The 10 Films That Influenced You Challenge

True confessions.  These past 10 days have been agonizing.

“Why?”

Because there has been a challenge on social media, primarily Facebook, concerning one of my favorite things—film.  Oh, it starts simple enough, "The rules are, once a day, for ten days, post an iconic image from a film that influenced you... with no explanation necessary... feel free to join in if you would like..."  That's how it all starts.

The challenge is to post, “an iconic image from a film that [has] influenced you…with no explanation necessary”.  This challenge still lingers, which is why I had to post it right here on Chicken Scratch.  This has been agonizing for three solid reasons: 1., gathering ONLY 10 films that have an influence, 2., narrowing one’s scope to one image that fits the film, and 3., not explaining why.  I’ve been meticulous in this process.  I even set up a specific file for images, pondered films, and asked myself why these films—in particular, had such an impact on yours truly.  Meticulous, I say!  I, could not—in good conscience, let it rest…   

NOTE: if you don’t care about movies—or, more specifically, my choices of iconic films—move along.  No harm—no foul.  I’ll see you next post or so.  Thanks for stopping by.

Now then, fellow film geeks, here’s the explanation & the honorable mentions…

Day 1: “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, 1954.  This movie blew my young mind.  It was released 14 years before I was born but it runs deep.  The Nautilus was my introduction to steampunk and the mysterious Captain Nemo—his motivations & character (which are fully realized in the book by Jules Verne) captured my imagination & attention.  Brilliant stuff.

Day 2: “Airplane!”, 1980.  I’m not saying it’s the most quotable movie of all time, but I’m not saying it’s not either.  This makes me laugh.  Laugh hard.  Still.

Day 3: “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, 1981.  Pound for pound, a perfect film.  Adventure, excitement—all the things that Jedi do not crave are in abundance surrounding the exploits of Indiana Jones.  I like the sequels—in fact number 5 is slated to be in the theaters in 2020, but there will NEVER be another Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Day 4: “Blade Runner”, 1982.  There are so many layers to this film.  At first glance it’s a futuristic noir detective story—however, the more one looks at this one the more one will see.  This film is an exploration into what life is, it’s precious nature, and who gets to say what is deemed to have a soul or not.  This one runs deep.  Mary Shelley, the mother of Frankenstein, would approve.

Day 5: “JAWS”, 1975.  JAWS horrified a generation of filmgoers, me included.  I was scared to get into the bathtub after seeing JAWS.  The scene on the Orca (Quint’s boat) when Robert Shaw/Quint is talking about the Indianapolis—one of the finest character driven scenes ever put to film.  ‘Bruce the Shark’, kept breaking down so Spielberg was able to keep the genie in the bottle until seeing the shark was the most impactful.  It’s a heck of a film that can make yellow barrels being drug along the water’s surface so terrifyingly menacing.  Brilliant stuff.

Day 6: “The Road Warrior” or “Mad Max 2” if you were not seeing it in the United States back in 1981.  This film strummed all the right chords for me.  It’s a western set in a post-apocalyptic future where the cowboys ride V-8 Interceptors & motorcycles instead of horses.  Max, a lone figure from the wastelands, comes to save the day.  Shane would be proud.

Day 7: “Superman – The Movie”, 1978.  “You will believe a man can fly”, was the tagline.  Even after all these years, Christopher Reeve’s performance as the Man of Steel still has me believing.  When Clark first introduces Superman to the world, ripping open his shirt—revealing the “S” on his chest, saving Lois, and the crowd below from the falling helicopter—chills.  Even now.  Seminal stuff.

Day 8: “Escape from New York”, 1981.  I love John Carpenter. He had a distinct style and it was a style that I lapped up. The pairing of Kurt Russell and Carpenter produced some of my all-time favorite movies.  This one introduced, for my money, one of the absolute best anti-heroes of cinema—Snake Plissken.  It took me a long time to find the right image for this one.  I settled for Snake in Hauk’s office holding up his bound hands, with the American flag in the background.  It is just before he delivers the line, “Call me, Snake”, for the first time and just before he tells Hauk, “I don’t give a fuck about your war—or your president.”  Hell yeah.  Every now and again there are rumbles about a remake.  I hope it doesn’t happen—not while Russell & Carpenter still have time to make Old Man Snake.  …To the gods of film, make this happen.

