Cactus West

Fitting I would choose this subject as my 100th blog posting. Forgive me for playing loose with logic and prose.

Just as the west was won with barbwire, the internet has been tamed by the large corporations like Google and Facebook. But unlike the old west which was divided up into homesteads, the maturity of the Internet has been marked by the tearing down of walls and obstructions.

When I started my media business over 6 years ago, the Internet was still very much the domain of the nerd. Around 2000, Bill Gates proclaimed that there were two types of businesses: Businesses with websites and Businesses that were going out of business. That was true then, but as we draw this decade to a close it’s become true for the individual.

Now there are two types of people: People that are involved with Social Networking and the hold outs.

Less then 10 years ago, it was not uncommon to meet people that didn’t have a regular email address. Only the most technically inclined would dare build their own website and building a web gallery was something that required a patience and a bunch of html table tags. The word “blog” was yet to be invented.

Lest you think this posting is just a reminiscence into what has changed in the last 10 years, let me assure you, there is a point.

As the web becomes easier to use, it also becomes ever more prevalent. At first I was very much anti-Facebook (as I was anti-MySpace and started an MS profile as a lark), but now I think more than 50% of the people I know and communicate with in real life are Facebook Friends. That milestone is striking to me.

No longer can I compartmentalize the web from my “real life”. No longer can I be one person online and another person offline. The barriers between these worlds are crumbling fast.

I don’t know that I’m sad to see the blur between the two. On one hand it has improved my own offline personality – it’s made me more sociable (strangely enough). On the other hand, the deception of “privacy on the internet” has never been more… deceptive. You can’t just blog about a bad experience with someone lest that someone actually tracks you down and reads that bad post. Sure that’s always been the case, but since you can link up your blog with your Facebook and automatically tweet about your latest anger filled tear down – tracking down the bad blood has never been easier.

But then, maybe you should just throw caution to the wind sometimes. Then again, as a freelancer who lives and dies by my reputation, maybe not.

And no, I don’t have the need to rant about someone right now.

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