This Monday we ran a post on Social Networking Watch about Mark Zuckerburg saying that 'the age of privacy is over.' These are bold words for what many may see as a brash young entrepreneur with more money than sense.
I commented that people care less about their personal privacy because its ok to be human these days. Has Zuckerburg gone insane, or is his quest for opening up peoples havens of privacy the mark of a true visionary. I'd argue the latter.
An amusing yet deep cutting article titled 'Renouncing Evil Powers' appeared in the International Herald Tribune this morning written by Garrison Keillor. My favorite quote from the article goes like this, "War requires very well-brought-up people to do vicious things that they are able to do efficiently because the recipients of their viciousness are unknown to them."
If you look past the most obvious end goal that Mr Zuckerburg has of massively improving the advertising monetization effectiveness of Facebook by lowering privacy levels, there's another interesting social goal that I imagine he is not getting credit for. When you open up the world to talk to each other more, and allow the people of the world to peer deep into the lives of those that may be foreign to them, the impetus to attack those that are unknown is rapidly broken down.
The social internet is helping to educate the world by bringing home the personal impact of our country's political moves. Case in point, see the blog Baghdad Burning and IraqiGirl. The social net is making the world a smaller and more personal place by bringing the pains that people are going through closer to home. Case in point, see the Haiti earthquake twittersphere.
Zuckerburg's moves to lower privacy levels and make us share our lives more, also help Facebook become a catalyst for world peace. Your comments please.
