Sunday Mālama: Internet Privacy and a release in Talking Story

MY MANA‘O ~ ~ ~ If you are new to MWAC, Sunday Mālama is when we mix it up here. I may offer an extreme tangent to our current value of the month (for April: Mellow Maintenance Mālama), or write about something completely different. My very first Sunday Mālama was this one: A Beginning and this click gives you the full index to page through. I call Sunday Mālama my mana‘o meaning that it shares a deeper view of my thoughts, beliefs, and convictions with you, my Ho‘ohana Community. Thus, Sunday Mālama is also an invitation to share your mana‘o if you wish to.

Anyone who has ever watched a reality show on television has surely had the same thought at some point:

“How can these people expose themselves like this to millions of strangers?
What are they thinking?”

Then, that same any-man, or any-woman, fires up their lap top, and hits the publish button with the story of how they just messed up big time at work. Or, they click over to a social media site like Twitter and post a tweet on what they just had for breakfast, with whom, and exactly where.

Photo as on JJL: WHAT IF all your learning inputs were digital?
[Flickr Photo Credit: "Working late" by Delgoff.]

Internet Privacy: An evolution

When I started blogging back in August of 2004 I’d been reading blogs and thinking about it for almost a year before taking the plunge. I had a “static” website, but it was a safe one, and I was very aware of the differences. With a blog there would be less ‘firewalls’ and people I did not know would easily be able to reach out to me. I liked the thought that there were those who would invite me into their lives for my aloha conversation; the thought that others would lurk in my life for unknown reasons terrified me.

What made me take the plunge was not that I came to terms with that; it was publishing my book, and realizing that my contact information would be now public domain anyway… maybe the internet would at least give me a bread crumb trail to knowing who both followers and lurkers were.

Then, decision finally made, it took me all of 6 seconds to know what I would name my new blog: Talking Story was born— online. Why not do what I naturally did offline, when online?

Here I am, still blogging nearly four years later, and at this moment in time I’m sensing another evolution of sorts. I previously tumbled about it in regard to our Brex initiative for 2008: Brex is short for Brave Experiments in Digital Learning:

1. Traditional website (needed to hire a webmaster)
2. Blog platform (could actually do it myself!)
3. Blogging (guess there is more that comes with this… Oh! a community ecosystem!)
4. Group Blogging (Joyful Jubilant Learning is born! Eleven Things, circa October 2006)
5. Tumbling (put the lifestreaming stuff here, and edit your blogs better!)
6. Twitter (what say we change this up a bit and see where else social media takes us, hmm? Care to follow along?)

What is most interesting to me, is the privacy evolution we’ve gone through too. And my word choice is deliberate: Once you blog, “I” becomes “we” and you’ve become the spider drawing others into your world wide web. I think of Kuleana, and the responsibility I accept with that pretty often.

Yet I’ve gotten braver than I ever imagined I would have, and no regrets.

This weekend my Mellow Mālama Maintenance has involved sharing my learning with Twitter, and beyond that, eagerly and joyfully inviting people to follow along. (Equally fascinating to me is how our contextual language changes: What does friending and following mean to you right now?)

You may recall this part of my Day One Essay for April:

There are three themes within Mellow Mālama Maintenance that I plan to explore in April: 1. Financial Literacy —a hot button of mine that Uncle Sam always presses relentlessly in April. 2. Productivity —when we Mālama and Ma‘alahi by keeping things simple, simpler, and simplest, (busy-work be gone!) 3. Learning —something I believe managers and leaders don’t have the luxury of stopping or putting on hold. Brex (our Ho‘ohana Community 2008 initiative with Digital Learning) moves to Joyful Jubilant Learning for the entire month of April. “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” ~ Alvin Toffler via Tim Milburn

Now talking story is back, but in a whole new way, just as was meant to happen

Truth is, talking story has always been part of the mix, and always will be.

Here is an excerpt of how I shared the talking story connection on Joyful Jubilant Learning: From Mynah bird to Twitter bird...

Talking story is a big part of the local Hawai‘i culture. At its purest form, to talk story is to shoot the breeze with someone because you have some laid-back, easy-going, relaxing time to do nothing but swap stories with each other about everything that is personal but light and joyful with you.

You talk with someone like you have known them forever; you are direct and to the point, no posturing or pretense, and asking questions freely, but never crossing that line of intimacy that even the best of friends would never cross without invitation. You don’t need much context in way of introduction; you just jump in and talk to someone just because they are there smiling at you, and you have this positive expectancy that aloha lives and breathes within them. What more do you need to know?

There is so much in life that is happily light-hearted, and that’s what talking story celebrates. The less serious the better; talking story is best when there is tons of smiling, laughter and kidding around about stuff that is pure nonsense. You laugh with each other, and at the silliness and yes, even the stupidity of life.

