In the last days of my 60days I reconsidered what my father said at the beginning, about sharing information publicly like we do here and the danger that might come with it. Well I still wouldn’t go so far to talk about danger, but I did question myself to what degree I am aware of how voluntarily transparent I make certain aspects of my life.
I am maybe old school to still believe that private is political and that by illuminating a microcosm something more global could come to light. But I am also old school in the sense that I easily mistake the vastness of the Internet and accessibility of information with this “felt coziness” of a small group sharing ideas. Like everything interesting, there is ambivalence to this. The chance to reflect and think loudly, to phrase thoughts, engage on issues that are important to me, is a great chance and a responsibility. I stand behind my beliefs and I’m thankful to have been given the opportunity to communicate them. But at the same time, despite the whole NSA discussion, I realize that I don’t know how to responsibly share information. And I would dare to say, lots of people don’t. Taking Facebook as an example, in the times where I don’t deactivate my account and post information, mostly only about work or politics, my mind can only think of a limited number of people reading it, disregarding how many friends I actually have. When I then meet far away acquaintances and they know where I have been in the last month this stupidly surprises me and I’m not sure if I would have shared that information with that person in real life. I have been asked last year to participate in a home thingy on a blog. And just now I found out that this story was one of the ten most clicked pages of that blog in 2013. Despite of being flattered and ego-struck I was shocked. Who were these people, why do they look at my apartment, do I want them to see it? I know it’s naïve and of course I should have thought about it before but is the mind really capable of dealing with an abstract unknown crowed who virtually walks through your apartment. Or is there an interest behind all that, to have people voluntarily giving away their keys to their mind. And we know of course there is. So when do we start learning and speaking about it. When do we say if you do that or this you could rather stand on Alexanderplatz and hold a speech or spread photos of you, your family, your house and it would still be much more private than having it out in the worldwide web.