TED Community » Don Tapscott

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• A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: Cool. I just found out there there is a TEDed lesson up based on my TED Talk on Radical Openness.
  
  http://ed.ted.com/lessons/four-principles-for-the-open-world-don-tapscott
  
  Please let us know what you think.
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  A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: When it comes to each of us as individuals, Anthony and I think we all need a balance between the public and private. Just as the complete loner and hermit lifestyle is not optimal (we all need and benefit from human interaction and relationships) so being a completely public person undermines one essence of what it is to be human – to be private, reserved and discreet.
  
  Develop and implement your own personal privacy strategy. When you share consider the benefits. But realize that withholding most information about you is in your interests: there are many “bad actors” who would misuse it. Privacy is important to the formation and maintenance of human relationships, reputation trust and even “the self” and its presentation in everyday life. Society lacks the laws and norms to protect you from companies being invasive or manipulative. And don’t assume governments are benevolent: we may harmed in absentia by unknown public and private bureaucracies having access to our personal data -- perhaps the targets of injurious decisions and discrimination and we will never really know what or why.
  
  By all means, be as open as you want but realize that with openness can come vulnerabilities, especially for your children. And as the expression goes “Discretion is the better part of valor” meaning that it makes sense to be careful in the face of unintended consequences and risks.
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  A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: IN fact, in Macrowikinomics, Anthony and I argue that banks should start sharing risk management data to help them get a valuation of all the so-called "toxic assets" on their balance sheet. If they placed these assets in a commons and let the world's leading modellers go at them, the values could be determined and the assets disposed of. Evey Wall Street needs to open up, just to save itself.

• A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: Agreed. the whole sub-prime meltdown was caused in part by a lack of transparency. If the banks had been open they wouldn't have been able to create this mess.
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  A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: Thanks. The Naked Corporation was a very good book and I'm proud of it. But the timing (10 years ago) was awful. The world wasn't ready for it. Also the new book Radical Openness takes a broader perspective on openness -- four meanings, transparency, sharing IP, collaboration and empowerment. The Naked Corp was about transparency only.
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  A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: Well Patients Like Me shows that there are some benefits to personal openness. People there with, say ALS typically use their real names. But they don't have a lot to lose either. This is a deadly disease and so naturally they air on the side of sharing to help them manage the disease.
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  A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: there are some benefits to each of us being more open personally and we all share more information than we used to. But that doesn't mean that we should live our lives out loud. The fundamental problem with the case of radical personal openness is that we are a long way from a world where being open will not hurt us. A world, say, where employers don’t discriminate because an applicant has had a mental illness, held a certain political point of view, or was photographed as a teenager having a beer on Facebook. There are also bad actors and the danger of fraud, identity theft or inappropriate disclosure of personal information is also a problem.

• A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: Oh, and by the way I agree with your point about science. But science is stalled today because it's not fully embraced the new opportunities for sharing. See Anthony's comments about those in the pharmaceutical industry who are trying to change that.

• A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: For chats like this I prefer to talk to people with real names. People are smarter and more thoughtful when they have a personal reputation and brand to defend.
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  A reply on Conversation: How much of your information do you share? How much should corporations share? TED Books Q&A Friday at 3pm Eastern!

  Feb 8 2013: Indeed. But it's important to differentiate between transparency (communicating information) and sharing (giving up intellectual property assets). Both are good ideas for companies. Both are often bad ideas for individuals.