One Big Small Town

I grew up in a small town, a place where everyone knows everyone pretty much, where you go to school with the same group of people from kindergarten through high school, a place where that embarrassing mistake you made in second grade never completely goes away. There are no secrets, at least not for long.

Things are different in a small town because you are rarely anonymous. Interactions on the roads, in grocery stores - anywhere at all really - are never a one-shot game, you always have to be aware that there will be a next time, aware that your reputation informs and is informed by every interaction. When you apply for a job, your whole history comes with you, there's no need for anyone to Google anything but their own brain to know your life story. If you are a business owner, repeat business is everything and you have no chance at all if the town loses trust in you.

This is not an earth-shattering observation or anything, but as I was reading this column by Thomas Friedman on the new realities of the digital world, about how young people need to be aware that their lives are being recorded like never before, I was struck by how much it sounded just like that town:

The World is Watching: ...The implications of all this are the subject of a new book by Dov Seidman, founder and C.E.O. of LRN... His book is simply called “How.” Because Seidman’s simple thesis is that in this transparent world “how” you live your life and “how” you conduct your business matters more than ever, because so many people can now see into what you do and tell so many other people about it...

For young people, ... this means understanding that your reputation in life is going to get set in stone so much earlier. More and more of what you say or do or write will end up as a digital fingerprint that never gets erased. ... For this generation, much of what they say, do or write will be preserved online forever. Before employers even read their résumés, they’ll Google them.

“The persistence of memory in electronic form makes second chances harder to come by,” writes Seidman. “...[L]ife has no chapters or closets; you can leave nothing behind, and you have nowhere to hide your skeletons. Your past is your present.” So the only way to get ahead in life will be by getting your “hows” right. Ditto in business. Companies that get their hows wrong won’t be able to just hire a P.R. firm to clean up the mess...

“We do not live in glass houses (houses have walls); we live on glass microscope slides ... visible and exposed to all,” he writes. So whether you’re selling cars or newspapers (or just buying one at the newsstand), get your hows right — how you build trust, how you collaborate, how you lead and how you say you’re sorry. More people than ever will know about it when you do — or don’t.

Comments

[rowena]

The underlying message packs a mean punch. If religion might have failed in some respect, technology may well be the key for getting your "hows" straight.

[Esben]

But just as technology ruthlessly exposes to the world everything we have done under our own name, it also allows us to increasingly interact with others in a completely unaccountable form of anonymity. In the physical world no matter where you were and what you were doing there was always that off chance that someone you knew would walk around the corner any minute. Not anymore.

So it goes both ways really. Do we end up with a split life where we behave exemplary under our own name and then at night take on an alternative, misbehaved "handle" and identity where we can compensate for being overly correct during daytime?

[reason]

So Exxon is broke?

rowena - um... what has religion to do with it.

General comment:- there is a difference, reciprocal accountability is missing. How do I challenge the veracity of the electronic record and set it straight? This is how the Republicans have been able to use the "swift-boating" strategy. Every google search produces lots of information only some of it true. Eventually people will twig to this and the electronic record will lose its power as it is subject to manipulation.

[Barry]

The most important lesson of the early internet age is that more data doesn't necessarily mean more information.

Large corporations and movements have easily adapted their methods from the print to the digital era - multimedia propaganda campaigns; front organizations; cute slogans which beat long, boring truths; converting journalists into propaganda whores.

Above all, the relentless drumbeat of the endlessly repeated lie.

[RW]

Mark, your observation reminded me of a comment Guy Debord made some years ago, I think in his "Comments on the society of the spectacle," in reference to Marshall McLuhan's text(s):

"The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a "global village" instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle's present vulgarity."

[jm]

There's a crucial difference between a small town and the internet: In a small town people truly know who you are; they know your voice; they know your handwriting. It is not easy for someone else to masquerade as you and cause vile statements and beliefs to be attributed to you, except perhaps through the rather transparent device of sending a typewritten letter in your name with no handwritten signature.

It's now much more difficult than before to post on Nouriel Roubini's blog because someone started posting outrageous racist comments there over his name.

Some time ago, a number of comments appeared on the Calculated Risk blog over the name of Ben Jones, publisher of thehousingbubbleblog.com, with content so inconsistent with that blog's nature that I emailed him directly to confirm that he had not written them.

On the internet, no one knows you're not a dog. Nor do they know you're really not Mark Thoma.

[donna]

Well, the name we techies used to use for the net was "The web of a million lies". Except it's more like billions of lies these days.

But Friedman has it wrong, as he usually does. What happens in one's youth is no more or less important than it ever was, no more or less remembered. Our country is currently held hostage by men who never let the record of their youth get in their way. Anyone who looked at how Bush and Cheney acted in the past would have known their takeover would lead to the disaster it has. They pretended their past didn't matter, the Supremes put them in place, and they've proceeded to trash the country and take their profit. I didn't notice Friedman complaining much about their past at the time.

[Anonymous]

donna: Isn't the point that indiscretions are now blown up, while the substance of a character get lost? So we learn about Bush's fraternity days, but not his actions as governor of Texas.

[RW]

The point may be, rather unlike a village (pace Dubard), that it is possible to import voices on the web in contradiction of previous 'indiscretion;' e.g., for everyone noting Bush's feckless fraternity days, history of selling business's just before they fail or the condition of the Texas budget after he cut taxes, there is someone else extolling Bush's collegial spirit, business acumen and fidelity to neoconservative values.

Perhaps those in greatest danger of serious abuse are those who remain exposed but can not recruit voices.

And too there are a growing number of spaces in the Internet and, as the tragedy of the commons proceeds apace, a growing number of fences. This may make the issue of "how" highly dependent upon where your cultural capital is to be spent regardless of when reputation was acquired.

[NH]

In Seidman's book, he discusses the very phenomenon you picked up on from Friedman's piece. In his chapter on reputation, Seidman writes:

"For much of our history, the
importance of reputation was largely self-evident. When most people
lived in smaller, semiclosed communities, the proximity and familiarity
of other people placed social pressure upon us to conduct ourselves
within prevailing norms....
"The last part of the twentieth century saw remarkable changes to
the underlying structures of how we live. Increasing affluence, ease of
transportation, expanding multinational business practices, and the
transformation of economies from manufacturing/agricultural to information/
service exerted tremendous pressure on the nuclear cohesion
of communities. Families spread out. Neighborhoods whose character
had been consistent for 100 years saw influxes of new people, new
customs, and new wealth....
"These transformations broke the bonds of familiarity and tradition
that placed high value on reputation. In a new city, or a new job, you
could reinvent yourself. Identity became more fluid, opening up new
opportunities for change and growth, but also removing some of the
external pressures of conformity. More was possible, and so more was
possible...."
"All that has changed. The world of business is faster, more spread
out, more transient, and more fluid than ever before. Information
flows. Yet, paradoxically, the overwhelming capacity of technology to
connect us and transmit information to us instantly and cheaply binds
us together as never before. It creates conditions of interdependence
as high as if not higher than when locality bound us in commonality.
In some sense, the whole world is now local (or glocal, as the current
Reputation, Reputation, Reputation 185
meme goes, both global and local at the same time). What does this
mean for individuals and companies? From a reputation standpoint,
what is old is new again. Reputation—how others think of you—is
now more critical to your ability to build long-term sustained success
than ever before."

I found this idea fascinating, as was the whole book. Things are changing so fast that we rarely have time to sit back and think about what it all means, and how we can change to take advantage of prevailing trends. This book helped me do that.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Our small town had crank phones (until 1974!) and the telphone operators knew everything in town because all of them listened in on calls.

Tough to get away with anything in that town.