Welcome to the Panopticon

In posting about Danielle Hatfield's observations on the loss of privacy brought on by over-sharing, I was reminded of this good read by Devin Friedman. From The Viral Me:

"For the past month, I've been trying to fully engage with the social layer. I joined and contributed to such services and platforms as Quora, Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, Blippy, Swipely, DailyBooth, Goodreads, Daytum, etc., etc. I tried to tweet five times a day. I gave two sites access to my credit cards so I could share my purchases with my friends. I did my best to check in wherever I went on Foursquare. And what it all made me feel, mostly, was stupid. And anxious—that I didn't have enough people following me and then that I was the kind of person who wants people to follow him. Every update, every tweet, every check-in, ultimately began to feel not unlike doing my expenses. The experience isn't unusual. I think old people like me (I'm 38) often do this stuff to feel like the world hasn't yet left them behind, but we don't have any natural hunger for it. It's kind of like androids having sex: We know we're supposed to do it, but we're not really sure why. Meanwhile, and infuriatingly, we know that humans just like to bone."