Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Steven Johnson defends "oversharing" on the web:
There used to be a large crevasse separating the intimate space of private life and what's exposed by the klieg lights of fame. But in the Facebook age, that crevasse has broadened out into a valley between the realms of privacy and celebrity, and we are starting to camp out there and get the lay of the land.
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Now, we have to choose whether we want to venture into the valley of intimate strangers, and how exactly we want to live there....It requires that we acknowledge that certain kinds of sharing can, in fact, advance a wider public good, as well as satisfy our own needs for compassion and counsel.
Anyone with a virtual life has dealt with these not always easy choices. I think for myself and a lot of bloggers web sharing has gone in reverse of Facebook: at first by default everything in your life is fair game for your blog, then you don't share much of anything private when you realize people are actually reading the blog, then you move somewhere in between. In between is a good spot, I think.

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