Day 9: “Planet of the Apes”, 1968.  This one scared me.  I came to it after it’s release since I was born the same year it was released.  I remember getting caught sneaking into our living room to get a glimpse of the sanitized, edited for TV version, when it came to the small screen.  I was not allowed to see it.  This was probably a good call since that what I saw disturbed me—especially since I can remember at that time hearing about guerrilla wars on the evening news.  My young mind couldn’t recognize the difference between guerrilla and gorilla, so my, ‘Planet of the Apes’, horror was compounded by my own ignorance.  The stark beauty of POA is that, hidden under a thin veil of ‘science fiction’, the story pokes holes into so many tropes of our institutions—religion, government, authority, control, freedom, anti-intellectualism.  It’s from the sixties but the messages are eternal.  It still holds up. It still has things to tell us. …And then, there’s THAT ending.

Day 10: “Star Wars – A New Hope”, 1977.  This hit my generation right between the eyes.  The image I chose for this one is Luke, gazing at the setting twin-suns of Tatooine, wondering about what the future may hold for him.  He has no idea at this point—no idea, whatsoever, that he will spark a revolution that rocks the seat of power in the galaxy. No, not yet—he’s just another soul looking at the suns set, wondering about tomorrow.  Luke, at that moment, represented each audience member sitting in that theater in ’77, at one point or another in our lives—staring into that uncertain future.  Would our futures involve going to Alderaan, learning the ways of the Force, and becoming a Jedi like our father—perhaps, even, helping to overthrow an evil galactic Empire?  One never knows.  As influences go, this one was—and is, seismographic in scope.  This one changed me.  No exaggeration.  Star Wars inspired wonder and made me want to tell stories—to write—to dream.  I’m not alone in this sentiment.  Countless other storytellers were touched by this space-opera homage to Saturday afternoon serials, Samurai movies, and westerns.  They still are.  The Force is still working.    

And then there’s the honorable mentions… 

“Treasure Island” with Wallace Beery as Long John Silver in 1934

 “King Kong” 1933 

“Frankenstein” 1931

“Conan – The Barbarian” 1982—which could have easily made the top 10

“Star Trek II – The Wrath of Kahn” 1982—which is STILL the greatest Star Trek movie to date 

“Goldfinger” 1965

“Moby Dick” 1956 – with a screenplay written by Ray Bradbury 

“A Fist Full of Dollars” 1964 

“Caddyshack” 1980 

“Big Trouble in Little China” 1986– another one from Carpenter & Russell that is STILL ahead of it’s time…

I could go on, but I should probably end this here…

The agony is too great to go on.

  

The Privacy Poll

This afternoon I took a Facebook poll on privacy.  I answered how satisfied I was with the privacy settings and if I felt they were easy to find.  Then there was a box for my comments so I commented.

"I enjoy FB.  However, privacy is an illusion.  I self-censor and I’m mindful of what I post, both status updates and with pictures.  FB is a free service but information is the new currency & knowledge is power.  That makes information priceless.  Right now FB is the 900 lbs. gorilla in Social Media and people, being people, like to share information about their favorite things; themselves.  I’m cautious as to what I share and to what extent I share it, I don’t think you can’t make a setting for that - yet.  I know this isn’t a space for questions but what is FB’s stance on CISPA?  - Thank you for your time."

And that was that. 

The price of admission these days is tied to data – your data.  I love Social Media; further, I am an apologist & proponent for it.  At this point in our history and, I hope, far into the future a user driven, free & open internet is in the world’s best interest.  That said, if you are going to participate in Social Media be it Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinerest, or even blogging you should be aware of the price.  For many, including me, it is still worth the price of admission but that cost may be increasing if members of Congress had their way; CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) passed in the House but failed in the Senate.  It is only a matter of time before someone else who has no idea or concept of what they are talking about proposes legislation to take away your online freedoms & compromise your personal information.  I hope whatever may come next meets a similar fate as CISPA & SOPA before it. 

