Note, 11/25/09: The unfortunate reality is that planning activities with multiple people is extremely difficult without the use of a social networking framework. For this reason alone, I have decided to re-open a Facebook account. However, my views on social networking’s long-term effects on privacy have not changed. I suppose the experiment was not a failure, but the fact is that the way people communicate in the 21st century has evolved; some things have changed for the better, and other things for the worse.
Recently I closed my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I didn’t plan on mentioning it since I didn’t think anyone would notice; however, some people have been wondering why I did it, so let me explain my reasons for jumping ship.
In the new 2.0 culture that we live in, über-transparency is an accepted way of life–in fact, it’s a socially acceptable addiction. Every thought that goes through our head is tweeted, things that were once considered private are openly shared between complete strangers on a global electronic billboard, and life itself has been reduced to almost nothing more than a constant stream of status updates. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but you get the idea.
