discussing everything from the Please Rob Me website, geo-location apps like Gowalla and Four Square, and even Blippy, my favorite example of a channel for overshare that was even highlighted at this year’s TED conference.

Couple this with the recent issues about kids being “monitored” by the Lower Merion School District, which is now being investigated by  the FBI, and you quickly can come to the impression that privacy is over.  The school district case is a mess, but it raises lots of interesting questions about where school and governmental authority begins and ends.

I have been online for longer than I care to admit, and I know that when I put something up on this blog, or Facebook, Twitter or any other channel, it’s open for anyone and everyone to see.  I will be accountable for anything I put up here forever, thanks to Google and the miraculous Internet Wayback Machine.  I know that, and I take that into account before I post things, knowing that clients, future clients, friends and relatives and anyone else out there have access to everything.  But where does the concept of privacy start and stop?

Everyone seems to have a different line they draw for themselves.  Some people don’t post anything having to do with family- no pictures of them or their kids online.  But then this rule is subject to violation when kids appear in someone else’s photos that get posted, when you’re in a group shot at a party, or other ways where your carefully scripted version of public and private is violated by well meaning friends.  Since it’s almost difficult to go buy a traditional film camera these days, and the actual supply of film at the local camera store yesterday was sad compared to the wall of film they used to stock, the majority of photos are digital, which obviously enhances the ability to share and exchange them, which people then do, meaning any photo- innocent or compromising- can become public domain with a few keystrokes.

This is not meant to freak anyone out, but it’s simply a fact that the old rules of privacy are being eroded away, bit by bit, byte by byte, over time.  If I were practicing family law, for example, I would definitely try to monitor both what my client and their soon-to-be-former spouse were doing and saying online- in a public forum, that information should be admissible as evidence, although I’ll be frank that Facebook was not created when I took evidence in law school in the early ’90’s.   On the other hand, the fact that there is this openness and discoverability might just work to keep people together, because they can’t hide that information from each other, either.  Transparency keeps everyone a bit more honest and accountable, but when does this constant stage pressure become too much?

We leave a digital paper trail behind us that should not be alarming so much as causing us to think a little bit, at least, about what we’re doing, what choices we’re making and why.  We can create incredibly rich and important relationships with others online.  I keep in touch with friends all over the globe now, that I otherwise would lose that sense of relationship and of being current in each other’s lives without these tools.  I learn new things every day, share information, and have fostered business relationships through these tools, and the fact that people can find out almost anything they want about me before we ever meet.  This “pre-vetting” is like a fast track towards trust, friendship and sometimes, business that works far faster and far more efficiently than ever before.

For all these tremendous positives, it also means that people know when I am cranky with my offspring, when I’m available, when I’m out of town, and just about everything I’m doing.  My trainer knows where I’m out to dinner and potentially doing something I shouldn’t if I check in with foursquare, but my clients also know when I’m in the office for the same reason.  I’ve agreed to make this information accessible, and I bear the fallout, good, bad and indifferent from this connection.

And my kids are growing up in a world where that line between private and public is fuzzier than ever.  It’s taken me years to become comfortable with all of this- will this be the new normal for them?  Will future politicians always have to see pictures of themselves as a child, ranging from food on the face to those first girlfriends, just by a few quick searches online?  How will anyone be able to be perfect all the time?  Will our standards finally change and we’ll have to allow for people to make mistakes and change their mind, rather than be somehow wedded to an opinion they had back a decade ago?

I have no idea where the concept of privacy will be in five years or ten.  Where courts will decide the constitutional rights to some sort of privacy exist, at least as far as the State is involved, is going to be difficult, especially when people are so willing to share (and overshare) with no thought at all.   Hopefully, we’ll decide much of our right to privacy still exists within our home, but we’ll have to see how the case in Lower Merion Township turns out, and whether inviting a governmentally owned computer into our house gives up some of these rights or not.  There’s tons of litigation like this ahead, you can bet, so all you law students out there- make sure you’re paying attention during Con Law and Evidence.  Your career could depend on it.

Tags: Blippy, foursquare, gowalla, internet, lower merion school district, Mitch Joel, privacy, six pixels of separation

Personal Branding

At the very first Podcamp Boston, CC Chapman and Mitch Joel did a great presentation on Personal Branding that altered the way I approached my web projects.  Instead of always staying in the background, I learned how important it was to own your blog and podcast, add your personality into the mix, and give your projects a human face and voice.  This is still excellent advice, for businesses or individuals.  Without a sense of personality, of humanity to our writing and work, we lose the most compelling aspect of it, and what people want the most- connections and affinity with others. (I’ll save the diatribe on Maslow’s Heirarchy of human needs for another post.)

