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02/03/2007

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Pat

I don't like to publish images of my family online. Too many creeps out there. I'll keep it to limited to friends only.

As for Twitter (see my post in our dept blog) I think it's pretty distracting at best. And at worst could leave you or your family vulnerable should you say something like "My plane for Chicago is taking off soon". The Twitter technology should be retooled for something more useful, IMHO.

Cole Camplese

Pat, that's what I'd like to see -- some ideas on how a Twitter like environment could play well in either education or organizational spaces. Using it right now is the key to understanding that limits and limitations. As for pictures of the kids on Flickr, it was time to move on.

Christian Johansen

Yes. Great post. I feel much too exposed and much limited by the kinds of personal questions, and the limited range of the answers available those damned pull-down menus in facebook (ditto the myspace ghetto and now orkut). I'm frequently denying requests to be a stranger's friend. But when I heard one of your folks was experimenting with GPS tracking, a la, "where am I now web page", I thought, man, THAT CROSSES *MY* LINE. Classes on common-sense privacy in the digital realm, anyone?

Elizabeth Pyatt

I had some experiences a few years ago that convinced me that I need to always consider the boundaries of private vs. public when it comes to posting things online. The Web can sometimes make us think it's an intimate experience between friends, but in the long run it is a public forum which anyone can view.

I've been on a board of linguists answering questions for the public for a few years. To be honest, some of us have been a little snarky (and heavens knows I've seen questions which really deserve snippy responses.) But one time when a bunch of gave some off-the-cuff sarcastic responses about Esperanto, the original questioner actually compiled our answers and wrote a "scholarly" paper on how "Linguists do not understand Esperanto and are really a bunch of Anglocentric bigots buying into US hegemony" (apparently the author has never read Noam Chomsky).

There were ethical issues in that we never got permission to be quoted and had we known we would be, we would have been more thoughtful in our responses. Yet legally, this guy probably had the right to do so...because it was all public and all online.

When I'm online, especially if I'm presenting myself as an expert, I really want to be sure that I am representing an issue thoughtfully. Because you never know who's reading your material and what they may do with it.

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