“You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.” ― Charles Portis, True Grit

The Great Categorization

“Alas, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.  I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” - Bilbo Baggins

Ah, Facebook.  I do not wish to deceive you, Gentle Reader, I love it.  I never suspected that I would; however, I do.  It’s a great way to communicate & share ideas, thoughts, events, photographs, & adventures with your friends.  Unfortunately, you also share this information with your, “Friends”, which are two entirely different things.  If you have tooled around Facebook and have acquired a list of people on your, “Friends” list you know what I mean.  “Friends” should be more accurately named, “Acquaintances”.  I have thousands of acquaintances in real life and a much smaller group of what I would truly call my friends.  It is inevitable that Social Media would mirror this simple equation.  I’m pretty sure that if you were to look at your Facebook “Friends” list that you too would come to a similar conclusion.

Now I’m not necessarily saying that I’ve tuned up the grouping on my list of “Friends” on Facebook but I would imagine such an experience would be cathartic.  Let’s face it, there’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam in Social Media or our Facebook pages.  Gentle Reader, don’t deny it.  Yes these people are your, “Friends” but it’s YOUR Facebook experience NOT theirs.  Wouldn’t it be nice to take it back - to trim the vines, so to speak?

If you wanted to thin the great head here’s how it’s done.  Go to your main page and click on “Friends”, (currently located to the left of the page) a whole new world opens - a world of lists, categories, & groups.  This would be where you get the option to put people into whatever grouping you so desire.  You can post to individual sections of your groupings by choosing the option button next to “POST” in the dialog box.  In the future this will insure that your message is delivered to the group that YOU want it to reach.

“But I have a bunch of “Friends” - how can I arrange them all?”

With patience, a pinch of honesty, & half of an imagination you can find here are some possible names for arranging you “Friends” by groups.

True Friends

Acquaintances

Perfunctory

Friends who post Pictures of Cats

Optimists

Pessimists

Lunatic Fringe

Friends with Agendas

Friends who Believe Themselves to be Constitutional Scholars

Friends who are Zealots - Religious

Friends who are Zealots - Political

Friends who are Zealots - Other

Friends who Believe

Friends who Do Not Believe

Friends who Used to Believe

Friends who Kind of Believe in Something

Friends who Want to Believe

Friends from Assorted Schools

Who Are These People?

Of course, you can have cross-sections and sub-categories.  Say you have a narcissistic, gun-toting, acquaintance from high school, who believes that alien technology is responsible for all the “dangerous” leaps in technology that we’ve experienced over the last 25 years and that the only way to protect ourselves from the world is to secede from the Union and to destroy all those who stand in their way as they reshape the world in their own image.  As you can see, it’s possible to be in several groups and sub-categories at once.       

If I were to embark upon, “The Great Categorization” and I were to filter all my “Friends” into designated groups so that I could reach and/or speak to the groups that I wanted to communicate with when I wanted to communicate with them I must confess, that would be pretty cool.  I have a sneaking suspicion that my “True Friends” category would not only the most precious to me but also the least populated.

Just like in real life.

We Need a Social Network Declaration of Independence

No.  Really.  We do.

In 'Part I' of this series (We Need a Social Network Constitution: http://evilchickenscratch.blogspot.com/2012/03/we-need-social-network-constitution.html) we looked at the concept how our technology has outpaced our laws & ethics.  In this blog I will give some recent examples of this concept and offer a few, humble suggestions for participating in the Social Media arena.  You don’t have to swing a dead external hard drive too far to find stories concerning personal information in Social Media these days and such stories will only become more intense in the future.  That being said, I only pass this along for your edification and awareness.  You may already know this information, Gentle Reader and, if so, feel free to sit this one out.  Now, if you are concerned over things such as personal information, how that information can be used, and what your rights are here now in the United States of the 21^st century please read on. 

Now please don’t get me wrong.  I love Facebook.  It has become integral.  Social networking is how things are and will continue to be done.  Believe it.  The data and information that is mined is priceless.  It is not just people who want to sell you something who are taking notice of your likes and dislikes these days.  “Social Network Forensics” is a burgeoning field and the federal government is paying very close attention in the name of security.  Here is an article by Todd Piett on “How Law Enforcement Uses Social Media for Forensic Investigation”: http://mashable.com/2012/02/13/social-media-forensics/.  Piett writes, “Of course, as with every technology employed by law enforcement, concerns about “Big Brother” inevitably arise. What is the expectation of privacy around social media? If I tweet “Jack deserves to get a beating for that one,” is that an admission of guilt? What if I only direct message someone as a joke but they retweet it to a broader audience and it incites action? What if I only post it on Facebook for my friends?”  The simple truth of the matter is if you put it out there ~ it’s out there.

