The Surveillance Society

The younger generation is revealing their entire lives on places such as MySpace, Live Journal, Facebook and has advanced the theatre of community. Their sense of privacy is not the same as that of older generations.

As most girls did, I used to write to myself in a diary, which I kept locked with the accompanied key. I wrote down all of my most private thoughts. All of which, I would have been mortified if anyone would have read. Conversely, kids of today has their diary online with computers they were given in elementary school. They instant message their friends and create online profiles at a variety of sites.

Eight year olds can “network” with people all over the world through consumer product sites as Barbie Girls.

Teenagers are revealing their inner most thoughts, anxieties and party life complete with infamous pictures at sites such as MySpace.

Adults from young to senior have stepped into a world of self-documentation focusing on the intimacy, the dullness or the adventures of daily life – just anther individual in a quite or uploaded noisy music track of a busy virtual world.

The caution of us over 30’s who are careful not too reveal too much personal information over the internet isn’t understood by the younger generation of online citizens such as Kitty Ostapowicz whose said in the article “Say Everything”: “Why not? What’s the worst that’s going to happen?"

The worst that can happen is that cyber stalking becomes real life stalking. What could also happen is that your public online life can and has affected people's careers and college education. Human resource managers and university faculty staff members are going online to find the non-application information that will reveal the "truth" or at least the image of the prospective employee or college student. If they don’t like what they see, they will not hire you or accept you into the college of your choice.

There’s a lot of transparency between being known on social networking communities and Hollywood celebrities -- it's about being a public figure and seeking an audience. The problem arises when something we don’t want others to know is published.

Hundreds or even thousands online may see a picture or a video of you, that you thought would only be seen by one or two other people. In 2000 a women named "Susie" was the victim of an uploaded video she took for her than boyfriend. It's believed her than boyfriend's roommate uploaded the tape to the internet where "Susie" was suddenly infamous. Sadly, this has become a trend among the broken hearted. We may say today's boyfriend / girlfriend would never so such a thing to us, but the truth is once feelings are hurt and pride is wounded, people are capable of anything.

There are advantages to manuscripting a life though. Patient blogs are a way for patients to communicate their feelings in a positive way and letting others know that they 're not alone. Their blogs give hope where before there may have been none. When a terminally ill individual or family member passes away, or a friend leaves unexpectedly, the blog or profile remains as a memorial for that person. Allowing family and friends to celebrate and remember the person.

As I grow older I have gone back to the beginning of my earliest public exhibitionist days and sometimes I’m amused at my former self’s writings and other times I reinforce my belief of how much of a nerd I really am. Which gets me thinking about the generation before me. How I would have loved to read about the life and personal adventures of “normal” everyday people in the earlier years.

From reading the adventures of the “new breed" of young women flappers and her bad boy (of that era) boyfriends to the thoughts of someone in 1929 when the stock market crashed and into the fashionable global phenomenon of Talkies in the 1930s…. That was a time to be recorded.

Yes, I know books still exist and I can walk from my desk stiff legs from my car to the door of any Barnes & Nobles. But those books are written mostly about famous or infamous people. While those stories and recollections are indeed fascinating, nothing beats the Girl / Boy Next Door retelling of what s/he thinks is dull.

So when I think about the future of who may be reading my public life, I wonder if they will find it dull or fascinating? Will Google still be popular by then? What will the internet have morphed into?

On a planet that is wired and networked and continues to grow USB cable tentacles stretching into rural villages, privacy is an illusion when you choose to publicize your life. People of all ages need to constantly ask themselves if what they publish is something that they can live with everyone on the planet knowing.

Are you considering how your private information can be used? Are prospective roommates, friends, husbands or wives or employers Googling you right now to piece together the reality of your life as opposed to the tales you’ve spun? Google probably knows more about us than any one person on this planet.

Does Duck Tape Really Fix Everything?

