Call and response

In response to my Uncle's comment to my last post (his original text can be found here):

Hey Rick -

Your thoughts on this matter on much appreciated, and it is something that Ariel (who I have a hunch might have been that first poster) and the rest of my friends have talked about at length. I think that the suggestion you've posited about our desire for Celebrity is certainly part of the story. However, I also think that those who you are referring to as My Generation have a ever-growing belief that information - about themselves, about their friends, about the wider world we live in - resides in the public domain.

At first these web-based tools like blogs, photo sharing sites, etc. were utilized almost expressly as a convenient medium for sharing this information with friends and family. But much of this, once private, information has become readily available to anyone with access to the internet with the rapidly growing power of search engines and social networking sites - and my generation has embraced this shift. (I often speculate that this trend will spiral out of control, ultimately giving way to The Dystopia, but that is outside the scope of this particular discussion, I think.)

These are just some of my off-the-cuff thoughts on the matter, but the larger questions at hand are certainly something that is actively being actively thought about and discussed by many of us. This is a subject that would certainly warrant further discussion at another moment in the near future.

Also, Ariel has just informed me that New York Magazine recently published an article discussing this issue exactly. The article is called Say Everything and can be found on their website here. I haven't read the article yet, but hopefully it will shed some further light on this question.