Jeff Jarvis: Openness and the Internet

As our social lives, business, and government become more transparent via the Internet, there are benefits for anyone who wants to create and connect

By Jeff Jarvis

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In the company of nudists, no one is naked. We are entering an age of publicness when more and more we will live, do business, and govern in the open. Some see danger there. I see opportunity.

The evidence of the trend toward openness is all around. Young people are sharing their lives online via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Google (GOOG), and whatever comes next. Though that mystifies their elders and appalls self-appointed privacy advocates, the transparent generation gains value from its openness: This is how they find each other, share, and socialize.

In business, in the wake of the financial crisis, the public and government will demand far greater disclosure. Companies should view transparency not as punishment but instead as a necessary step in rebuilding trust and repairing relationships.

And in Washington, President Obama has promised a new transparency in government—against the sure resistance of bureaucrats and politicians. For government, too, transparency is the prerequisite to trust. As newspapers shrink and die, one way to assure many more watchful eyes on government is to make all of its actions and information open and searchable. Government should be transparent by default.

Benefits of Openness

Are there dangers in publicness? Yes. For one, we can all share too much and turn into the nation of narcissists. Young people may regret tomorrow what they make public today; this is why Google CEO Eric Schmidt jokes that we should all be able to change our identities at age 21 but I think we will all be protected by the doctrine of mutually assured humiliation (I won't dig up your college-party picture if you don't dig up mine). More important, our information can be stolen, misused, and misconstrued. But the issue isn't really privacy, as its advocates insist. It is control. We need to be masters of our own data and how it is seen and used.

But we also need to understand the benefits of living and working in the open; that is the discussion that is being ignored. I can attest to the value of the public life. As I wrote my book, I explored its ideas openly on my blog and that enabled my generous readers to improve, challenge, correct, and add value to them all. In the book and on my blog, I revealed the most private and personal of information—that I have a minor heart condition—and again my readers gave me advice, support, and information. I'm having a ball now reading readers of my book on Twitter as they quote and review it (and I respond). Finally, because I am on Facebook and LinkedIn and have a blog and use Twitter, I have made business connections—and money.

In reports I've written for BusinessWeek, the heads of Dell (DELL) and Starbucks (SBUX) corroborate the value of business in public as they each now seek and discuss customers' ideas openly. Comcast (CMCSA) has learned that there is a public discussion about its service happening independently and that is why it assigned staff to monitor and respond to Twitterers' complaints. Every company alive is hiring search engine optimization experts to help them manage their public face for Google and its users. What more powerful business elixir is there today than Googlejuice?

Business Opportunities

There are business opportunities in this new transparency. Google has won the war to organize our information. The next frontier, possibly even more valuable, will be organizing us. I don't believe the victor will be a single social network that has the most members. No, the Internet is our social network and the Google of people will be the service that makes sense of and gives us control over our information and connections.

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