There’s a small downside to personal branding, though.  When some web personalities become really successful, like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki, they become not just a personal brand but a brand unto themselves.  They become a product.  And people expect different things out of products than they do people.

Products are supposed to be available on demand, whenever we want them.  For example, I am in the process of replacing the “twitter van”- my old Toyota Sienna minivan with over 197,000 miles on it, with something new.  The old girl is just sad looking at this point, and my husband has declared enough is enough, so I am updating my “personal brand” with a new car.  We’ve been shopping for cars for some time, but I was disappointed to find out the brand and model we wanted were sold out of 2009’s so I have to wait for a 2010.  Dealers were surprisingly blasé about selling me a car.  I would have expected them to be a bit more enthusiastic about the prospect, but only one dealership did any sort of work to really see when the models would be available, see what they could order, and give me a great deal.  When I took this offer to another dealership closer to my home to see if hey would match it, they seemed incredulous that any of this was possible.  Yet, here I sit, with the VIN number of the car in hand, awaiting its delivery in the next few days.  The bottom line in terms of branding is that I expected with this brand that the Company as a whole should be happy that I want a car from them, that they should have them ready for me unless I want something really unusual, just as if I were buying a bottle of ketchup.   And as a brand, I expect they should be willing to do at least a little to make sure I don’t go off and decide to get the large purchase elsewhere.

But when people become brands, they can never be exactly like a car or a bottle of ketchup.  They can produce great books, like Trust Agents or Six Pixels of Separation, (both written by friends of mine), that act as products or souvenirs of the people and their ideas.  But the people themselves don’t scale the same way.  They still have lives and families and friends; they need to sleep and eat and have private time.  But some of this gets murky once personal branding and actually branding start to merge.

Think about this in terms of celebrity.  I think it really started with the Beatles.  The band became more than just records and music.  They became icons, they became lunchboxes and action figures and now even video games, many years after their initial fame for just being musicians and song writers.  Now you see the merchandising of fame and celebrity being as important as what ever someone did to become famous in the first place, but what gets lost in the hype are the people themselves.  A quick trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will bring this all into relief, as you see how many people get chewed up by the fame machine, and see the few that have managed to survive it.

We don’t always consider how weird and difficult a childhood someone like Michael Jackson or Lindsay Lohan have had.  We don’t think or look at them empathetically, as people.  We look at them as side shows, as entertainment, and when they seem to crack up, we say “Well, they asked for it, what did they expect?”  On some level, they just did what they did best, acting or signing or writing or whatever.  The rest became the business of being a celebrity, which has its privileges and up sides, but has just as many down sides as people take random pot shots at you, or think you have some magic you can lend them, or give them a big break so they can be just like you, or whatever.

Celebrity, the height of personal branding, breeds a certain amount of expectation and neediness in others.  We expect our celebrities to be the bottle of ketchup we can get a fix of whenever we need.  We expect them to keep on delighting us with every new project and we’re more than happy to express crushing disappointment when our appetites aren’t fed.  And the media, professional and amateur, seems only to happy to find something to criticise at every turn.  We think “Oh, what a big head they have now that they’re big shots.”     Or “Well, you don’t seem to remember that you used to be just like us before you got lucky.”  Or “Why should I feel sorry for them?  They have it easy.”  Or “Well, they’re snobby now- I can’t even seem to talk to them anymore- I guess we aren’t really friends.”

All of this is ridiculous, of course.  All that’s happened is that a greater number of people constantly want the personal attention and adoration of the person whose “made it”, and that the person can’t scale like their product can.  All this drama is happening on the side of the audience, not from the person on the pedestal, and the person can’t do much other than watch it happen, because the cat is out of the bag, and there’s little hope of getting it back in.

I don’t think there’s any easy answers here.  I think part of it is for all of us to realize that personal branding is a great thing, but once you reach the product stage, there are hidden traps along with the benefits.  And I think this is meant as a wake up call for all of us who have friends with strong personal brands, to remember that our friends still need the same love and support and attention they always got from us, even if it doesn’t always come back reciprocally- they are trying to scale, but they’re finding themselves trying to be people in a product loving world.  And that seems like a busy but pretty lonely place to be.

