More on social media
As you are probably aware, seeing as how I’ve written about it here plenty of times before, I’m fascinated by the social media trend — a mixture of wonder and fright. I honestly don’t know what the end game is with this things, whether it’s going to go by the wayside like BETA and turn signals or if it’s going to transform into something even more far reaching than we can imagine today.
Let’s take a look at the timeline for a second:
Home phone – Get in touch with any home whose personalized 10-digit number you know
Primitive cell phone – A HUGE jump, allowing individual people to have telephone capability wherever they are
E-mail – Send messages via the Internet that can be read from any computer connected to the web.
Instant messaging – Chat with a person over the internet
Modern cell phone – Literally every person has a personalized 10-digit number that you can use to get them at any time
Text messaging – Like instant messaging, but no internet required. Trade information without actually having to call the person
MySpace/Facebook – Each person has his or her own page with the ability for people to leave messages, photos, etc. Enormous leap in information sharing
Twitter – A simple question — What are you doing? — updated continuously by millions of people around the world
And so on. Basically we are at the point where we are willingly displaying publicly aspects of our lives that previously were limited to our close friends and family. This is an unprecedented idea in our history. For the first time we have the following information compiled neatly in one web page:
Name
Address
Phone number
Email address
Photo
Job
Job History
Family
Photo of family
I’ve given less information to pull $1,000 out of my bank account. Add to that information the fact that we often freely put up information like:
Where we are
Where we are going
When we will be there
When we will be back
Who is with us
Let’s look at John Smith’s Facebook page for a second. It says that John lives at 1234 Main St., Fairfield, Ill. He is originally from Dallas — family is still there, as a matter of fact. He doesn’t have any roommates, and his Twitter update yesterday says, “SWEET!!! JUST GOT BRAND NEW 50″ PLASMA, CANT WAIT FOR MNF!!!!” John’s status is “Headed to Chicago for Sox game w/Kev.” Long story short, John’s coming home to a ransacked house, and I’m watching “Flash Forward” on my new 50″ plasma.
Or let’s say that the knockout redhead from my math course is ignoring my every advance, and I’m at the point where I just can’t take no for an answer anymore. She tweets, “Need a break, gonna take a walk in the neighborhood.” What’s t0 stop me from running into her as she turns a corner?
Want to hack your roommate’s email? A quick hop over to Facebook will answer probably half of the questions on the “Forgot Password” link. I would be willing to bet he uses that same password for his online banking and PayPal accounts.
See where I’m going with this? The social media wave has engulfed us so quickly that we haven’t had time to work out the problem areas. I plead with the readers here — be very, very careful with social media. It seems harmless today, but there’s no telling where this will go in the future.
