The Dark and the Light sides of Social Media...

"In 1999, in a book entitled The Control Revolution, journalist and legal scholar Andrew Shapiro described two futures that the Internet might take. The first was the familiar story of increased individual freedom, as the network gave us greater control over our lives, and over the institutions, including government, that regulate our lives. The second was a less familiar warning—of the rebirth of technologies of control, as institutions 'disintermediated' by the Internet learned how to alter the network to reestablish their control." - Lawrence Lessig in The Future of Ideas (download the book)

Are you trapped in a walled garden? It may appear to be beautiful and fun from inside, but what happens if and when you want to leave? Can you take anything out of the garden that you have collected?

This is the ethical dilemma under continual debate in the cybersphere.

Who owns your social identity when it is made up of scrapbook pages and lists of friends, all housed in a data mine under the lock and key of MySpace or facebook? What happens if you get banned for inappropriate behavior? There are no tools to export your personal data. In other words you have no rights.

The more time you spend in MySpace the more money MySpace makes from advertisers. Do you deserve a share?

Trebor Scholz explains, "What the MySpace generation should know about working for free."