Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age

Here's just an add-on to my last post about Facebook . This article of the German journal DIE ZEIT points out the benefits of transparency in a completely other area: taxation. In Sweden, everyone knows what everyone earns and how many taxes they pay for the good of the national community . No hiding and no fear. And as a result more trust into the state and the community.

Privacy concerns have accompanied Facebook since its launch in 2004 , mostly for legitimate reasons. Undoubtedly everyone has a right and - to variing degrees - a need to privacy and any service provider who ingnores these rights and needs should seriously reconsider his strategy. However, I would like to shed a different light onto the scenario. Especially in the German media, more and more articles voice a very critical view on social networking in general. Like e.g. my favourite online journal SPIEGEL ONLINE, which has continuously publishes solely critical articles against Facebook & Co ( http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,531000,00.html or http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/wunderbar/0,1518,532070,00.html ). The critical voices all go into similar directions: If you use social networking sites, publish rather less about yourself Why should anyone connect to so many people online? Why should anyone just tell stuff about himself? It's better not to use social networkin...

After about 6 months of blogging, it's time to look back and reflect on the outcome of my blogging activities. And I hate to name it, but the first outcome that comes to mind is stress. First it was the stress of finding the right topic. Do I have anything to talk about which would be interesting enough to others? Then it was the stress of being seen. Suddenly friends were mentioning that they have read my blog lately and were commenting on it. Each time then I rushed back to my site to verify that what I had written was really something I could still confirm, desperately hoping that I make somehow sense with what I write. Then it was the stressful urge to get more users. Of course I want to be seen and I want have more readers, so I started to link to other blogs and make comments there, at the same time inviting others to comment on mine. Which of course requires further investment in research and quality check. And increased quality indeed takes time and effort, which in return ...