Then there are employers who fire employees who refuse to give them their Facebook password: http://www.themarysue.com/michigan-teachers-aide-fired-over-facebook/.  There are also cases where potential employees were asked to give over their Facebook passwords before being hired (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-seekers-getting-asked-facebook-080920368.html).  To it’s credit, Facebook has not been taking such threats to it’s very existence lightly and is considering suing employers who demand job applicants passwords: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/facebook-says-it-may-sue-employers-who-demand-job-applicants-passwords.ars.  From Jon Brodkin’s ars technica’s article, “As a user, you shouldn’t be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job," Facebook said. "And as the friend of a user, you shouldn’t have to worry that your private information or communications will be revealed to someone you don’t know and didn’t intend to share with just because that user is looking for a job. That’s why we’ve made it a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to share or solicit a Facebook password.”

John Brownlee from Cult of Mac wrote an interesting piece about privacy, “This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s a Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy”.  It can be found right here: http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-without-their-knowledge-its-a-wake-up-call-about-facebook-privacy/.  In the article, Mr. Brownlee very clearly illustrates the importance of privacy settings by showing an app that scrapes Facebook & Foursquare for information.  The following is from his article…

“Okay, so here’s Zoe. Most of her information is visible, so I now know her full name. I can see at a glance that she’s single, that she is 24, that she went to Stoneham High School and Bunker Hill Community College, that she likes to travel, that her favorite book is Gone With The Wind and her favorite musician is Tori Amos, and that she’s a liberal. I can see the names of her family and friends. I can see her birthday.”

“All of that is visible on Facebook?” one of the other girls in our group asked.

“More, depending on how your privacy settings are configured! For example, I can also look at Zoe’s pictures.”

I tapped on the photo album, and a collection of hundreds of publicly visible photos loaded up. I quickly browsed them.

“Okay, so it looks like Zoe is my kind of girl. From her photo albums, I can see that she likes to party, and given the number of guys she takes photos with at bars and clubs at night, I can deduce that she’s frisky when she’s drunk, and her favorite drink is a frosty margarita. She appears to have recently been in Rome. Also, since her photo album contains pictures she took at the beach, I now know what Zoe looks like in a bikini… which, as it happens, is pretty damn good.”

My girlfriend scowled at me. I assured her Zoe in a bikini was no comparison, and moved on.

“So now I know everything to know about Zoe. I know where she is. I know what she looks like, both clothed and mostly disrobed. I know her full name, her parents’ full names, her brother’s full name. I know what she likes to drink. I know where she went to school. I know what she likes and dislikes. All I need to do now is go down to the Independent, ask her if she remembers me from Stoneham High, ask her how her brother Mike is doing, buy her a frosty margarita, and start waxing eloquently about that beautiful summer I spent in Roma.”

The App has been effectively killed by Foursquare.  However, Mr. Brownlee also points out, “…Girls Around Me wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. Sure, on the surface, it looks like a hook-up app like Grindr for potential stalkers and date rapists, but all that Girls Around Me is really doing is using public APIs from Google Maps, Facebook and Foursquare and mashing them all up together, so you could see who had checked-in at locations in your area, and learn more about them. Moreover, the girls (and men!) shown in Girls Around Me all had the power to opt out of this information being visible to strangers, but whether out of ignorance, apathy or laziness, they had all neglected to do so. This was all public information. Nothing Girls Around Me does violates any of Apple’s policies.”  Mr. Brownlee makes the point that he works in the technology field and that he always assumed that people knew that the information that they put out into the wild, so to speak, was public information.  And that is frat boy stuff.  What happens when the government takes note of who you are, what you do and whom you follow?  

In an op-ed from Amy Gagran that ran on CNN entitled, “ACLU: Most Police Track Phones’ Locations Without Warrants” (http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/tech/mobile/police-phone-tracking-gahran/index.html), Ms. Gagran makes the case that such behavior is not so much the exception to the rule but is fast becoming the norm.  That’s not only cell phone calls but all the texts and emails too.  Ms. Gagran writes, “But don't the police need a warrant for that? It varies by state, but carriers generally say they require a court order to release this data. Regardless of these requirements, however, "Only a tiny minority reported consistently obtaining a warrant and demonstrating probable cause to do so," said the ACLU.

