I have always held a clear boundary between my professional and my personal worlds, and it was easy until recently. There was some amount of anonymity to mail lists, newsgroups, online forums, and even social sites to a degree. There is comfort in separating my professional life and my personal life. Professionally, I am known as someone who is focused and analytical. Personally I am known as someone who plays a bunch of instruments and different styles of music, is enthusiastic about Italian cars, log cabins, and photography, and does not take things too seriously. I have got nothing on Sybil, but in some sense, I am two different people.

I have also been inclined to maintain a certain amount of anonymity on social media sites. I would create an account with a “handle”, borrowing the lingo from the world of CB radio. In some ways this was good. I could keep things separate. But it was also bad because the credibility I earned on one forum did not cross over to another forum where many of the names were familiar to me, but my handle was not familiar to them.

Facebook changed all of that, and only in the last several months. I joined Facebook at the behest of my cousin, who said “you will be really surprised who you will find on FB”. She was right. It became a place where old acquaintances became reacquainted, where my cousins could get together and share family photos, where my wife could tease me, where my music friends could talk about the great session and how much Guinness was consumed.

Then my co-workers started sending friend requests. And the guy I bought a mandolin from seven years ago. And women I dated briefly, and people I never met who randomly sent a request because somehow I ended up in their address book. I paused. Where does one stop? Do I “friend” the people I bought my house from? They are friends with a dozen of my friends. Do I “friend” the friend of my ex? And if I do, what does it say when or if I decide to “unfriend” them? I am not even sure that is possible.

I cannot say where this is going, or how far it will go. I know that for now, I am drawing a line. Linked-in is for business, including personal friends whom I have had business relationships with. Facebook is for my family and closest, dearest friends. I will even add the people whom I only know personally, who are close and dear to my wife, or my closest friends. So, if you’re reading this, we have a professional relationship, and you have sent a “friend request” on Facebook that I did not respond to, please accept my apology. I am still working out exactly where all of this social media fits in my life. I do have lines. For me it is not all about a personal brand. I want my brand, but I want my privacy.

This might be an aspect of my age. I grew up in a time when we practiced in grade school how to duck under our desks if Russia sent an atomic bomb hurling toward us. I was a teenager during the late Nixon years. Everyone I knew read 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. We learned that putting your trust in the hands of those in power was not necessarily a good idea. I contrast that view with Kevin Kelly’s suggestion that we, collectively, through the computer networks and the information we put on them, are organizing ourselves into a system that will ultimately surpass anything we have ever witnessed in all of humanity. We will be the computer.

So, do I draw my lines, or succumb to the collective? I might give you a different answer tomorrow, but for now, I am keeping the boundaries in place. It is just a little more comfortable that way, like knowing I can always duck my head under the desk if someone hurls an atomic bomb my way.

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