If you don’t have a presence online, how can I know whether or not I should trust you?
I feel the same way as Hugh expresses in his post. When I’m supposed to do any kind of work or business with someone, I look them up on the Web and if nothing shows up, it makes me a little wary. I also feel that anybody who would want to do business with me – like buy something from me on eBay for example, or let me sublet their apartment – would know by looking at my blog and archives that I’m a reliable person. (Plus, they’d pretty much know where to find me if something went wrong.)
I have a theory that much of what’s happening online is rebuilding the physical, small-scale social networks that we crave, but got destroyed in our modern/suburban/hypercommercial era. We don’t know our neighbours, we don’t know the people we buy from, we don’t know the people in the street. 50 or 100 years ago, it was different. Digital identities allow us to *know* people in a way that people used to know people from their own town – even if they had never spoken or been close socially, everyone knew everyone, and could judge how they should interact…and now, with weblogs etc, to a certain extent that’s coming back, even for strangers.
Go read the whole thing at hughmcguire.net
Nous sommes beaucoup à partager ce point de vue… J’ai pour mon dire, si quelqu’un travaille en art, web ou marketing et qu’ils ne sont mentionnés ou n’ont aucune présence nulle part sur la toile, c’est louche…
Attention, par contre, hein: y a toujours moyen de connaître ses « vrais » voisins et les marchands chez qui on achète! Question de priorités! Ceux pour qui cette communauté est importante font l’effort de la préserver. (Ça ne lui donne pas tort!)
Mais j’avoue que quand je « Google » le nom d’un ami perdu de vue depuis longtemps et que je ne trouve *RIEN*, je me demande vraiment quel chemin il a pu prendre! Ça doit être une question d’âge, puisque maintenant les écoles secondaires ont une présence en ligne, et il n’y a pas de décalage, les jeunes sont en ligne dès le berceau. Haha, je fais partie de la dernière génération pas entièrement webbifiée!
It is so true! For example Martine, I have a feeling you live close to my house and that we’ve probably shopped in the same places, maybe even at the same time ; ) Yet you wouldn’t know me, as you only know that I am a plump goddess and that I have an overactive imagination and that I like Patrick Huard. It ain’t much to go by, but at the same time it is more than most of my coworkers will ever find out about me! Re-building networks indeed!