We Live in Public: When Technology Invades Personal Space

I blogged earlier about the potential for social network advertising to go beyond the scope of normal marketing tactics and turn off potential customers by thoroughly creeping them out.  I just recently watched a movie that explored this idea in detail.  The movie, called "We Live In Public" documented the odd life and social experiments of pseudo.com millionaire Josh Harris.  It explores the effect that social media like FaceBook and Twitter could have if taken to the extreme.

The main social experiment that took place involved the placement of over 100 artists in an ultra-wired, locked basement where everything was recorded, and everyone could monitor everyone else.  Each person had their own "pod" with a TV and a camera, and everyone had the ability to monitor everyone else's pod. There was no privacy, and privacy was eliminated.  The important thing to remember is that everyone involved in the experiment did so voluntarily and with quite a bit of enthusiasm about this bold new project.

After about 2 weeks of the experiment, the project imploded.  Even the most ardent exhibitionists had trouble giving up their privacy completely.  Tensions ran high, violence broke out, and the shooting range that had been included in the basement as a mode of entertainment became an accident waiting to happen.

Eventually the experiment was shut down by the police for zoning and weapons violations.  But the film emphasized the potential dangers of social media to the extent that people make their personal lives privy to the observations of others.  Even if it seems like a fun or exciting idea at the time, once a person gives up their privacy using social media, it isn't something that they can take back.  Their personal life will forever exist in a public forum.

The movie seems to suggest that the internet is an inherently impersonal place--which is why I thought our speaker in the panel discussion who talked about his church was so interesting.  The idea of trying to promote intimate, spiritual connections on a medium that is in many cases impersonal and unforgiving struck me initially as counter-intuitive.  But with them I think it all came down to the way that they used the internet to connect to people.  The church seemed to use the internet to reach out for ways to help people in times of crisis (personal or environmental).  So it seems like the key is using the internet as a tool for accomplishing your goals as opposed to the place that you live your life.

For information about the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/