Not surprisingly, the ACLU disapproves of this practice.

"The government should have to obtain a warrant based upon probable cause before tracking cell phones. That is what is necessary to protect Americans' privacy, and it is also what is required under the Constitution," states the ACLU on its site.”

The ACLU is right.  This is now constitutional law we are discussing.  It is widely accepted that we live in a Post 911 world and that security takes precedence over rights that we used to take completely and utterly for granted.  I, for one, believe this to be a frightening practice that pushes us a hair’s breadth away from utter tyranny.  A place where the common communication of citizens is monitored for any danger that you may be to the state and concepts like privacy and dignity are luxuries that we have lost along the way to our glorious future.  Who could pull off such a feat – the monitoring of not only a country but also the whole of the internet worldwide?  Where would one build such a complex?  Well, apparently the NSA could in the desert of Utah.

The cover story in April 2012’s WIRED magazine is by James Bamford, whom I’m pretty sure is currently on several people’s ‘watch lists’, entitled, “The NSA is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)”.  You can read Mr. Bamford’s article here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1 and I encourage you to do so.  So how much memory would be needed that could monitor and save Google searches, cell phone calls, texts, tweets, and pictures from the family vacation that were put on Facebook?  Have you ever heard of a yottabyte?   Mr. Bamford writes, “…as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabyte (10²⁴ bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytes—so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)

It needs that capacity because, according to a recent report by Cisco, global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year. (A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.) In terms of scale, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, once estimated that the total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. And the data flow shows no sign of slowing. In 2011 more than 2 billion of the world’s 6.9 billion people were connected to the Internet. By 2015, market research firm IDC estimates, there will be 2.7 billion users. Thus, the NSA’s need for a 1-million-square-foot data storehouse. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

The data stored in Bluffdale will naturally go far beyond the world’s billions of public web pages. The NSA is more interested in the so-called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, US and foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between trusted peers. “The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.” With its new Utah Data Center, the NSA will at last have the technical capability to store, and rummage through, all those stolen secrets. The question, of course, is how the agency defines who is, and who is not, “a potential adversary.”

 

Pogo is quoted as saying, “Yes son, we have met the enemy and it is us.”  Mr. Bamford provides a link to my favorite second brain, Wikipedia, concerning totalitarianism, “Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.  Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda campaign, which is disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror.” 

Heavy stuff, n'est-ce pas?  Now please don’t get me wrong here.  I am proud and blessed to be a citizen of this country.  Further, I am thankful to those not only on the front-lines protecting my freedoms but also to those behind the scenes (perhaps even in Utah) who are doing the same.  One of those freedoms is the freedom of speech.  I would hope that writing a blog such as this would not put yours truly onto a ‘watch list’ or label me as, “a potential adversary”.  This being said, no one should be above the law.  We are not a totalitarian regime, we are a democracy and we should act like one.

No.  Really.  We should.

THIS section should really be ‘Part III’ but I am growing weary of my own slacktivist rantings; so now, as promised, a word about Facebook that I mentioned way back in the beginning of this particular blog entry.  I said I would offer some humble suggestions for participating in the Social Media arena.  Please take the following with a grain of salt.  Facebook is, at the end of the day, is driven by the individual user.  The way you run your Facebook is completely and utterly up to you.  My simple guidelines are as follows: 

Social Media is NOT my diary.

Words still mean things.  Actions do too.

Don’t be stupid… or at the very least, TRY not to be stupid.

Never feed the trolls.

Treat others, as I would want to be treated.

There you go.  That’s it.  These are my guidelines.  Yours may be completely different and that’s ok too.  That’s why they make different flavors of ice cream.  As we have already established, Facebook is user driven and that’s how I drive. 

