I’m sitting in the OCLC Symposium about social spaces (for a precis, go here or here) . The thing I kept coming back to is: what is happening to privacy? More specifically, who owns “me”?
There was a discussion about this on LM_NET: is it ok to resend messages from an e-list to others (let’s face it, 15,000 readers doesn’t count as “private”)? Let’s widen that: what about a blog post? The URL to a website? Ken Jennings gets asked about the MySpace people with his name. What about a Wikipedia article?
My high school philosophy teacher used to say “your right to punch me ends where my nose begins” – where’s the edge between private and public? Much of our on-line social interaction is like the old-fashioned party line, in that we presume privacy that isn’t really there.
More than that, when we are on-line we’re often multitasking. I’ll check my e-mail and Bloglines while cooking dinner. I’ll write a memo and do complete a book order. You get the picture. Where’s the mindfulness in this?
If I’m mindful of what I’m doing, if I’m careful about what I put “out there”, then some of these privacy issues will resolve themselves. I hope.
Venn Librarian 
Once upon a time, in my early online phase, I thought there was such thing as online privacy. I am wiser now. I assume that anything I write and send over the internet may become public knowledge. With that assumption in mind, I sometimes simply don’t say things.
Yes, Sherri, but you’re an adult. My students are no where near as sophisticated and they don’t “get it” (or don’t care, which is worse).