Visions of Shadow and Light

I had one of those life-moments this evening. We were driving home after a birthday dinner and my oldest son casually mentioned that he’d googled my name, using the picture search, and found a couple pages.

He was impressed, because there are a couple pictures of my books, but numerous pictures of me speaking at various conferences. Several of the conferences hire professional photographers to take pictures of speakers on stage so the conference can use the images for future promotions. This leads to a fair number of such pictures being on the web, with appropriate captions and thus accurate googling.

All I could think though, was that I’m happy google isn’t full of less flattering pictures. Not that I’m often in unflattering situations, but it did give me pause. Very few of us are always, always, always in places and situations we’d want to share with our kids. Yet the reality is that any time you are photographed in a public setting odds are pretty good that you’ll turn up on a google picture search.

Sailing ships, the printing press, the telephone, the airplane and the television each shrank the world. To the point that the world became a small enough place that the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” became a commonplace concept.

But the Internet, and more specifically google, shrink the world far more. To the point that a pre-adolescent can easily look into the public life of their parents or any other adult they care to consider.

While the economic impact of the Internet has yet to reach the heights predicted during the tech bubble of the Clinton era, the deeper social impact of the Internet is slowly becoming more and more apparent as time goes on. As more people live more public lives (by choice or not) via the Internet it is clear that some impact will be felt.

Against all hope, perhaps the Internet will become a civilizing and moderating force. Remember, anything you say or do in a public forum – and especially directly online – had better be something you are comfortable with your kids seeing. At each stage of their life.