Tags: CC Chapman, lindsay lohan, maslow's heirarchy, michael jackson, Mitch Joel, personal branding, rock and roll hall of fame, seth godin, six pixels of separation, trust agents

The How To Myth

A couple of my friends have recently come out with fantastic books- Mitch Joel wrote “Six Pixels of Separation“  and Chris Brogan and and Julien Smith have come out with the New York Times best selling Trust Agents.  Both books discuss how people are connecting for business over the web and how these new relationships work, but there’s been some critique that the books aren’t “How To’s” of  internet success.

This got me thinking about the whole concept of the How To.

How To permeates every aspect of our lives.  As a parent, we have a major role in teaching our children everything from appropriate social behavior to self-care – how to eat politely, how to tie your shoe, how to brush your teeth, how to get good grades- it goes on and on.   From the kid’s side, our parents and our teachers are constantly giving us the recipes to follow to learn stuff we’ll hopefully need later on in life.

After being indoctrinated in the How To all of our lives, we seem to want others to provide us with the fool-proof formula to win at whatever decide we want to do.  How many books, for example, promise us 5 easy steps to instant fame and fortune?  8 steps to flatter abs?  & habits of highly effective people?  Somehow, if we can just get the recipe right, everything will be perfect, and we’ll look better, smell better, and have the easy life of a Hollywood star, with all the fame and fortune we can imagine.

I don’t know about you, but I have found the following things to be true:

• To get what you really want, and the satisfaction that comes from attaining a goal, hard work is necessary.  It’s never handed to you.
• The Rules, the How To, the Recipe for success may seem simple, but the devil is always in the details.  Take the 10 Commandments.  Think how many pages of interpretation and commentary have been written about this simple list of things to do and not to do, at least two thousand years ago.  Clearly, it wasn’t that simple.
• I love to cook, and I love to knit.  In both of these areas, success can depend heavily on following a recipe or pattern.  Even in directions that allege to be “foolproof”, I can assure you, I can find a fool (usually me) who will make some sort of mistake executing this simple set of directions.  Let’s not even discuss the infamous Beer Cheese soup or the sweater that was about 2 inches too short, shall we?
• The Genius is always in the customization anyway.  Take a given recipe- adding a touch of your favorite herb, or adding nuts, chocolate chips and raisins into those brownies- and you take the generic “just like the picture” meal from replication of someone else’s idea to your version of the same idea, with unique elements that make it all your own.
• Customizations of the prototype to fit your own life, the hacks we all make to get the generic product to fit our needs-this is what takes things from being just “stuff” to being a part of our own creative process and learning.  You don’t learn much about painting by doing a Paint by Numbers- you may learn basic technique, but it’s the application of those techniques to your own project where genius lies.

We all want How to’s because they are comfortable, and we hope that if we see behind the veil, we’ll automatically harness someone else’s creativity and hard work, harness their insight, and somehow, leverage that to make ourselves equally as successful.  Yet we don’t need more imitations, copies and echos of the original, as much as we all yearn for that one, unique, purely special moment, great idea, or original insight of our own.

I’m currently working on a project that is a How To- but the critical element is to try to let everyone know that in using this book -1) it’s only a guideline, a coaching tool- your own milegage may vary  2)We’ll give you templates that work for us, but you have to customize it towards what you think will be best for you and 3) Never be afraid to try something new, to fail, to try again, and fail better the next time.

We only learn from making mistakes.    Some mistakes you only ever need to make once. Let me help you avoid a big one- never put dish detergent in the dishwasher, thinking it’s an ok substitute unless you want to flood your house.

Some mistakes you make more than once.  I still insist, for example, I do not need to “swatch for guage” ie. make a small sample before knitting a huge project, hoping that the knitting gods will protect me.  I am frequently wrong on this account.

But the biggest lesson is this:  even the best how-to’s only provide guidance and suggestions based on one person’s experience and what they have researched about the experience of others, trying to shine a light on frequently encountered difficulties.  This is what Parenting books are all about.  But only you know yourself and your own unique situation, and applying these ideas to your life will require mass customization to obtain the results you want.  Lockstep copying won’t get you the best results, only customization of the recipe will.

I still get suck ed into the promise of the How To, but at least my expectations now are that it is nothing more than advice.  I will learn and master things only through trial and error, making better guesses and spurring different ideas based on what the book or expert offers, but I can’t expect that these books and lectures will fix my life- that’s my job, and mine alone.

Tags: books, chris brogan, how to, julien smith, Mitch Joel, six pixels of separation, trust agents