Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide
Posted by unbrand on 10 April 2005 | 0 Comments
One thing I’ve noticed about life in Wellington is the transparency of existence here. It’s such a small community that you often run into co-workers or friends whilst running errands. People know each other through 1 or 2 degrees of separation here, not 4 or 5 or ? as in San Francsico. One effect this has is that it keeps you honest. Because there were so many people in SF you could pretty much re-invent a life in the same city if you wanted to. Randomness of social interaction was key, as well as that wonderful San Francisco attitude of live and let live.
But here in Wellington, there are much fewer people and the people who are here have banded together much more so than in SF. Maybe it’s to fight off the wind. Or to make sure New Zealand stays afloat. For whatever reason, kiwis are much more socially active and aware than what I’ve been accustomed to. I enjoy it and had hoped it would be like this before we left San Francisco.
With the advent of Google, we all are now building up our permanent records we were warned about in primary school. Maybe there’s a business model for Google: they charge to “forget” certain aspects of your life which would then become unindexed.
But maybe as a society we could all do with more transparency. Transparency in this sense leads to a more self-correcting system where issues are dealt with quickly and you know you can’t run away if you want to be devious or get away with something. Then again, wasn’t conditioned “goodness” one of the points behind A Clockwork Orange? I think in the case of Google, I really hope they live up to their promise of “Do no evil” or at least put some mechanisms in place such that they don’t become synonymous with “permanent record.” But if you want to be more transparent and be part of a society that rewards goodness, Wellington fits the bill.