DLTQ.org

(This blog post is continually updated)

In 2020, there will be a different kind of luxury, the kind that money can’t buy, but which takes a lot of work to maintain: The luxury of privacy.

As Facebook and other forms of social media litter our atmosphere, we see several tendencies that are normalized or even considered ‘good’ .

* Making noise. A la “any PR is good PR”. Or rather, any attention is good attention. If they cannot remember you, you are as much as dead.
* Idle chatter is good. Keep most discussions short and sweet. 140 characters is ideal.
* Quantity of contacts is seen as a measure of who you are.

In 2020, you are seen as a potential terrorist if you are not visible on that mobile network where all your friends can see where you are, your presence like an electronic beacon.

This constant on-ness will work with our minds in sometimes surprising ways. We might end up being more concerned about the crowdsourced priorities than our own, or in a more subtle way we let the agendas of others, or our own expectations of what others would like (read, re-tweet, link to), guide our own words.

(And then, on a personal note, an update from me: I am good, still living in Copenhagen, enjoying my time with my girlfriend, reading books, looking for more work, working, and thinking a lot about my past adventures in social media. And writing, although the writing is not more than a bunch of pages in google docs – an unshared document )

But what do you think? Do you sometimes want to withdraw from the “social media”? When you do have those thoughts, are you worried about how that would affect your life? Your relationship with your e-friends? (That is, people who you have not met in the flesh yet, but who you still consider to be good friend of yours)