Then, when the talking story is over, it is over. Goodbyes are said with hugs and aloha. No promises made, no commitments to be honored, no follow-up calendared (unless it’s for a party somewhere) —you just go merrily on your way again as carefree as a mynah bird.

Talking story happens in the workplace too; there it’s kind of a warm-up exercise that opens people up for when they need to roll up their sleeves and get into more serious matters. However you don’t get into those serious matters of work that will surely mix personal and professional into a people-pungent stew-and-rice mixed plate (come on now, it’s to be expected after all), unless you have a talking story relationship with all those people first, one that has been built on aloha.

My jump into Twitter was the catalyst, and I continue there, writing about the community connections of talking story. You can read the post in total over at JJL: Talking Story and a JJL Twitter Soiree.

Talking story is a big part of my comfortable releasing of my privacy. Further, the light-heartedness of talking story does not intrude on others; I feel that talking story is respectful.

As you read this, where do you feel you are?

Talking story is part of my inner source of well-being

There is this inner source that is part of our make-up, a spring of well-being we all draw from. How fiercely protective might you be of your inner source?

In Managing with Aloha I refer to this inner source as our value of Nānā i ke kumu, our authenticity, and the value of Pono is our balancing act of truthfulness that blends with it. My Hawai‘i cultural and community concept of talking story is a big part of my own Nānā i ke kumu, and I suppose that it will always help me reckon with those cautionary concerns of internet privacy in the best way I can.

What has been your evolution with privacy on the internet? How has this reckoning with privacy issues on the world wide web happened for you?

Your reckoning may still be happening, and many of us live within double-standards with our approach as employers, and as parents —and perhaps wisely so. For example, are you as ready for Twitter as I have realized I am now, even to the point of drawing the entire JJL community in with me?

I would love to hear from you if you have the moment to spare. Let’s talk story…
~ Rosa

 

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Mahalo, thank you for reading today.

• If you would like to read more about Aloha, you may enjoy Aloha in A Love Affair with Writing
• If you would like to read more about Mālama, the value of caring and stewardship, you have picked the perfect month, and I recommend you start here: Mellow Maintenance Mālama
• If you would like to read more about Nānā i ke kumu, try this one: Ho‘ohana; Nānā i ke kumu, Look to your Source
• This is the page with my full listing of articles to date for 2008: MWAC 2008 Article Index and you can subscribe on this page: Get MWAC delivered to you. I do hope you will!

Comments

[Peter Juan]

These are very interesting insights, specially regarding the evolution of privacy in these age of blogs and social networks. As the product manager of a blogging service, I find the evolution of privacy controls in blogs quite interesting too. A few years ago, even when blogging was already quite popular, there was little a blogger could do to control the privacy of their blogs. That's not so true these days though. Our service for example, i.ph blogs has made it a point to continuously develop deeply granular privacy controls. Our users can select which posts can be seen by who, regardless if the people they give access to have i.ph accounts or not. We've seen a lot of our users take advantage of this and I think there's something in what you said that's the reason behind it. Blogs for the most part are like talking stories. And while sometimes, it would be perfectly fine to tell a story to a stranger, however there are stories that one can only be "direct and to the point, no posturing or pretense" if told to someone that is already trusted. This is why i.ph blogs have made it a point to give our bloggers a chance to choose their audience. I believe that the opportunity to better control one's privacy online plays a huge factor in the total evolution of privacy. Anyway, forgive the long comment and thank you for giving me something to ponder about.

[Rosa Say]

Just read this at Stowe Boyd's /Message and thought I would keep it here as more perspective:
To go there directly:
My Twitter Story: Why I Use Twitter

Being connected is becoming the best way to be effective in the brave new webified world. By tapping into and supporting the passions and drivers of a swirling, ever-changing network of people, I am made better. I am made stronger, smarter, and deeper, and more together in a way that I could not be, on my own.

There is an African saying that says it is through other people that we become people.

Twitter helps us become more human, in a time when it is more important than ever before to see us as connected on this Earth, not separate; linked together, not divided; to see ourselves as elements of a whole that is greater than any, and all, of the individual parts.

Twitter is about hope and love, although the casual observer might miss that completely.
~ Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd on Twitter)

[Rosa Say]

An update: Evolution #7 has arrived, of that there is no doubt

May 17th, 2008

I was a bit disappointed this morning, for I had planned a Saturday morning Artist Date to my favorite Farmer's Market with my new camera in hand, and then thought better of it as we are getting some very nasty vog (volcanic haze from Kilauea's recent eruption).

So instead, I traveled to Brazil, and any disappointment I briefly pouted over quickly disappeared, and completely and joyfully erased itself from memory. Meet my new friend Liz Hamill: Can’t Get Started (Not Vernon Duke).