I’m clicking on Laughing Squid’s Writers & Publishers web links one by one. With each link I quickly look over it and self-doubt creeps in a little more and a little more and little more. That nagging little girl entity deep down inside of me that has never grown up and has never felt too sure of herself starts questioning my ability to be a Blogger let alone any kind of a ‘comedy of life’ online columnist.

I scan web sites like Infiltration, Annalee Newitz (Techsploitation) and Wikipedia’s biography of Hunter S. Thompson and I wonder if I’m full of unruly bravado boosting potential for a developing project (not only to myself but to others) that maybe, I have no right to do.

Much too often I find myself plagued by the same insecurities that have held me back in the past only to later find out I could have done it. Or I listen to stories from others who did what I wanted to do and I felt even worse for not following my heart and or desire. More than anything, I hate that nagging little girl that whispers I'm not good enough, not smart enough, or not talented enough, that no one wants to hear what I have to say, so why bother? Too often, I listened to those voices.

I’ve been able to lock her inside a small cabin but she never sleeps, she’s always there making un-approving faces at me, reminding me that she hasn’t gone away and doesn’t plan to. I’ve learned to silence her whiney voice most of the time, but she always manages to find an open window where she whispers insecurities. I can't even begin to imagine how many opportunities I have missed because I listened to her. It saddens me to think of where I could be right now if I only I had the courage and confidence to go forth and pursue my destiny with full vigor.

Fortunately I also carry a stronger entity than her -- she has always wanted to be out. She is the one that has held me up and forced me to keep walking in my most trying times. She’s been there all along, for all of my life rumbling rowdily, building and gaining momentum. I didn’t understand her. I thought she was a danger to me, I believed she was the one that needed to be silenced. I believed that she would cause me harm and didn’t want me be happy. Now I know she was the one trying to save me from the true evil of self-doubt.

Insecurities weigh us down or hold us back. Allowing feelings of self-doubt, feelings of not being good enough, feelings like we don't deserve success, or that success is not ours to achieve seems to burden women more than men. A friend and I were talking about this last night, after we climbed a 10,000 foot mountain with nothing but a bottle of water, a small pug dog and an over zealous health …. Ok, it wasn’t 10,000 feet but Runyon Canyon Park felt like it at the time.

Next to guilt, self-doubt is one of the most self-defeating personal emotions to carry. There’s a book named Living the Artist's Life by Paul Dorrell. This is excerpted from chapter eight of the book.

Every living artist I’ve ever worked with, and every deceased artist I’ve ever studied, have all shared one simple trait: each of them has gone through varying levels of self-doubt; each of them, at different times in their lives, has questioned the worth of their talent. No one that I know of has ever been exempt from this. For some, like the poet Sylvia Plath (who was also a talented illustrator), their spells of doubt and depression were mind-numbing, paralyzing, and, in the end, beyond their control. For others, like Picasso, those spells were nothing more than a minor dip on their emotional graph.

I feel that spells of self-doubt occur so that we will reassess our lives, and work. For some, these spells can virtually destroy them if they don’t keep their emotions in check.

I do feel that I have the tools at hand to conquer the demons that have always held me back. I look around me and I see opportunity at every turn.

The days of making excuses for why I can't are over. It's not that I’ve plugged into some super Matrix of overwhelming self-confidence -- I’m still battling the whiney little girl of self-doubt. It is because I no longer want to deny myself the possibilities that are laid out before me under a sunny California sky. There is something great out there for me, and it is my mission to find it, to claim it and make it mine. Anyone have any duck tape I could barrow? There’s a slow whispering leak I need to fix.

Five Things I learned Last Week

1) I love having female friends

2) I need to remember to stop, think, consider the variables and if I genuinely do not like something, I need to say no. Treating yourself like dirt

3) Sunday night is (normally) an extension of my online persona

4) I was funnier before I hermited and found morality – need to change that.

5) Don't compare your success and definition of to others - Cs Are Not Acceptable