The End Of Secrecy

One of my faithful blog readers (Allison Kanti) pointed me to a very thought provoking article (Getting Found Out Web 2.0 Style).  The point of the article is that you can’t hide anymore in the new digital world we live in. This is especially true if you are a proflific social networker and use tools such as Twitter, Facebook or Flickr. Now that smart phones have video capture capability with easy upload to YouTube, everything you do can go as viral as the Rodney King video.  

I think this is great news for good people. Secrecy is the ally to evil. Think about the future of business in a transparent world: No bad act gets hidden, no good act goes unnoticed.
What does this mean? Same things I’ve been saying since 2002 — Nice smart people succeed.  More than ever, values and ethics must drive our day to day decisions.  Since the birth of capitalism, countless companies have relied on layers of communication blocks to externalize their true costs on society with impunity.  Those days are over.  

When I was growing up, my grandmother often told me about some relatives in Oklahoma that were true snake oil salespeople.  They’d show up in a town, pop open the trailer and do their little scam-show, and often leave with their pockets stuffed with cash.  I asked her once, “what ever happened to them?”  She replied, “they were eventually caught when the telegraph wires went up!”