I read a post on facebook – in Italian, please use google to translate it – about oversharing. The term is self-explanatory, it means when people are sharing every detail of their lives, disregard privacy and the potential problems, which may arrise from sharing photos, locations, trips and so many things, I am sharing, as well.
Yes, I am aware of it to share my life – runkeeper, tripit, facebook, twitter, linkedin, lastFM, Picasa, and so much more – and I have never thought about doing anything wrong with it. I mean, I’ve organized our tour to India based on blogs and social networks, and it was the best trip I’ve ever had in my entire life!
I recall one of my first seminars at the university in Munich about information retrieval. It was said correctly, that in the last century after inventing the gigabyte large storing disks and internet, people, companies started to collect and store electronically available data.
Data is not information.
The difference between them could be defined, like between singing an English song without understanding, what is it about, just for its rythm or understanding its words.
So after the problematic of being able to store everything you need, you turn back and you want to find, what you need in the cloud of what you have. Sure, without having everything you won’t find it ever.
Choosing is only possible, if you have something to choose from. Otherwise it is only realizing of what you have. (Och, old times in Hungary, when there was only one person to be elected to be the leader of the country, and we still called it election…)
I might be wrong, but maybe this oversharing seems just by now idiotic for the people, since the internet is free and people necessarily think, that what is shared, is shared to be read and must have a value, must come from important channels, from important people.
I think, internet is just the biggest storage box of the world, where I am free to store, whatever I want to, so if there is someone, who is not interested in it, should just go to another site, but if there is someone else, who finds it interesting, why not to share, what I felt, saw, heard? It is the biggest crowd application of: do not invent the wheel twice. Apps, and sites, like booking.com are brilliant, since I not only can talk to the hotel itself, I also can look at the reviews of others (since newest I also can read teh reviews translated, and share the hotel’s details on my private social network). I mean, come-ON, why should I live alone, if I can share everything I do, what could help others to avoid the same stupid things, I’ve done?
Then one day it happened…I’ve been contacted by a certain individual on facebook, who stated to have looked at my photo for hours and thought, I could be his next wife, with whom he could spend his entire life with, blablabla. In that very moment I started to think about my chain of information, what he can know about me: he can see my photos, created maps, runs, favorite artists, documents, I’ve created, even my current location is shared. So come-ON again, was I like shouting out to the public: come and find me?
Obviously I got scared and controlled my personal information on the major networks and closed photos, locations and home addresses, I got scared and wanted to have my…..privacy. Me, who thinks, that internet is and should remain free for everyone, since it is a huge help to find, what you want.
Yes, one person is intelligent, people are only stupid, on the other hand, one person can’t do, what people can….
And go for a trip! 