I love Facebook.  Is it intrusive and do they sell my demographic information to data aggregators?  Sure they do but information is the new currency and if you want to participate in the Social Media arena then you must be aware of the consequences.  Before I post I try to remind myself that whatever I put out there, is out there.  We have already established this.  Facebook; however, can take on a life of its own if you don’t understand a few key things.  Bilbo Baggins was onto something when he said, “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” 

Just for the sake of discussion, for instance, suppose I start to annoy you.  You don’t like what I am saying, the silly way that I say it, or you are sick of seeing my pictures fill up your Facebook experience.  If such is the case you have a few options open to you, (don’t feel bad, I know how annoying I can be).  First, I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with this: http://mashable.com/2011/02/07/facebook-privacy-guide/.  It will show you how to exclude me from your feed.  If that doesn’t shut me up to your liking you can simply un-friend me.  It’s ok; we’ll always have Paris.  I know this flies in the face of any perceptions of narcissism on the branch of Social Media known as Facebook but why would I wish to torture you any longer?  Go now; know that I will carry your memory with me wherever I go & that you have carved out a special place in my heart.  You see, on Facebook, I am not there to entertain you ~ I’m there to entertain me and to communicate with those I wish to communicate with on my own terms.  If all that is too much or too little, too bad. 

Just look at how empowered we all are now!

Who da thunk?

...Now where do I go to get a yottabyte of memory?

Graphic from Forbes.  Interesting article too: http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkerschberg/2011/09/28/managing-information-risk-and-archiving-social-media/

We Need a Social Network Constitution

No.  Really.  We do.

We live in an age where our tools have lapped our personal freedom laws and ethics a dozen fold.  A world where data aggregators; those we let in (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) and those we don’t (who use cookies & copies of our emails), record every keystroke that you type, every search you do and every YouTube video you watch.  Someone, somewhere is taking note.  This is not ‘tinfoil-hat’ territory here; this is real and it is ubiquitous.  A friend of mine posted a link on Facebook and the story caught my eye. 

Submitted for your approval, Gentle Reader, I humbly present to you a podcast from WHYY’s, “Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane”.  She interviews a Social network and privacy expert, Lori Andrews, who is, after discovering what she is about, one of my heroes.  WHYY’s splash page for the interview states, “Social networking sites have the ability to put us in touch with old friends, help us meet our soul-mates and even topple governments, but they are also blurring the lines between our public and private selves leaving us vulnerable to invasions of our privacy.  Social network and privacy expert LORI ANDREWS says that as we work, chat, shop and date online, many of us are unknowingly opening ourselves up to surveillance from employers, schools, lawyers, the police, and even advertisers. In her recent book, "I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did,” she exposes the widespread misuse of our personal online data and proposes a “Social Network Constitution” to govern our online lives.”

It’s a great interview and I could not recommend it higher.  Before you click over to listen grab a cup of coffee and make yourself comfy since the interview is about 50 minutes long.  It is worth your time. 

Got your coffee?  Good.  Now click here: http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2012/03/09/lori-andrews-on-social-networks-privacy/.  I’m looking forward to reading Ms. Andrews’s book.

We seek out new ways of connecting and communicating with people.  Social Media is a new frontier and the rules that were written at noon change by mid-afternoon.  Yet again our principals are being put to the test.  The founding fathers had no inclination as to the scope of personal freedom as applied to the internet.  Still, those truths still must be self-evident.  Social Media is a tool and how that tool is used – our behavior and motivation when using it, defines us.  Information is the new currency, let there be no doubt.  The “Facebook Nation” as Ms. Andrews coined it has a population that if it had boarders would be the third largest nation in the world.  Facebook has its own currency.  Who has your information?  Anyone who wants it, that’s who.  The data aggregators (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_aggregators) collect the data and sell it.  Mark Zuckerberg created a billion dollar social network around the concept.  Information is not only currency but it’s also power.  There are entities out there that wish to exploit this information and, yet again, we must ask just who watches the watchmen?  Of course that is a question that we should be asking even if there was no such thing as the net.  Democracy is about free speech.  We should still value that.  Just as we wouldn’t allow cameras to watch our every move in the privacy of our own home, governments, schools, the police, and yes, even advertisers should not be able to do the same via our home computers.  You may have allowed Zynga access to your information so that you could play “Mafia Wars” but did you know that they sold that information to a data aggregate who sold it to the Republican Party?  Now the GOP knows everything about you that Facebook does.  Everything.  The legal system has not yet caught up with new and emerging technologies and/or applying the principles that have held our country together for the last 235 + years to them.  It will happen but by the time that it does will it be too late?

I stand behind Ms. Andrews Social Network Constitution’s preamble, “We the People of the Facebook Nation…”  

I hope I'm not alone.

NOTE: This humble blog is the first in a two part series.  Next up, “We Need a Social Network Declaration of Independence”